146 at johor house
Originally uploaded by jaremfan.

The weird thing was that it wasn’t giving any signals the night before, and I wondered whether my frenzied driving to and fro KLIA had anything to do with it.

I was reluctant to leave the Alfa in its current state, but I had to. I took the Kelisa instead to work, and admired its nimbleness. As I breezed in and out of traffic, I thought about the maintenance worries I’ve had to bear with the Alfa. Would it be worse if I was driving a Swift Sport or a Bimmer?

Worried that the battery could be a symptom of something worse, I rushed to a workshop and picked up a DIN55 battery for RM200.

It took me awhile to replace the battery, as the nut was in a hard place. Thankfully the car started. I started it again just to be sure. Everything seemed to be working, although I wasn’t sure that my rear fog lights were supposed to be alive on both sides or just one. A bulb could have blown.

As I was preparing to leave, I realized that my remote wasn’t working – the doors weren’t centrally locking. Ugh. I’ve heard of problems related to folks not being able to operate their alarms and central locking after a battery replacement.

I got headaches going through the manuals again and again. The forums didn’t help much. There were folks who had to go out and replace the entire alarm system, which cost a bit of money. I didn’t want to end up there.

I prayed to God that the remote would be okay the next day, and went to bed.

Thankfully, my remote did work after all, and I did manage to unlock and lock my doors centrally. My drive to work and back was such a joy, it was almost as if the whole battery episode made the experience of owning an Alfa even more special.

I wouldn’t want a repeat, though. I just hope that I don’t have some odd leak somewhere that will cause my new battery to fail earlier than it should.

Everything should be back to normal, I hope.

The car is smaller than I thought… at least from the inside.

From the back, I could see the “start button”, the well-manicured dashboard, feel the almost-emaculate leather stitching, and driver-focussed positioning of the gear knob and steering wheel… quite overwhelming, really.

It’s almost over-engineered. You’d have to spend a good full year to appreciate all the work that’s gone into the thing.

The car belongs to a friend of mine. It was the family car. And you know, I really tried to hate it.

I don’t really like the rear light clusters. I don’t like the fact that they only sell it here in 4 shades of gray. I also don’t like the fact that most owners won’t probably have a clue what it’s like to fully enjoy about the new E90.

But after months of observing more and more E90s being put on the road, with their resident auntie-types in the driver’s seat, I can’t help but admit it’s a best-seller, and for a very good reason.

For a “premium” price of roughly Rm230k and above, you’re really getting the whole thing plus the kitchen sink. No matter that you probably won’t be observant enough to realize 21 items they placed in the website’s feature list – everybody makes the assumption that it’s probably packed full of stuff worthy of the next 50 years.

Now if only I can convince myself worthy of a test drive.

I got my car serviced recently, and I’m really happy with the improvements. New timing belt, new variator, an oil change, new brake pads, and a set of camshaft upgrades. It set me back quite a lot, but this only happens every 40k kms or so (excluding camshafts).

The car feels lighter now, more eager to rev and run. So much that it’s been hard to avoid pressing the gas pedal too much. Once it hits 3000 rpm, it shoots off like a rocket.

My days of redlining in and out of city traffic have been transformed ever since I got the 146. My other car is a 1 litre Perodua Kelisa, which I used to redline a lot, to get the full potential out of it.

The K-car had good torque but you had to redline it often for it to dash to 80kph. It does move quite quickly. Quick enough to have fun, and definitely satisfying between crowded KL streets and outer ring roads.

The alfa redlines in a different sort of way. The first gear will redline you past 2 seconds. The second would have taken you across a few hundred meters. By the third gear at the redline, you would have reached the pivotal 100kph mark and moving steadily towards to 140kph.

At that point, if you’re in KL streets, you’ve run out of road. Or the guy in front of you is taking too long to switch lanes.

Even if you push the rev meter to 4000 rpm (it redlines at 7000), it’s enough to give you that push. So I don’t really have to redline it till the cows come home (unlike the Kelisa).

In fact I don’t have to redline it at all.

Which was the whole lesson learnt from the gas station the other day when I clocked a miserable fuel consumption rate of 8.7 kms per litre.

I sat in the driver’s seat utterly dejected because I wasn’t looking forward to living with a fuel guzzler. And though the readings haven’t always been that bad, I wasn’t expecting the light at the end of the tunnel to come soon.

The next day, I decided not to go past 4000 rpm. In fact, I tried to switch gears at 3000. To my surprise, I found that there was still good amount of torque after switching up gears. This meant that I didn’t have to struggle to maintain or increase the steady acceleration I needed to pull the car forward. Hurray for the TwinSpark engine!

As I continued to do that, I found cars gradually being left behind, as I was streadily moving and cruising at 100kph and even comfortably towards 140kph (I really don’t notice until I see the meter).

And because I was in that mode of driving, I could time merging into and switching between lanes better, as well as allowing the car to cruise to match the speed of the car in front of me. I was literally using less fuel, but I wasn’t going any slower than before.

I was just so used to the stop-go motion of my K-car that I assumed I’d just do the same with the Alfa. Instead, it didn’t do much good, since I kept running out of road all the time. It’s quite like eating a large piece of cake, only to find out I had to spit it out shortly after because I couldn’t swallow it.

I’m still not through this cycle of petrol yet. I’ll find out in about 300kms later. But looking at the fuel gauge, it’s not looking too bad. I just hope it’s not just another theory of mine.

Meanwhile, it’s just another way to get to know the car and to enjoy the ride…

My alfa is back… well, it was back almost a week ago, but I was too busy to blog about it. The repair cost me over 1k, but they fixed my condenser clutch (I didn’t even know condensers had clutches) and regassed my A/C with new R13A.

I’ve been driving it for a few days now, and I don’t have that overheating problem anymore. Plus, Dino gave me a brand new cooling fan, which is larger than the old one. He says my front brakes need replacement, which will take place during the 120k km service interval coming up soon.

The car hasn’t dissapointed me since the day I got it. It is an absolute dream to drive, despite the fact that it looks like a brick. I don’t understand how these engineers do it, but the transmission and drivetrain is absolutely silky smooth.

Compared to the Kelisa, this car really loves to roll. There isn’t a hesitancy in moving forward. The engine doesn’t drag back when you cruise, the gears don’t grind and kick, and it dances along corners and curves.

The only thing missing is rear-wheel drive for cruising effortlessly at maddening speeds on the highway, which is what beemers and mercs are well known for.

Alfas aren’t known to be sluggish, either. The top speed for the 146 1.6L is 215km/h. I have barely touched 130km/h, which means there’s a lot more room for enjoyment.

The picture beside is a classic thoroughbred 1953 Alfa Romeo 6C… as you can see, it’s a happy thing on roads. And more than 5 decades later, they still haven’t lost that lovely feeling.

• prepare photostated IC of buyer and seller, complete with Borang C1 for each IC, stamped by commissioner of oath (RM6 fee)
• 2 original copies of JPJ K3 Form, signed by both buyer and seller
• prepare cover letter or copy of insurance policy
• prepare copies of Form 9, 44 and 49, from the seller if the car is company owned. Forms have to be signed by the company secretary with appropriate stamp.
• Puspakom check-up (can be done by runner, RM40 for full checkup). Not necessary if end financer is not a bank or something, but recommended anyway.
• letter of indemnity for the runner.
• transfer of ownership agreement letter.
• pay runner RM250, which covers stamp fees of RM100, and other miscellaneous fees (mostly runner fees).

Main Puspakom + JPJ centers in the Klang Valley are…

For cars having a Wilayah license plate:
Wangsa Maju
Jalan Genting Klang
53300 Setapak, Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03-41433321 Fax: 03-41435388

For cars having a Selangor license plate:

Lot 1, Jalan Sungai Rasah,
41300 Padang Jawa,
Shah Alam, Selangor,
Tel: 03-55199882 Fax: 03-55196119

I am hoping this information will save some people a few hours of their lives.

I couldn’t get my car today after all. I wrongly estimated the amount of time it took to find out that I needed my savings bank book in order to make a bank draft, which led to time looking for my bank book, which led to time spent learning that I had lost my bank book.

Conclusion: If you are opening a bank account for yourself, go for the online option.

I’m glad that I still managed to get the bank draft done before 12pm, although I had orignally planned to get the car by 12pm.

Anyway, I postponed it. If I wasn’t so stubborn, I’d be in bed right now, like my wife. Instead, I’m gleaming over my new web space and subjecting myself to some kind of one-post-per-day utopia. I’m expecting it’ll last a week, at the most.

The ride
The car that I am getting is a year 2000 Alfa Romeo 146. It has the lovely 1.6L Twin Spark engine which churns out 120bhp, which is pretty good for a naturally aspirated engine. 2000 was the final year of production for this model, which was replaced by the dang-I-wish-I-had-that 147.

For those of you who don’t know… this marks the end of a phase of my life, and a beginning of another.

Earlier this year, I started spiralling into some kind of mad craving to get a new car. I had tested a good handful of cars, ranging from the exec-smart and wonderfully balanced BMW e36 325i coupe, a 1.6 TSpark 147, a 2.0L 156 Selespeed, a punto HGT (2 in fact), Honda Jazz 1.4 vtec, and the new Suzuki Swift 1.5L.

The fact of the matter was I couldn’t afford a single one of them.

I had to put aside pretty much everything to do with cars, especially since the apartment was going to be ready in a few months’ time. My pastor advised against making the commitment, and that was a sobering effect.

I’m glad to say that I made it this far, having not traded in my Kelisa, which is still a wonderful car. I now do have a somewhat-more-arguable need for a 2nd car, since LL is out and about so often. And the apartment, which is due to be released to us this month, is kind of isolated in some kind of public transportation no-go zone.

The 146 is defintely so much more affordable and practical and more fun to drive and cheaper to maintain than a lot of the cars that I had taken a look at… it’s a beauty in the eyes of the beholder. You can’t tell until you get into the driver’s seat.