Thanks for the surprizing number of responses, except for the political one. It is strange that Chevy reused a name which had been used for totally different vehicles in the past, the current Cruze is manufactured in Ohio, is an American car as much as pretty much any modern mass produced car can be, with components from all over, when was the last ALFA built from entirely Italian parts ? During 2010 we rented various cars for trips due to problems with our verging on unrepairable ALFAs & have driven friends cars, the Cruze, partially due to being a new model and partially because of some very good design had features and charisteristics as good or better than imports & i am not against supporting American workers & companies. i was most skeptical about the feel of electric power steering, a nice simplification from hydraulic boost, but it is very precise, one learns very quickly how much to turn the wheel to get the amount of steer one wants at whatever speed, and in the twisties at least there gets to be some feedback, though of course not the constant feedback i enjoy on my manual steering ALFA spider. My idea of good handling is the combination of good 'roadfeel' and the ability to navigate curves at speed without significant oversteer, understeer, body roll or lack of control, sometimes called 'tossablilty' on a motorcycle, the experience which makes aa ALFA so fun to drive. The intent of my original post was not to criticize ALFAs, but to suggest that one no longer has to only look at Japanese, Korean, German, British (?) or other imported cars to find a good quality fun to drive car.
jak -- to be removed from alfa, see http://www.digest.net/bin/digest-subs.cgi or email "unsubscribe alfa" to [email protected]
