Practicality can do that. Look, I don't blame you about the 164L. It's
a saloon. A nice saloon, but a saloon nonetheless. I have a friend who
has one one of the all-wheel drive, 24-Valve 164s and it's a nice,
fast and comfortable 4-door sedan. But It's not a spider or a GTV. In
your shoes, I likely would have done the same thing. I've driven a
Cruze, and I thought that it was a pleasant car, but without much
personality. Like most modern cars, it has great roadholding, superior
brakes (to our aging Alfas), modern computer modeling assures us of
that. OTOH, I found the steering dead and all of the things that we
consider good "handling" (as opposed to "roadholding" - roadholding is
the numbers, handling is the way the car communicates with the driver,
the feel, if you will) are missing. The brakes seemed to lack feedback
(and were a little spongy, as I recall) and I couldn't feel the
chassis through the seat of my pants. Just like my VW GTI, modern car
design has removed all the things that make driving fun (to me,
anyway) from the equation. My VW will beat my Alfa GTV-6 to the top of
a local mountain road every time and by a considerable margin, yet I
find it boring to drive, and I find the Alfa to be a stimulating and
scintillating adventure. So I drive the VW every day and save the Alfa
for nice, sunny weekends.
George Graves
'86 GTV-6 3.0 'S'
On Jan 14, 2011, at 10:16 AM, doskow, j wrote:
well, pricticality eventually changed my attitude about the romance
of motoring,
we still have 2 ALFAs, one 164Q that has been ~ 300 miles away for
almost a year for
repairs that perhaps could have taken a week or 2 at the most, and a
74 spider
out for the snow/salt season, i was really sad about getting rid of
the 164L when
we got the chevy, but it was getting absurd, suspension bushings all
wearing out,
it was gonna need rear calipers again, there was the oil leak, the
water pump
was probably gonna need replacement again, there was a valve noise,
and an unexplicable occasional running on noticably less than 6
cylinders. plus the
general wearing out of the interior, occasionally flakey electronics
& the not
very good heat/ defrost.
but the Cruze handles better than any of them, everything works,
including a
really functional handbrake, etc. etc. and after ~2000 miles i fail
to notice
a significant absence of personality.
maybe i'm not a real ALFA person anymore, if i ever do get my Q back
i doubt that
i'll find that it really has more "personality" or is more fun to
drive than the
cruze. it will be fun to drive the spider with the top down in the
spring,
but similarly inferior in every respect except simplicity.
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