If there is a reason needed to go to Italy, Alfa Romeo are the people to come up with one. And this time, for Irish journalists anyhow, the reason was the addition of two new doors and a bigger engine to the I47.
The Irish got a special run to themselves because the international launch of the 5-door took place in Cornwall three months ago, and was really more a launch of the CONNECT mobile information system, which will not be relevant to Ireland until we have a proper GPS Sat-Nav System in place, a matter over which the car companies here have no control.
"lt would have overshadowed the actual car, which we in Ireland had more interest in," Alfa Romeo Ireland PR manager Joe Gantly told us. "So we decided to have a special session for the Irish."
Joe is a committed ltalophile, and if he wanted us to visit Umbria of good food and fine wines, beautiful women and two thousand years of history around every bend, we weren't going to stop him.
Besides, and no disrespect to my British friends or to the truly excellent beers and ciders produced in the South of England, but Cornwall simply is no place to properly drive a car like the Alfa 147.
For a start, the place is infested with Gatzo cameras, and anyway the winding roads of that part of the world, with their high hedges and aged Morris Minors likely around every second bend, are not really places for fun driving.
So Umbria it was, picking up the cars on the outskirts of Rome and heading off down the A12, the coastal motorway which is the best way to get quickly north of the Eternal City.
The concentration starts there, because so does the speed. There IS a speed limit on Italian motorways, pretty well the same as on our own. But the Italians, including their police, seem to take it as a starting point. I remember travelling here once before with one of our own gardai and he mentioned that if they used speed cameras in Italy they 'would clean up'. But they don't use them except in towns. And so the traffic keeps moving. Fast. And efficiently.
And on none of my forays in Italy over the past few years have I ever witnessed an accident. Compare that to my regular drives on the Naas Road to and from Dublin, and I can safely say that there isn't an every second trip on which I don't see a timpisht of one kind or another.
But I have digressed. There is a car. An Alfa. A 147. On the outward run with a 2-litre engine and manual transmission, a combination which has not yet been available in Ireland.
It's a powerful beast, there's no doubt. And the freedom to properly try it out on the fast coast road up to Tarquinia showed that the car has the brio we come to expect from Alfa, and the surefootedness which is essential when fast shifts of lane are needed in a constant close proximity to a central divider made of solid concrete.
It’s too short a time to judge, but there seem to be two different power areas in the rev band in the 2-litre. In between, it may be a little flat. It’s not a problem, because it is in the nature of Alfa engines that one revs them hard, and the real fun is in the high revs area. The real pulling power too.
The slower road from Tarquinia to the northeast took us up past Lago de Bolseno through increasingly undulating and very well cultivated agricultural land, olive tree and cereals countryside. Roadworks traffic lights too. So the 147 also had a chance to show us its mild-mannered side. OK, so it was forced mild manners. That’s life.
Our coffee stop was just inside Umbria, shortly after when, on the cusp of a bend, we got our dramatic initial sight of Orvieto. This was the first of several hilltop towns we were to see over 24 hours, and which are typical of the area. Towns for the ownership of which blood was spilt. Both of townspeople and invaders.
Today, the owners welcome invaders. Well, tourists. And Orvieto is one of those places where I want to come back to with time to walk around and discover the ages of time which it represents.
I had to content myself with a look at the Duomo, the cathedral, which from the front is beautiful with its frescoes by Signorelli. The rest of the building is externally - and most of the inside - unexciting, even unlovely in its black and white stone stripes which are the kind of Gothic thing in this whole central Italian region.
But in a chapel within the Duomo is a small and extraordinary artistic treasure, Signorelli’s ‘Last Judgment’, done in the 14th century and - according to many - -surpassing Michaelangelo’s similar production in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. One interesting element is that it features the painter’s unfaithful mistress immortalised in Hell.
(It takes two to commit adultery. Wonder did he join her?)
By the way, Orvieto has its own recorded miracle too, which kind of thing seems be be a feature of these hilltop medieval towns. Well, this one happened during a mass celebrated by a priest down near Lago de Bolseno, but the pope on a visit to Orvieto to whose notice it was brought decreed that the Duomo be built in its honour. In short detail, a priest was saying mass when blood appeared to drip from the eucharist in his hands onto the altar linen. I can’t comment.
Anyway, it was a relatively short drive to the destination for the night, and work intruded on such speculations for the rest of the evening. The next day it was a short drive to Assisi, birth and burial place of a saint often compared in importance to John the Baptist.
Like Orvieto, the first sight of the hilltop town is dramatic. Strangely, the Basilica di San Francesco is not at the top of the town as is normal for Catholic edifices. It takes up a complete side of the hill, and is even more dramatic for that. Multileveled, it was begun a year after the saint’s death, and today houses one of the most overwhelming art collections of anywhere in the world.
This we didn’t see. But there was time to look at the great variety of frescoes, and then slip down to the lower church underneath which lie the remains of the saint who founded an order pledged to poverty.
The town itself is also worth a walk-through, and though it is difficult to get beyond the tourist stuff, there were some quick visual rewards to dipping down through back alleys and stepped tunnels. Mind you, I got the distinct impression from looking at the apartments I passed that there is no vow of poverty for most of those living in Assisi today.
There is, though, much going on to repair the damage caused by an earthquake in recent years. St Francis must be smiling wryly at the protection of a tourist and pilgrim goldmine built around his vision of a poor priesthood.
And there’s the requisite miracle to be mentioned, on the conversion of Francis from reprobate to religious when a Byzantine cross reputedly bowed to him and told him to ‘repair his church’.
But we’re driving, aren’t we? So there wasn’t time to visit the other major church in the town, dedicated to and containing the blackened remains of St Chiara, companion of Francis and founder of the Poor Clares at his instigation (and where hangs also the Byzantine cross which converted him).
So we drove this time the 1.6-litre version of the car, on a slow mountain trek through southern Umbria and then a fast run through the less interesting northern Lazio area to the circular motorway around Rome.
I think I like the 1.6-litre engine better, you know. Sure, it’s a little softer on power than the 2-litre, but it is at least as powerful as many others in that heavier size and responds with a true Alfa song and zing better than its bigger sibling.
It works harder, probably, but there’s no mistaking the fact that, if something inanimate can be said to have such an attribute, it enjoys working hard. Or we enjoy working it hard, probably. Anyway, that’s my impression on a first brief run.
There’s not much more to say, because it’s never fair to judge a car on an overseas short trial, however much fun that short time is. How it manages at home is for a time spent with it at home.
But there was no better car than the 147 in which to spend eight or so hours driving through some amazing parts of Italy, with some truly awesome reflections of history.
And as we jetted aloft out of Leonardo da Vinci Airport and looked down over where we’d been, there was a promise made to come back. In not so much of a rush.
Meantime, check back in when I do a proper review of the latest versions of the 147. Without the distractions of saints and miracles and a physical history far older than our own.
June 2001
by Brian Byrne