Alfa Romeo 145 Cloverleaf

Basically a good car, great engine, practical, looked good.

However it was plagued by reliability issues which various Fiat/Alfa dealers in were unable to resolve. In 70,000 miles of use there was not a single day when something was not faulty on the car. Often it would go into the dealer and come back worse, or with further faults!

I would never buy another, I lost a fortune on it and eventually gave up, and bought a Volkswagen Golf, which did not look as pretty but never gave any trouble in 5 years and 50,000 miles.

Alfa Romeo, above all else, need to get themselves a good dealer network. This dealer was hopeless with a capital H and did everything in their power to undermine my faith in the brand.

I will list just one example. At 3k the synchromesh went on first gear. After months of argument I gave up, at first they said I must have abused the car, then that first was a "stationary gear only", then that I needed to get an AA/RAC report and they would then fix it. I paid £100 for the report and they (Reg Vardy) then denied the conversation.

Eventually I traded it for a VW... the VW dealer traded the car back to Reg Vardy, who then repaired it before selling it on at a further profit of £2,500. I lost £6,000 in 8 months.

It later transpired that the Reg Vardy delivery driver had a race with his mate on the way back from collecting my new car from another dealer... but of course this guy had since "left" the company and there was "nothing" they could do.