How many actors are there in the world? I’m counting everyone, from the “boy”
in an amateur dramatic society’s performance of The Winslow Boy, to the
Latvian teenager who appears only on webcams, covered in baby oil.
I’m counting people in Bollywood, people in French art house films, people at
provincial Brazilian drama colleges. And if you do that, the number must be
into the millions.
Some of them must be very good. It stands to reason. But they’ll never make
it. The hand of fate will continue to deal them low diamonds and mid-range
clubs until eventually they wind up teaching Stanislavski to self-harming
inmates at Pentonville. Even those who make it to the top struggle to become
Tom Cruise. The big-name star. The guarantee of bums on seats.
Take Christopher Walken as a prime example. He’s big, all right. He could get
a table at the Ivy any time he wanted. And he’s also fabulously watchable.
That gold watch scene in Pulp Fiction was, I think, the finest performance
from any big screen actor since . . . well, ever.
But he still couldn’t fill a theatre. I mean, since Pulp Fiction he’s appeared
in Kangaroo Jack, Engine Trouble, The Country Bears, Poolhall Junkies, The
Affair of the Necklace, Joe Dirt, Jungle Juice, The Opportunists, Kiss
Toledo Goodbye, Mousehunt and countless other movies that I can pretty much
guarantee you haven’t seen. Since Top Gun, however, there isn’t a single Tom
Cruise film I’ve missed. In fact there isn’t a single Tom Cruise film I
don’t own on DVD. Of course Tom’s a fine actor. His performance alongside
Dustin Hoffman’s twitchery in Rain Man was especially memorable. But is he
better than Walken?
So it goes with all things, especially cars. Last week, after a hard day’s
filming, I drove home in a new 3-series BMW. The Tom Cruise of motoring. The
machine you would automatically choose if you wanted a well-made, reasonably
sporty four-door saloon. And it was fine. But the next day an Alfa Romeo 159
arrived at my house. Now this is a car you would automatically not choose if
you wanted a well-made, reasonably sporty four-door saloon. This is
Christopher Walken.
Actually, that’s one of my less risible metaphors. Because in its long history
of making cars, Alfa only rarely produces a Deer Hunter or a gold watch
scene in Pulp Fiction. The vast majority of its offerings are complicated,
silly and badly made. And as a result most go straight to the discount DVD
bin at Blockbuster.
The thing is, though, with the exception of the simply appalling Arna, I’ve
loved all Alfas. In fact I’ve argued time and again that nobody can be a
petrolhead until they’ve owned one. It’s a rite of passage. Think of it as
the great sex that leaves you with an embarrassing itch.
Take the old GTV6 as a prime example. I owned one once and it was a nightmare.
The worst car I’ve owned. Deeply uncomfortable, spectacularly impractical
and blessed with steering so heavy that navigating into a London parking
space was like navigating a donkey into a budgie cage.
Then there was the complete lack of quality. Nothing worked. And when you got
one thing fixed something else would break on the way home. Once it tried to
murder me. The linkage from the gearlever to the rear-mounted gearbox fell
off and jammed the prop shaft, causing a sound not heard on earth since
Krakatoa blew up, and the rear wheels to lock.
But behind the oyster-like impregnability of its ergonomics and hidden in the
sea of snot were two perfect pearls. The styling. And the howl from its V6
engine. In a tunnel, at 4000rpm, it was more sonorous than any music. It was
like having your soul licked by angels.
In essence, then, Alfa has always understood what makes driving a thrill. But
it has never been able to make a car. Well, not a car that a rational,
normal human being might want to buy.
Think of them as underground German art films. Great for serious-minded
critics but not quite in the same everyman league as BMWillis on an asteroid.
At first I thought the 159 would be more of the same. The boot release button
is in the roof, just where you wouldn’t expect it to be, the electric
windows have a mind of their own, and like the Fiat Grande Punto I reviewed
last week, it couldn’t find or hold Radio 2. It could pick up pigs squeaking
on Io, and Radio Leicester. But not Johnnie Walker.
These, however, are trivial faults. No more annoying in the big scheme of
things than the iDrive in a BMW or the harsh ride you get on an Audi. Unlike
Alfas of old you have to look long and hard in a 159 to find something
deeply disturbing. But I found it, all right.
The greatest sensation of speed afforded to ordinary man is not on a go-kart
or a rollercoaster. It comes when you’ve got the cruise control set at
70mph, the traffic in front is stopping and momentarily you can’t find the
button to turn it off. In that hiccup of time it doesn’t feel like you’re
doing 70mph. It feels like you’re doing three times the speed of light.
That’s why, in most cars, the cruise control “off” button is clearly visible
and easy to use in a hurry. Not in the Alfa it isn’t. It looks like one of
the pieces from a game of Risk and it’s mounted on a stalk just below and
slightly behind the indicator.
So when the traffic ground to a halt on the M40 I bet the chap behind me was
keen to know why I didn’t slow at all and then, for no obvious reason,
suddenly indicated left. This, then, is proper swivel-eyed Alfa lunacy but
it is the only thing in the car that’s truly wrong and there’s a simple way
round the problem. Ignore it. Pretend it isn’t there.
But do not pretend the 159 isn’t there next time you want a mid-range
four-door saloon because that would be a mistake. A bad one. First of all,
it is exactly one million times better looking than a BMW 3-series. And with
those triple headlamps, and perfect proportions, at least half a million
times better looking than any rivals from Audi, Mercedes or Jaguar.
Inside, it’s even better. The driving position is spot on, the dials look like
they’ve come from a Swiss watch and the quality of the leather, especially
if you have it in red, gives the impression that it costs Rolls-Royce money.
But it doesn’t. A 159 Lusso, which is the luxury version, is £22,395. That’s
about what BMW charges for a 320i SE, but Alfa gives you far more equipment
as standard and lots more power as well. The 2.2 litre engine is a peach
that just begs to be taken outside and given a damn good thrashing. Porsche
engineered an exhaust rasp into the Boxster at 5000rpm to reward the sporty
driver. Alfa hasn’t bothered. It just gives you a simple four-cylinder
engine that, all on its own, sounds better and better until you’re up at
6500 when it sounds like a metallic werewolf.
You can pootle around slowly but somehow you tend to drive the 159 very hard
and very fast. But the engine, torquey, powerful and smooth though it may
be, is not the best part of this car. That accolade goes to the steering.
It’s fast, sharp, more informative than the internet and more tactile than a
freshly carved stone otter.
The handling is also sweet and yet the ride isn’t even slightly uncomfortable.
Which means that the 159 drives and feels like no other car in its class. If
you have even the faintest trace of petrol in your veins, if you are even on
nodding terms with the concept of simple, good engineering, you should drive
this car. Because it doesn’t matter what you have now, you’ll be smitten. I
was.
This is one of those cars that’s demonstrably and appreciably better than any
other mid-range four-door family saloon. And unlike any Alfa of the past,
you don’t have to machete your way through a million inconveniences to find
the point. This car does not hide its gold watch up its behind. It is an
absolute gem.
