Well well well, what a great reply! You happend to be am italian fanatic. I assume you eat noting but a pizza or pasta, drive an italian car and have the Benito Mussolini picture beside your bed
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But seriously I'll explain why I wrote my statement.
A very good friend of mine is a Fiat and Alpha dealer so I have a pretty good chance to test drive some of the cars. I tested Fiat Brava, Bravo, Palio Weekend, Seicento. Really, they are cheap not only in price but in design. You just feel the bad build quality in everything you touch. They break quite often. Sometimes after 1000 km you just HAVE to back to the service for some repairs! Can you imagine? NEW CARS!
Alpha's are great from the outside but the inside... really you have a strange mishmash of real great design with cheap fiat like details. Cool speed and rev meters in the front and really lame placed and made el. window switches in the middle. And the gear stick... allways too far to reach. I'm a toll guy 193 cm and a friend of mine is 176 cm and we both have to really hard put our hands forward to reach the gear shift. This is the thing all Alphas I checked out. On a british automotive program "Top Gear" they said it's a "tipicall italian driving position"
Lancias. Hmmmm... Never seen one from the inside and never driven one of them. But all I can see is an ugly car. I can't help it. For me Lancias are UGLY!
Talking about BMW's unreliability... I have 1996 Z3 1.9 Roadster. Before I have had 95 728i. Let's see... both those cars had the same problems with cooling system, power steering pump broke also in both, the rear suspention in the 7'th is very weak and some parts must be replaced regulary, lapms in the dashboard brake in both cars... the list can go on. Am I alone in the complaints about BMW? No! They are great but delicate cars! I used to drive Hondas (2 Accords, CRX, CRX Del Sol, 2 Preludes) and they NEVER broke that much!
So... what I wrote is not something I made up. This is my point of view I came up after test driving, looking at, driwing reagulary or talking to my friends who have such cars. Better try to watch what you're saing or rather writing about.
Good luck and watch it. Eating to much pizza can be dangerous to your health hehe
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Regards