I like cars with ‘character’. The original VW Beetle has it, the Peugeot 205 GTI has it; the Lancia Delta definitely has it. I’d even say some of the big German uber-saloons have it, in their own efficient kind of way. The Alfa 147 GTA undeniably has it, in bucket loads. So many modern cars around the GTA’s price and size have absolutely no character, no quirkiness, no emotion. That’s what sets the GTA apart from the crowd.

So, I jumped at the chance to test drive a GTA in September 2005. I was instantly impressed. Here was a car that managed to pull off a good show of being an easy to drive, modern 3 door hatch back, with 4 good-sized seats and a decent boot, whilst also convincingly demonstrating that it had character. Character in the shape of the wonderfully sculpted looks, the design and feel of the leather interior, and of course the simply fantastic 3.2 litre V6 sitting up front.

So, without hesitating, I bought it. £19,000 for an 11,000 mile ’04 plate GTA with a lot of warranty left (yes, that is an important piece of information!). Alfa Red, black leather, Bose sound system and the optional 18 inch multi-spoke alloys was the spec. Insurance turned out to be £900, fairly reasonable, and the dealer put new tyres on the front free of charge and got the first service out of the way.

So, after over a year’s ownership, what’s it like? Fantastic, to give the short answer. Performance is brilliant, with real acceleration that wouldn’t feel out of place in an expensive sports car, pushing you back into the seat well into three figures (should the law allow it) and pretty decent handling considering the weighty engine up front. I’m quite happy not to have the most nimble and agile car in the world actually, as it seems to me to be a relatively small price to pay for that V6.

It is, without a doubt, the centre of the experience, with a brilliant delivery, ramping up power smoothly to the peak of 250bhp at 6,500rpm, with a thrilling soundtrack that genuinely rivals some of the best engine notes of modern cars. It definitely isn’t lacking in the grunt to back up the sound either, happily keeping up with many supposedly quicker cars and passing other ‘hot’ hatches with surprising ease.

A trip to Santa Pod for the “Forza Italia” day provided the chance to try my hand at a timed quarter mile in the “Run What You Brung” event. I only managed a 14.9 second best time, although this was with a totally fluffed 2nd to 3rd change. Another standard GTA (with a driver who’d done it all before and knew what he was doing, pardon the driver’s excuse!) was running consistent 14.4’s.

However, what most interested me most about that trip up to Santa Pod wasn’t how fast the car was in a straight line, or how it compared to other cars, but the fuel consumption. You see, when you run a GTA, this automatically becomes a major part of your life. Ironically, I managed to record my record consumption for a long journey on the way up to Santapod, managing an average of 30.2 mpg. This I was very pleased about, never before had I seen an over 30 average. I reset the computer as I entered the gates at Santapod to see what difference it made driving timed quarter miles. When I left Santapod later on in the day, I saw it had recorded an average figure of just 9mpg.

With the GTA, you have to take the good with the bad. Unfortunately, dismal fuel consumption for a 3-door hatch back isn’t the only bad thing about the car. The paintwork on the front bumper almost jumps off before the stones can hit it and the rest is badly orange peeled. The electric window switch holders regularly pop out of the door linings and refuse to go back, the boot lining seems to be made of recycled cardboard, and a 3 point turn competition would be lost to an oil tanker.

That I can all cope with, but the air conditioning I cannot. It’s not that it’s broken (I think), but that it has a mind of its own. Even with the useless “auto” button off, it will change from a gentle 19 degrees breeze onto the windscreen to blowing an arctic gale at your feet, as and when it feels like it.

The radio’s infuriating too, changing the volume to, “hear a pin drop” every time you start the car, rather than leaving it on the volume you chose last; and making you cycle all the way through countless FM, medium wave and long wave frequencies just to change from Radio 1 to the CD using the steering wheels buttons. Not that I’d want to listen to the CD again, as half the time the player only ejects the CD far enough for it to be extracted using an elaborate two handed little finger pincer grip, so I can’t be bothered to change it.

What’s more, the battery drains if you listen to the radio for more than 5 minutes with the engine off, and last November the power steering went on sabbatical half way up the A303 and decided not to come back, leaving me with a courtesy car for a month whilst the dealer waited for Alfa Romeo to send new (read: wrong) pipes over from Italy. That warranty is important!

However, I wasn’t expecting a faultless car when I bought the GTA. I was expecting a car with character. I don’t mind the switches popping off once in a while; I will have to ignore the possessed air conditioning and I can keep the dealer’s number saved in my mobile… next to the RAC. I’d rather have a car with the emotion and character that the GTA so aptly portrays than a faultless, sterile and ultimately uninteresting vehicle. The GTA has a truly old school, organic and modern-classic feel about it, and I absolutely love it.