Your car breaking down and being an Alfa! You really can hear the laughter as people drive past!

On the plus side: you KNOW that it is going to happen.

I don't think people really think that much about it, they just see a red car at the side of the road, not many will consider it an indictment of Alfa Romeos reliability.

My Fiat Coupe Turbo always felt like it was about to expire, the two original Fiat 500's we have had never make a journey without something falling off, burning out or seizing up.

Italian cars, who would have them eh !

The laughter is probably from people who have previously owned an Alfa
Incidentally, does anyone want to buy my Brera ?

Italian cars: you choose the direction and they decide how far...

Alfas aren't unreliable, they're just exciting. You know its gonna break but you don't know how or when. It's like the jenga of cars, and jenga is one exciting game

I tell you what is worse: The recovery truck breaking down whilst doing a recovery.

An old Jaguar takes a humble second position whenever Lucas the prince of darkness demands another electrical sacrifice.

my mate had an alfa spider 09 plate as a hire car the other week and when you shut the doors the side repeaters fell out lol , quality stuff.


plus it was an ugly ****

As old Enzo Ferrari apparently was quoted as saying: "You pay for the engine and we throw in the rest of the car for free!"

In 22 years of driving and ownership of various makes of car new and old, I've only ever once needed the services of a flat-bed car transporter. That was of course thanks to one of Italy's finest. We were on the way to the garage for some more work when it failed! Electrics, surprise, surprise.



I got it sorted and it's long gone now, but sorely missed.

It is much worse breaking down on a very slow moving M25 on a very hot day in a brand new BMW 330Ci with steam coming out from under the bonnet.

That is much worse - the abuse was incredible!

What worse is your mum' car breaking down with water pi$$ing out of it at 11pm when you are driving it and then having to call your mum and told her that it has died and that the RAC are en route, but even worse than that is your mum's car breaking down again whilst you are driving it and having to ring her whilst she is away in Dublin for the weekend.

windyboy

You want to try driving an Alfa that has a sticker on the centre console that says: "Designed for Windows Mobile". I'm doomed!

So far it's never broken down but it has:

1) Turned the passenger airbag off randomly several times
2) Opened the passenger window by itself while it was parked up in Manchester in the snow
3) Displayed several warning messages to tell me that it had turned off the Traction Control, Stability Control, ABS, Brake Assist, Electronic Diff, Dynamic Mode, All-Weather Mode and Steering Correction Assist. This was one after the other and it went on for about 5 minutes. I didn't even know what the last one was until I got the warning message telling me it had been turned off, I had to look it up in the manual

Clearly you should hve gone for a lancia jamz , such boring reliabilty

Well as it turned out it may not have been all the Alfa's fault! 5/10minutes before my car died, i hit a very deep pothole and it dislodged an earthing cable at the gearbox which according to the recovery guy could have caused the problem. Drove home from work and she was swheet as a nut! Kept getting Motor Control Failure error messages before he tightened everything up.

I was quite worried about going down the motorway though as i really didn't wanna lose power whilst doing 60+mph.

After being parked beside this last year

you clearly are right!

What's worse is breaking down in rush hour in the centre of Bolton in a TVR Chimera 500 !

Good job they weigh nothing as I had to push it to the roadside whilst enduring all sorts of verbal abuse and hand gestures from passing motorists.

NB. This was some years ago when the car could still be perceived as a 'rich boys toy' !

Breaking down with "just a flat tyre" on a quiet stretch of motorway at 1:30 am in the morning in the pouring rain very tired on the last leg of a long journey with a boot full of moving house stuff in a mini metro where the spare wheel is bolted to the bottom of the car on the inside so you have to take all your luggage out on the hard shoulder to find the bolt has seized to the chasis so you have to hack saw it off with the tool kit you fortunately have lying on your back with no spare clothes under the car getting shaken as lorries drive past because the jack is made of recycled coke cans and getting an extra soaking each time, is a bit worse I think ;-)

My merc blew a rear bulb two days ago. The warning came up on the dashboard and then it told me "substitute bulb activated" - how cool is that

that is pretty damn awesome!

I never knew I needed that on my car until now------- nice

many years ago I used to run vw campers/beetles, also did some drag racing- so went to all the bug jam type stuff.

there would be dozens of broken down beetles/campers on the hard shoulders on every trip.

feckless pot heads who think 30 yr old vehicles don't need maintainance, but what they need are stickers, dream catchers and nice curtains for their vans.

Mine do'es that nearly every day, obviously the bulb has'nt blown every day, they get damp in the bulb holders and give false messages, there's not many a day that go's past without a message about tail/indicator/side/front etc bulb fault.

Ive had that,
Luckily car was convertible so put top down and heating to 32degrees.
Not funnn.

Neel

Have to be honest and admit that I do always have a little chuckle to myself at the sight of a broken down beemer

Even more so at the sight of one that's been pulled over by the Boys In Blue

I had a 1.0 nova once that blew a rad pipe while smack bang in the center of Newcastle, steam pouring out while i am at the traffic lights, some helpful bloke knocked on the window to let me know "its on fire mate" i had my window wipers on so i could see properly

It dumped all its coolant, and the lights turned green, so i drove it the 15 miles back home, in a rage, with no coolant, and it survived new rad pipe on, filled it back up with the finest tap water and it was good to go