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Pievienojies: 13 Jul 2006
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 EVO tests: AR 147 GTA vs. Ford Focus RS
If power corrupts, how's Alfa's 147 GTA going to cope with a massive 247bhp? Will the Focus RS, with a 'mere' 212bhp, even be able to keep up? One thing's for sure: hatches have never been hotter
By David Vivian/Gus Gregory
November 2002
It's downsizing time in all-action heroville. Vin Diesel and Pierce Brosnan (special agents xXx and James Bond) have been helicoptered to the rooftop floor of a car park in downtown Turin where their new wheels await, engines already warmed and idling. No-one has told them which car is theirs, only that they shouldn't be misled by the fact they're hatchbacks, and that their performance is extraordinary. When our heroes' feet touch the tarmac they can choose either one, but if they both go for the same car they must fight each other for it with whatever means they have at their disposal.
Diesel is stubble-scalped, muscular and into extreme sports. Brosnan is suave, intelligent and quite a lot older. The cars are the ones you see here: a Ford Focus RS and an Alfa 147 GTA. Having jumped the last few feet from the chopper to the rooftop they lock stares while still on their haunches. Then they stand up straight, shake hands and, without exchanging a word, walk calmly to their motors, each quietly convinced he's got the better car.
That's the beauty of finely attuned instinct (or acting to type) because, on paper, the Ford and Alfa are hard to prise apart. Both are second generation superhatches: tooled-up townies toting unprecedented, urine-extracting grunt. Along with the Volkswagen Golf R32, they represent the elite of the new kick-ass talent on the block. You'd think that xXx and Bond wouldn't be so fussy.
But then it's the little things that can grab your attention. Until a few weeks ago, the £19,995 Focus RS, with 212bhp, was the most powerful front-drive hatch anyone in a serious hurry could buy - a fitting qualification for a car wearing a badge with such an uncompromisingly sporty heritage. Then all perspectives on the matter were adjusted.
If it's possible to declare war in a subtle way, that's what Alfa appears to be doing with its combat spec 147, expected to cost around £22,500 when it goes on sale in the UK next summer. The decision to bolt in the 247bhp 3.2-litre V6 from the rapid but opinion-splitting 156 GTA won't have been made lightly, given that the smaller, cheaper, (and some would say prettier) 147 can't really help but upstage its bigger GTA brother. Alfa could have detuned the lump for the 147, spared the 156's embarrassment, and still out-muscled the oppo. But it looks very much like it went for the the 'psssst... hand me the shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, let's blow these suckers away' option. You can't argue with the logic. If your largest engine goes into your smallest car then the result is unlikely to want for thrust. But expecting it to all find its way to the Tarmac via the front wheels might well have a bearing on its ability to change direction.
Let's spare a moment to savour the audacity of the concept and the measures taken to curb potentially the worst dose of torque-steer since a Saab Viggen first veered onto the wrong side of the road. What we have here, essentially, is a neat, slot-in drivetrain transplant front-to-back; right down to the intermediate ratios and final drive of Alfa's peachy manual six-speed transmission (new, improved Selespeed due second half of '03). Indeed, most of the front-end hardware is the same, including the dinner-plate- sized vented discs, the super-direct steering rack and the double wishbone and trailing arm suspension, albeit with retuned coils and dampers. Tweaked rear bushes, with more toe-in compliance, dial-in extra agility.
That 247bhp is developed at 6200rpm and backed up by 221lb ft of torque at 4800rpm. These are figures that quite clearly put the hardcore in hot hatch. Back in 1974, Lambo launched its uprated Urraco, the P300. It had a mid-mounted 3.0-litre V8 and a (probably optimistic) 250bhp. No-one who drove it could have imagined the shape of things to come.
Certainly not the Vehicle Dynamic Control (VDC) whose job it is - in tandem with the ASR traction control up to 25mph, whereupon it switches itself off if you haven't done so already - to ensure that the marriage of considerable 24-valve V6 brawn and the 225/45 ZR17 Bridgestone S-02s covering the 7.5x17in front rims doesn't end in instant divorce. Like similar stability systems, VDC uses a regime of power easing and gentle single-wheel braking to trim excessive yaw movements. The 156 GTA was launched without it, true to the stated 'power and purity' GTA ethos, so there's evidence of Alfa thinking on its feet here.
The Ford's race-bred Quaife torque-biasing differential is a simpler approach to maximising grip at the front end. A sort of 'smart' limited slip diff, it spreads the Focus's impressive 229lb ft of torque 'softly' between the driven wheels rather than flicking from side to side as with more conventional set-ups. The idea is that the Focus's 225/40 ZR18 Michelin Pilot Sport-shod 18in alloys are kept tracking straight, even under maximum acceleration in the wet. But we already know that the 2-litre, 16-valve four-pot RS, being quite aggressively turbocharged, delivers its best work in something of a rush, so the fancy diff certainly has its work cut out.
Especially since the fast Ford is so stiffly sprung. Nothing tokenistic about this, either; the WRC cues are more than cosmetic. Apart from the wider, lower stance - a look massaged by the rear wheels' radical negative camber - the RS has special front hubs, beefier pair-matched driveshafts (to reduce torque-steer), harder bushes, a strengthened front crossmember, shortened higher-rate springs, Sachs Racing dampers and thicker anti-roll bars front and rear. The brakes are just as heavy duty, with truly massive (325mm, 20mm larger than the Alfa's) Brembo vented discs and four-pot callipers at the front.
At 1278kg, the Focus is over 80 kilos lighter than the 147, too. But it isn't enough to put much of a dent in the Alfa's 38bhp advantage: 169bhp per ton plays 182bhp. It's unlikely to be a defining factor, though. Alfa quotes a 0-62mph time of 6.3sec for the 147 GTA and we've already recorded 5.9sec for the Focus RS. Unless the Italians are being uncharacteristically conservative, the RS should hold its own, at least up to the ton, which it hits in a fraction under 15sec. Then expect the GTA's extra muscle to tell as it powers on to 153mph; the RS is all in at 144mph.
But we're a long way from the autostrada today. An hour's drive out of Alfa's famous Balocco proving ground, which is surrounded by what seems to be the endlessly flat Po Plain, are soaring hills, writhing roads and spans of pitted, lumpy Tarmac that should provide an illuminating trial of traction, composure and sprinting ability for this pair's first meeting. Betting on the outcome cuts along fairly predictable lines. That the Alfa will have the sexier, more musical powerplant is a given. Likewise the superiority of the Ford's heavily worked-over chassis in extremis. Which car will emerge as the more finely judged driving tool, though, hinges on the context in which each car sets its star qualities. Hollow charisma won't do. We're looking for cohesion, depth and resolve to underpin the dazzling party tricks.
Diesel and Brosnan knew something. Apart from being ridiculously rapid front-drive hatches, there are no points where the characters of these two cars overlap, or even touch. The design statements say much. The RS has an acute sense of hardcore rally-chic that makes the GTA - despite its artfully distended arches and the macho rear bumper grilles - look about as tough as a calf leather executive wallet. The Focus's gaping lower grille and Coulthardesque jawline could be a particularly disturbing template for a Halloween pumpkin. Inside, the steering wheel is a compact, deeply tactile affair, part-covered in the signal blue leather that also makes a big appearance on the heavily bolstered Sparco buckets. The alloy gearknob and handbrake grab are similarly uncompromising.
Instead of going for a comparably mean 'n' lean look, the GTA adds to the already quite complex cabin architecture of the 147 with more elaborate door trims and 'luxury' leather buckets that have proper height adjustment (the Focus's cushion doesn't go low enough). Great steering wheel, too; almost as good as the Ford's. By a whisker, the Alfa is the more comfortable car to drive and has a far more opulent (certainly tasteful) ambience. Then again, there's a sense of purpose to the Ford's driving environment that urges you to dispense with the soak-it-all-in niceties and hit the green button on the centre console that starts the engine. It springs instantly to life. The sound is unremarkable.
In the GTA, a simple twist of the key does the job, but it's the Alfa engine that really deserves the sense of occasion a button brings. Both visually and aurally, the 147's V6 is a thing of beauty but it's what it does that makes it so memorable. Throttle response is definingly sharp, power delivery flexible enough to indulge the lazy, but deliciously weighted towards the 6900rpm cut-out. It goes just fine. There's no straight-line stunt the RS can pull that the GTA can't cover. The big, normally-aspirated motor has enough on-tap thump to make the Ford 16-valver feel slightly gummy as its Garrett turbo is spooling up. And it easily matches its pace at maximum boost. Rapid as the Ford is, there's no hiding place from the Alfa on the straights.
That said, the RS does elicit the greater sense of urgency when really cracking on. The whole character of its engine changes from anodyne to hard-edged and throaty; its upper-range shove feels satisfyingly savage as it rises out of the off-boost torpidity. But somehow the surprisingly stodgy gearchange and late clutch take-up conspire to take the shine off the experience. On these hillside roads, at least, the way the RS deploys its performance is, at best, sporadically thrilling; it never quite seems to gel.
Much the same goes for the suspension and steering which - take it or leave it - are heavily biased towards track work. Smooth-road grip is stunning. Find some unruffled blacktop and the RS clings to it. Turn-in is swift and accurate, front-end bite remarkable. And the faster you go the better it gets: great steering feel, hardly any understeer, fabulous balance, sublime body control, stupendous brakes.
But we only found those roads late in the day. Our initial runs up and down the big hill with its tight turns, tricky cambers and lumpy, pock-marked surface told a different story. And to be frank, the Focus struggled. Quaife diff or not, torque-steer isn't just present, but the kind that actually pulls on lock if you aren't extra careful with the gas exiting a hairpin bend. Just to drive briskly requires constantly stoked-up concentration levels. In fact, you become very much part of the front wheels' battle to get a grip. Involving certainly, but factor-in the unremittingly hard, occasionally jarring ride, so-so gearchange and turbo-toppy power delivery and it all becomes too much. Even if the adrenalin's flowing, most people's instinct will be to relax the pace. Then the Focus returns to being rather too ordinary.
By comparison, ride comfort is something of a GTA strength. At low speed, its suspension/tyre combination is much more pliant than the Ford's and especially good at smothering small dips and ruts and the worst effects of broken surfaces. And although it might not have the Focus's ultimate dynamic resolve - on the really fast stuff where the Ford is in its element, the weight of the big V6 in the GTA's nose gives it an increasingly nose-led balance - the way it gets its power down is in a completely different class. What torque-steer there is never gets in the way of actually steering the car; traction and drive out of tight bends are terrific. The downside is that, at low speeds, the helm is rather light and feel-less and never matches the Ford's perfectly judged weighting when pressing on.
But take the broader outlook and the Alfa cleans up: it has a taut drivetrain and sweet, swift gearchange, brakes that are almost as fabulous as the Ford's and a chassis that chooses a sporty (instead of extreme) trade-off between grip, agility and comfort. It tackled the hill route rewardingly with the minimum of fuss. The RS made it just too exciting, a little too 'live' and harsh. It's a car for hustling bends into submission and sod the choreography. If that's your mission, though, the RS will pull it off.
Which is why Vin Diesel, perhaps recalling he was once in a film called The Fast and The Furious, made a bee-line for the blue car while Pierce Brosnan felt instant affinity with the Alfa. Always a sucker for a few sexy curves and a sonorous exhaust note is our Mr Bond. And, of course, he didn't want to have to hurt the bald bloke with the big muscles and bad tattoos.
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