Big Picture

[MD]

This clip takes the Big Picture somewhere else but it is noteworthy and worrying at the same time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB9SGwa9jD0

[poohbah]

One of my favourite YT channels, along with Roadster Life.

[festy]

social media replacing forums is the circle of life.
I remember when forums first started taking over from newsgroups. Sure, forums offered fancy formatting and image embedding, 'emoticons' etc - but also  introduced us to moderators and site outages :/
That, and instead of everyone hanging out in alt.autos.alfa-romeo we now had alfisti scattered across dozens of different alfa forums.
I'm not on any social media and have no plans to change that, so if SM eventually kills the forums then I'll have to go back to reading books or something

[TEE Z2]

This forum has been changing through the years. 35years ago there were a greater percentage of Alfa's on Australians roads and the people who drove them were enthusiasts who had been influenced by family members, who had owned Alfa's in the late 50's and 60's then past on the passion to their children. Then Japanese cars arrived in the 60's they were nowhere near as performance orientated as any Alfa of the period so the passion stayed on until the 80's. Then came the next generation of Japanese sports cars and they ran rings around our beloved cars, sales declined and stalled across the globe so Alfa sales in Australia were stopped by F.I.A.T. The F.I.A.T. takeover was I think the worst things that ever happened to our glorious Alfa Romeo car company. Then 20 years latter with the launch of the 156 a new breed of Alfa passion arrived some of the people who drove them had a connection to Alfa's of the past, and there were the people who were new to the marque with a very different attitude. a varied group with little enthusiasm for the brand and it's pedigree. Alfa sold a fair few 156 and 147 then through the F.I.A.T./General Motors merger the Alfa 159 was fitted with shit holden engines this was the most embarrassing thing I as an Alfisti had ever felt about the once great company, and it didn't help when just about every motoring journalist in the country or the world started their articles with some reference to Alfa's legendary UNreliability. Alfa struggled on selling Giulietta's and Mito's. I think a lot of these cars were sold to people with no passion for a sporty drive and joined this forum with one question about blue tooth connectivity or something similar and were never herd of again "one post wonders" they didn't come here to discuss their cars they just wanted a quick answer to fix their cars then on to face book with it's look at me ideology and no real answers to questions. Then came the 4C, at last rear drive fast and nimble then the Giorgio platform how good is this. F.I.A.T. has sparked new interest in the brand. Alfa returned to America sales were good at first but service was often criticized and sales dropped. Then Sergio Marchionne died that was sad news he was an Allie of the Alfa brand. Alfa lost the person most important to it's survival. The two door GTV on the Giorgio platform was dropped and a second SUV was announced and we were then told all Alfa's will be EV's by 2030. My new found hope for the company was lifted with the 4C and Giulia then dashed when they announced that the Giorgio platform was to be cancelled and new SUV's would be on Dodge and Puegeot platforms and not a sports car in sight. This forum has declined over the last few years with many of the regulars aging or falling ill and not participating as they did. I have been participating around this Alfa Romeo forum in different guises for 12yrs and have watched as the enthusiasm for real Alfa's the 105 and DeDion series cars has declined and the F.I.A.T. cars have become the dominant threads and the Stellantis cars might be in the future if Alfa Romeo and these forums still exist. Who knows what the different levels of social media will look like in 10 years. Sorry for the rant.

[MD]

TEE Z2. I would not downgrade your contribution to a rant. I will say that you must have a brave pair of shorts that you wear when at the keyboard. However, I do hope there is enough realists amongst the Forum members to admit that sometimes the truth does bear some pain. Here is some more..

I have been seeing the evolution of the "trinket" offerings to entice buyers grow from an AM only radio to an AM/FM radio through to every conceivable ad-on nonsense imaginable driven by the competition between brands. All this crap ads complexity, weight, reliability problems,COST and the pressure to keep up with the "Joneses". This strategy of gimmicks is the downward spiral to extinction for manufacturers that cannot keep up. When they try, they start to lose credibility due to bullshit inconsequential faults that cause the brand to lose favor with customers. I mean, who really gives a shit if your rain sensing wiper trigger does not work. If you need you wipers on, surely you can make a decision to activate them or not. A completely non-essential gimmick and modern cars are full of this crap. Do you really need a closed window to drop to allow a pressure relief to make for an easy closing of the door followed by an automatic window wind up ?? !! Install a 20c permanent cabin vent that will do exactly the same for the life of the car for goodness sake.

By now you are getting the gist of my direction here. If Alfa is to follow all this lard arse gimmickry, they will never compete with the Chinese, Japanese and the new players from South Korea. What they should do is the opposite. Trim the model back to it's most simple configuration possible consistent with performance needs. Reduce the mass weight, improve the reliability and quit with notion that all Alfisti are the new BMW wallet carriers. Stop with the squillion features and get back to what made Alfa great in the first place-value for money off the shelf performance. Fiat needs a wake up call.

[poohbah]

Nailed it MD. One of the things I hate most about all contemporary car reviews is they inevitably focus on all that sort of irrelevant crap - how good the graphics on the infotainment are, does it have park-assist, whether the mood lighting controls are intuitive, or is Car Play standard blah blah blah.

I love that my GTA (and prior 156s) doesn't even have cup holders - that's where this rubbish all started... Until I fixed the infocentre screen (myself) a few months back, I couldn't even read stuff like fuel consumption or range and had to rely on old fashioned calculation (which I've done in every car I've owned since driving a 71 Valiant Safari with dead fuel gauge from Perth to Melbourne in the early '90s). And I have never activated the cruise control in the GTA - assume it works but who cares. And when I reverse, I actually look over my shoulder and use my mirrors. How old fashioned of me.

If you buy a car for the doodads, you're not buying a car, you're buying an appliance.

[bazzbazz]

Well if we're going to be realistic, no one makes a car anymore. What they make is a collection of computers on a integrated local area network, that just happen to have 4 wheels under it to get it around places. 

[TEE Z2]

The average person goes into a dealership with expectations that they will get a car packed with features, advertising promises that and the more features the better the car must be. "Free auto upgrade" means there is no manual option all those features don't work well with a three pedal car.
CAN BUS systems that connect various systems together via multiple computers that monitor all areas of the car these are needed for the car to run.   
Stop start, lane assist, rain sensing wipers, light sensing xenon headlights, electric heated full adjustable seats, infotainment systems that need to be upgraded with each service, movement sensors, tyre pressure monitors none of these are needed.
I have a modern AWD wagon with all of the above it's ABS and stability control are life savers. Having the car steer itself to what it thinks is the correct part of a narrow back road is a little annoying the rest of the features are unnecessary, complex and add weight. My GTV6 has one computer and and a specific dual relay that is unobtainable. I can keep it going easily enough.
My 156 with it's direct injection engine and 150,000klm's I bought with overheating issues I fixed it with a new head gasket and a new rigid coolant pipe two new camshafts (half the lobes were round) and the carbon in the inlet tracks is a known problem with DI engines. I removed all the valves cleaned out the inlet ports lapped in the valves and replaced the camshafts and then drove it for another two years needing only an alternator and and two ignition coils and a litre of oil every 500klm's it was not a bad car but if it were rear drive and had a Busso I would still own it. I gave it a bloke down on his luck that knew alfas had tools and needed a car.
So your asking " WHAT IS MY POINT" I sound like an old man complaining about a changing world.   
"Electronics are the new rust". When enough electronic parts fail or become unavailable the car is sent for recycling.

[MD]

Is there anybody out there still wondering why the prices of classic cars is outpacing the new ones.. ??