IS ALFA 159 IS THE SEXIEST CAR??

[Nikolaiski]

http://www.xxxxxxx.com/articles/article.p...pageid=1&view=1

 

To all Alfa owners out there...

 

What do you actually think of the Selespeed? I find it really slow..but it was a great car to drive

 

IF only they had the manual for testing...heh heh...anyway enjoy...got a few nice photos

Edited July 8, 2007 by Nikolaiski

[Felipe]

the 159 saloon has manual for testing. feeling should be abt the same

[Nero159]

Though I drive a manual, I feel the Selespeed is faster in upshift during full acceleration, especially in Sport Mode.

[Felipe]

electronics these days are faster. DSG and all that. but these are all driver aids and it does take away abit of the feel between driver and car.

[Crummytyre]

Sometimes, I do wonder about this idea of "feel" between driver and car. I'm a sceptic you see, of the romance of old technology. The idea seems to stem from "When I was your age, I was...yada yada yada". In cars, it applies to some things, like looks, quality of built (hand-beaten panels anyone?), modern restrictions (anyone remember the 2L V8s of the past?), but when it comes to helping the driver interface with the car, I'll take the modern advance any day granted that some of the applications still have quirks to be ironed out.

 

When power steering 1st came out, we heard the complaints that it doesn't give the driver the real "feel". See which car is not power steered today? Same with ABS. Now gearboxes are evolving to give better and better "feel" without the irritation of the clutch pedal. Shift faster and more efficiently somemore. Then the DBW throttle. 10 or even 5 years down the road, you'll see hardly see a car on cable drive.

 

Isn't it an irony that we take things that detract us from pointing the car where we want it to go, and putting the power (or brakes) when we want it to, as definition of "feel"? For me, I want to be completely opposite. I "feel" the car more when it responds to my wishes exactly as I want it and as quickly as I can think of it. If it takes a ton of electronic gizmo to make that happen, I'll accept it with open arms, and the romance of the old technology can remain in the history books.

[Armored_Saint]

I previously drove a first-generation 155bhp Alfa 156 Selespeed and found it nowehere to be "really slow".

 

What are you benchmarking it against? I was able to keep up with a DC5 from sprint for about 50 metres before we separated and that's prolly enough to tell me it's 'fast' in the 2.0 NA category.

 

You've gotta just love that second gear that pulls all the way to 100km/h without it complaining!

 

Edited July 10, 2007 by Armored_Saint

[Falc]

IMO, different strokes for different folks.

 

While electronics may make cars go faster and more efficient, it may not make the drive more enjoyable (subjective). But more electronics (due to sensitive nature) definitely makes things less reliable.

[Crummytyre]

I think he's refering to the time taken for the gearchange to happen. Not the acceleration the car is capable of.

 

In truth, not many people can shift as fast as the Selespeed. I certainly can't. Just think what you really have to do to shift gears. Clutch out, throw gear, clutch in to bite, clutch fully locked. Have we actually time what all that sequence of action requires? For Selespeed, it's just a flip of the paddle. There is a hesitation between paddle flip and gear locked as the selespeed does the above intermediate actions for us and that's what makes us think it's slow. But the actual gearchange from start to finish is much faster than what I can do myself manually.

Edited July 10, 2007 by Crummytyre

[Count_dukulangsat]

http://www.xxxxxxx.com/articles/article.p...pageid=1&view=1

 

To all Alfa owners out there...

 

What do you actually think of the Selespeed? I find it really slow..but it was a great car to drive

 

IF only they had the manual for testing...heh heh...anyway enjoy...got a few nice photos

 

I drive the manual saloon version...the gears really need to be worked hard in order to accelerate decently. Sometimes when I'm tired and I shift leisurely, the Altis next to me at the traffic lights would be about 3 cars in front by the time I engage 3rd. In order to take off at the same/faster pace, I'd have to go 1st and 2nd very quickly. The 1st gear has very limited speed, and it's just to get moving. Rev the 2nd a little, move to 3rd drag it... Getting the timings right is part of the fun

Edited July 10, 2007 by Count_dukulangsat

[Nero159]

Not that bad lah. That day I just out accelerated a Camry (who is flooring everything he got) uphill easily in 2nd and 3rd. The 2.2JTS has loads of torque from as soon as you touch 2,000rpm and it really pulls hard in every gear till the 7,200rpm redline.

[Steppenwolf]

i have the 159 SW as well - Selespeed though.

 

I believe the "slowness" refered to in the article is because Selespeed doesn't engage till 1500rpm. This creates the feeling of lag from idle to 1500rpm. Rumour has it that Alfa will be coming up with a fix to this in the coming months.

 

However after 2000+rpm it comes alive all the way to redline as my fellow Alfisti will atest to.

 

I was recently up in Malaysia driving some twisty stretches of road at semi insane speeds. I would have to say that i was glad i was driving a Selespeed coz it ment i could shift gears while keep both hands planted on the steering. Maybe i'm a lesser driver than others, but i was glad i didn't have to fiddle with the clutch and gear knob while negotiating the challenging corners.

 

Boils down to personal preference as others say.

Edited July 11, 2007 by Steppenwolf

[Porker]

The selespeed is not as slow as the previous generation (found on 156).

 

The 159 is indeed a pretty nice car. The engine has a decent amount of torque even in higher gears.

[Paul123]

Thats interesting to know

[Felipe]

since u brought it up, i would add my viewpoint as well. i think we all agree that selespeed or advance tech does make things easier, faster. power steering does rob abit of feel but i'd leave that out for the moment as it's hydraulics, not electronics so in a sense, driver feel is still there though abit less.

 

so does the selespeed take away driver feel? One cannot deny any driver aid will take away driver feel. it's about minimising the loss of driver feel and in that sense, the SS does it admirably as when upshift or downshift, u feel the gears doing something without human effort (left foot in this case).

 

i would have to disagree with your definition of feel as simply doing something that i wish for. Let me give u the analogy of say a drummer. A drummer uses two hands, right foot for the kick drum and left foot for the hihats. Today's electronics for music enables the drummer to do w/o his left foot. Yet although it is possible, the drummer would want to feel what he's playing and that includes using every limb of his body. With today's technology, any producer can make a record using electronics but u find many of them still hire the human drummer because feel can't be replaced.

 

In relation to cars, true, the electronics can make u do whatever u want. i wouldn't call that feel. i'd call it robotic obedience. That's how Alfa calls the SS anyway- robotised gearboxes. More crudely, perhaps like sex with a great looking, all filled with human flesh cyborg. Feel is when the separation between driver and car is reduced as much as possible, or when the driver connects with the car as much as possible and feel every bit of what it's doing, rather than tell the car to do everything it wishes to do. Wishing it and feeling it are different. Faster or slower is not relevant in the definition of feel.

 

To conclude, i'm not saying technology is bad. if i had a choice, i'd like things simple, easier on the wallet too. i mean, how expensive can it be to maintain a lotus elise? but if no choice, i have to embrace technology. It def makes things faster but if my left foot is resting, i can't feel the car as much. i just hope any good technology does not replace my good old manual shifter. btw, i think the jap drivers here- wrx, evo, type R understand this definition about 'feel' more than many alfa drivers these days.

[Crummytyre]

You know what, I do agree with many of your points. But I think I can condense from what you've said and what many others have said about "feel" to two words: "predictability" & "effort". If we can reduce "effort" but increase "predictability", I'm sure many of us won't be complaining about losing that loving "feeling" . Most modern advances are focused on reducing the "effort" in driving a car. The problem is that in the reduction of "effort", "predictability" loses out as well. I'm glad you brought out the WRX/EVOs etc. These cars are so overloaded with electronic gizmos that you can see them spilling out from their airvents. But they do provide more "feel" than many other road cars, Alfas included. They are marvels of the modern car technology, and, in my opinion, heading in the right direction of providing more "feel" to the drivers.

[Relagsingh]

actually WRX not too much gizmos as the evo. still requires some driver input to make it fun. the evo is the 'culprit' here. idiot proof handling.

 

but read somewhere that they almost hit the wall while trying to make their SAWC for the evo X to work cuz the current ACD and SAYC are 'too good'. and if the new evo X really got DSG, it'll be a ultimate gizmo car liao.

[Normal_aspirated]

full of gismos.......then no need a pro to drive an Evo soon.

[Relagsingh]

already alot of 'pro' evo drivers liao lo...