Alfa Romeo 147 2.0 Lusso 5dr Review

Overall Rating

Handling,
Reliability,
Performance,
Style.

1 litre of oil/thousand miles on average (Alfa Owners tell me this is usual).

My Alfa Romeo 147 is just over 3 years old and the car has been completely reliable during this time. The handling is extremely good and the steering is very quick (fewer turns lock to lock than most cars) all of which means that the car is a joy on back roads and twisty roads.

There is no obvious power band and the engine is very smooth courtesy of the twin balancer shafts. The engine is very willing to rev and people who are new to driving the car often finsd themselves hitting the rev limiter going up through the gearbox because there is no harshness or other warning of the approaching red line.

The good news, once the car is out of warranty and bearing in mind the high cost of main agent servicing, is that there are very few service items to take care of. Change of oil filter, oil, air filter and pollen filter being all that is required on most services given that the car is fuel injected and has hydraulic tappets.

Although Haynes do not do a workshop manual for the Alfa 147 they can be obtained on CD from places like eBay quite cheaply.

However cam belt inspection/replacement at the recommended intervals is a must. In recent months I have seen friends and colleagues suffer cam belt failures on a variety of makes of car necessitating some very expensive repairs. Beats me why they can't make cam belts as reliable as chains.

The headrests on the rear seats get in the way when you want to fold the seats down and so mine have lived on a shelf in the spare room from new.

The gear ratios are sensibly chosen although the gear change itself could be a little smoother. Clutch action is quite light for a car of this power.

Fuel consumption has averaged 23 mpg over the life of the car but this can drop to 19 mpg for the 2 mile run to the station and go up to 30 mpg or more on long runs.

The windscreen is not coated with any exotic compounds and so a portable dash mounted GPS sat nav device such as something from the Garmin range will work satisfactorily without an external aerial.

Front tyres last between 8 to 10 thousand miles while the rears last more than twice this distance.

The front passenger airbag can be disabled if a baby seat is fitted.

The standard radio / CD player sound quality is nothing to write home about and the CD player will not playback recordable CD's which means that you have to risk your precious originals.

The storage space inside the cabin is very limited and the glove box in particular is tiny.

I like this car and think that I might keep it for a while yet.