Spring Alfa - Beaulieu

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Lightfoot
Posts: 27
Joined: Thu Mar 17, 2016 8:07 pm

Spring Alfa - Beaulieu

Post by Lightfoot »

Hi Everyone,

Difficult to believe after this past Easter weekend's gloriously sunny and warm weather that virtually no one was able to take their fur-lined coats off one week previously at Beaulieu in spite of the same level of sunshine! God it was cold!

Good turnout, of course, and I was well impressed with the number of new Giulias present. From the mainstream motoring media you kind of get the impression that they're not really selling - as in a lot of people are tempted but wary of actually committing. Good therefore to see so many in the flesh.

Three Alfa 164's present (that I noticed anyway) including my own. Photos attached of an immaculate red 'Leaf which really stood out seeing as it gleamed the way it did - concourse material to my eyes.

Good turnout of Bertone Alfa GTs too - which leads me to a question. How good are they?

The reason I ask is that I had a long conversation with Phil Ward on this topic and he was, shall we say, less than complimentary about the car. Readers of Auto Italia probably recall his articles in the magazine where he confessed to simply not bonding with his red V6 GT after it failed to provide the Alfa "156 Coupe" experience he was hoping for. Purely on this reasoning I asked him if, rather than a "156 Coupe", the GT might be perhaps better considered as a possible "164 Coupe" instead. I confess I have been watching Busso-engined GTs in the 'classifieds' for quite a while now and felt that, provided I could live without a sunroof, I might just consider jumping ship from 'Leaf to GT seeing as there seem to be some very well-loved examples around.

Based on his experience of 164 Cloverleafs, Phil was adamant that I shouldn't follow this course of action. In fact, what he said next quite took me back as he then described the GT as being like "...an old man's car". Now I've known Phil since the mid-80's so I'm well aware that he can be, shall we say, decisively blunt in his opinions and that it's kind of yes/no, good/bad, black or white with Phil and no shades of grey (50 or otherwise!) in between.

However, I thought that was pretty harsh and so I was wondering if anyone of the forum has actual back-to-back experience of both 164 Cloverleaf and V6 Alfa GT and, if so, how do the two compare? I know the simple answer would be for me just to go and test drive a GT somewhere but unfortunately I'm a bit of a 'slow learner' with any new car and a 15-20 minute 'run round the block' simply wouldn't be conclusive enough for me.

So, I would be very interested to hear the opinions of others here if anyone's got some thoughts...
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Sud 145
Posts: 1510
Joined: Mon Jan 27, 2014 11:08 pm
Location: West Sussex.

Re: Spring Alfa - Beaulieu

Post by Sud 145 »

Yes there was a line-up of Giulias - it's just that nobody was looking at them and there was no model comraderie from what I could see. Did you see it any different Keith?

Kegsti66
Posts: 2849
Joined: Fri Sep 26, 2014 7:20 pm
Location: Northamptonshire

Re: Spring Alfa - Beaulieu

Post by Kegsti66 »

I also thought that the newer models were the only ones where they grouped them together.
To be fair though, if you only have half a dozen of an older model turn up at random times, you can't expect to all be together.
It is nice to see the rare stuff dotted randomly in the crowd. That 164 was a real gem 8-)

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