Test Drive Alfa Romeo GTV 2003 - 2005 coupe
Daemon
A car, not like anything. The car causing persistent sympathy in some no less resistant antipathy in others. Someone seems to be feminine, someone is courageous. His expressive appearance in an unknown force attracts a look, causing a wave of curiosity. The design of the car is fresh, unconventional and stylistically completed: it is difficult to come up with something more empty. With all its extraordinary, Alfa GTV is not perceived as a funny case, but as a mysterious generation of some parallel, alternative universe. This mystical feeling emphasizes and black, which turns the car in the mirror, slyly distorting surrounding space. Daemon! How do you like the concept of Cab-Forward, first implemented in the front-engine sports coupe? Consider the salon is clearly shifted towards the front axle. In general, the car can surprise both the integrity and courage of its own image and details. In fact, headlights are not four here, but two, and rectangular. Four round holes are made in huge fiberglass hood, over-coverating almost the entire front of the car. And behind at all one horizontal lamp, divided into several sectors. Door handles are absent, there are only buttons. GTV profile dissected a deep-sided punch scar, as if abandoned by the strike of the samurai sword of Katana. And this scar, without any doubt, adorns the car, makes his nature energetically and stronger.
Cool GTV looks, inimitable! Meanwhile, he will soon guide his decade. The replacement is only prepared by him, while we see the modernized GTV / SPI-DER family, presented in March last year at the Geneva Motor Show. The differences are not so much: light facelifting, retouching in the cabin yes permutations in the line of engines. Main news two. The first noticeably increasing in the sizes of the radiator grille shield. The second appearance of the 240-strong Top version 3.2 V6, with its 255 km / h maximum speed, which has become the most high-speed car brand Alfa Romeo in history. But in our particular case, everything is simpler: two liters, 150 horses. Will enough? Soon we find out.
Of course, the appearance of the GTV is impressive, crashes into memory. Probably in the cabin there is such a colors! All black and black, frankly plastic, without special fiction. After elegant, charming interiors, much more mass models 147 and 156 are one disappointment. The desire to reduce the cost is obvious. Instead of the Locomotive of the model range, the exhibition sample GTV even after modernization turned out to be closed. Inside the cheapest feeling of all Alpha. ONE ONLY NECESSARY LEVER PPP What is worth! The most successful leather chairs with excellent side support and a comfortable, grab steering wheel. Perhaps the most unusual element deepening in the floor in the field of legs. In principle, with ergonomics, all Okay, a person will tell the man in 180 cm. The Rural Drivers will face difficulties. Landing is high, the top edge of the windshield, on the contrary, hangs before his eyes. You have to choose a half-row pose, and the steering column, as discharged, is not regulated in length. Although, I repeat, people will not experience any medium growth.
Formula 2 + 2 implies a couple of additional children's places. In practice, they turn out to be a waste of indoor space. As a rule, children manage to grow earlier than a sports car to be aged, and a difficult choice arises before the owner: change the car or buy the second, more family. It comes out, these plus two if necessary, it is only to pull the campaign to the dealer for a couple of years. In their place, it is better to immediately integrate the components of a good acoustic system, since the native sounds for rarity fad.
Undoubtedly, Alfa GTV is a real stronghold of egocentrism. Joy and pleasure exclusively for man driving. You do not need to purposely stand out from the crowd, seeking to prove your uniqueness: the car has already said everything for you. And it is necessary to ride it in a special, cheerful and actively, otherwise Alfa will remain incomprehensible. With a anemic, pensioner style driving, GTV does not demonstrate any advantages, in all parameters I give up the template sedan. Pretty hard suspension recalculates hardly all the road flashes, the engine is although it is striking, but the gear shifts are not shifted with clarity. The controllability is the most common: smooth responses, the formal presence of returning effort. It seems that the car fell into a hibernation, forced by the driver's orders.
In fact, her character is completely different. Forky, passionate, in something even demonic. It is only necessary not to be afraid to breathe full of breasts, live and ride the entire coil. The first revelation of the potential of the engine. Not at all two-liter dynamics! Developed acceleration becomes a real revelation, and the considerable share of charms lies precisely in the irregularities of overclocking: up to 4000 rpm, it is so-so, and then GTV is moving into a kind of flushing mode, pressing the saddles in the backrest and mig. And ideally selected gear ratios of transmissions make it possible to experience all this on each transmission, without reducing the pace. The accelerator pedal is a precision precision tool: GTV instantly reacts to the slightest, even millimeter movement with the right foot! Approximately the same can be said about the brakes. And what kind of motor is the sound, what kind of sound! The velvety rockness at idle is replaced by the dissatisfied with the womb grill, then evil notes arise, and wore all the attacking song with a metallic hoopotsy. Delight! Although on a separate CD release! At times, you catch yourself in an insurmountable desire to play gas on the traffic light, to bring yourself and unintelligate others. Be that as it may, but in the case of Alfa Romeo GTV, manufacturers of customized production systems can relax.
But the most beautiful GTV rushes with turns. The chassis settings and weighing on the axes are so successful that the car passes a bundle of any complexity with a guaranteed neutral turning: Even if you frankly exceed all the reasonable high-speed frames, Alfa, losing clutch with a roof, will answer only smooth side sliding with a light hint on the movement of the front wheels. It is difficult to even deliberately provoke a skid. The steering is pleased with a pleasant sharpness and very reliable feedback, and these qualities are more particularly evident in the modes close to extreme. I dare to assure you, in the word extremal there is nothing supernatural, since this car is simply created for a sharp, aggressive driving, and only in such an element he has a full-fledged existence. We can safely assume that at home, on the serpentines of the mountainous Italy, Alfa GTV does not know equal. And in terms of controllability, the four-cylinder version is preferable to a six-cylinder: heavy engine will inevitably change the behavior of the machine.
This car must be configured. Confess nonconformism. Think nontrivially. Do not be afraid to be in the center of universal attention. Love and be able to risk. Then you will feel that Alfa Romeo GTV is an integral part of yours. This is what you were looking for, and without which you can not live.
The car is provided by Center-Sparz.
At the time of the test, the car is insured by Nasta-Center LLC.
Autography
Alfa Romeo GTV / Spider
Predecessor
R. Z./S. Z. (1989)
Premiere
october 1994.
Modernization
spring 2003.
Body
coupe (GTV), Convertible (Spider)
Design
Pininfarina.
Engine power
144-240 hp
Production
Italy
Expected replacement
2005-06
Text: Leonid Klyuev
Photo: Roman Stunnin
A source: Magazine "Wheels" [№76 / 2004]
