Day 19: ALFAnalysis

We've been looking into replacing Belinda's Commodore and although initially she spoke of things that made me cringe, like station wagons, we took something a little different for a drive today. On David's advice we looked at an Alfa 159 and found that they really are a great looking car which I'm sure you'd agree is far more congruous with Belinda than some old station wagon.

The one we took for a drive was a diesel model which only sounded like a tractor on start up; once we were moving it was very quiet and quite pleasant to drive. I was impressed by the torque of the 5 cylinder Turbo Diesel but found that there was quite a bit more lag between right foot input and power output than I expected. It's nothing you couldn't get used to and the lag disappears when you're in the right gear to keep the revs in the right range, with 6 gears to choose from there should be one for just about any occasion to avoid the hesitation in throttle response. As with most Euro cars the indicators are on the left side of the steering wheel instead of the right, this lead to the wipers indicating some of our turns instead of the little orange lights. Again, something that you'd get used to.

Due to years of Alfa antagonism, David will probably fall of his seat if we end up with one of these, which is looking more likely than I'd have believed. I fear the consumption of humble pie may take more getting used to than left hand indicators and diesel turbo lag.