I've been toying with the idea of getting an Alfa Gta for a while, as a sensible second car to go with the GranSport.
Over the summer I tried a few 147s, including a couple of Japanese imports with the Selespeed box. I know they don't get a lot of love but I thought the Selespeed was really rather good. Felt like a similar mechanism to the Maserati CC box, and delivered crisp changes that weren't much slower than the CC in sport mode. It requires a delicate touch to drive smoothly, again like the CC box, but when you get the hang of it the changes are sweet and the blips on the downchange sound wonderful. I definetly prefer the Selespeed to the rather flimsy Alfa manual box.
In the end I didn't buy one. Partly because getting an Alfa Gta as my sensible car felt mad, and partly because I thought the prices were a bit strong for a ten year old budget hatchback. Six months later I'm browsing the classifieds and... every single Selespeed car that was listed this summer is still for sale! Most at the same price as well. Are these gearboxes so unpopular that no-one will buy one?
It makes me tempted to go back and make a lowball offer, although it would mean when I need to get rid of the car (when the London ULEZ comes into force probably) I'm going to have the same problem and get stuck with it.
Over the summer I tried a few 147s, including a couple of Japanese imports with the Selespeed box. I know they don't get a lot of love but I thought the Selespeed was really rather good. Felt like a similar mechanism to the Maserati CC box, and delivered crisp changes that weren't much slower than the CC in sport mode. It requires a delicate touch to drive smoothly, again like the CC box, but when you get the hang of it the changes are sweet and the blips on the downchange sound wonderful. I definetly prefer the Selespeed to the rather flimsy Alfa manual box.
In the end I didn't buy one. Partly because getting an Alfa Gta as my sensible car felt mad, and partly because I thought the prices were a bit strong for a ten year old budget hatchback. Six months later I'm browsing the classifieds and... every single Selespeed car that was listed this summer is still for sale! Most at the same price as well. Are these gearboxes so unpopular that no-one will buy one?
It makes me tempted to go back and make a lowball offer, although it would mean when I need to get rid of the car (when the London ULEZ comes into force probably) I'm going to have the same problem and get stuck with it.