So the Alfa 147 is leaving for car heaven tomorrow. Struck a very good deal for something new. So... It's red and it's new and it's the brother of what saved us out of the snow one uk winter. Have a guess what make and model and how many ponies...

A diesel (new) Bravo, 130bhp?

Giulietta...?

Grande Punto, Fiat obviously........bhp

Yups - we've ditched the Alfa that needed money spent on ERG, suspension and injectors after 220.000 km (and has proven to be utterly reliable in the 8 years I had it bar for a gearbox cable that snapped). Mainly because we need the piece of mind and could do with something small running on petrol - mainly because really Diesel is not made for short distances.

In its place there is now a bright red Punto, packed to the rafters with options. And room in the engine bay to put in an extra engine and a couple of turbo's, since we went for the good old 1.4 77bhp 'thing'.

Experience so far: it's really not meant to do motorway cruising. But it's really comfy for such a small car and I'm trying to fog my view by looking at all the optional extra's.

Why a Punto? We've done the rounds on the Brussel car show and cars are crazy stupid these days. Volkwagen were doing an "extra special super car show deal like you've never experienced" (£400 off their stock cars on top of the 'normal' 1.8% or so - idiots), Hyundai were selling their i10 for 12k or so without options (not counting 3 tons of plastic), Citroen wanted 16k for a basic c3,... you get the picture. And the Punto? Over 30% off!

Do I love it? Nope. Do I like it? Definitely! Is it fast? Quite the contrary - just sit in the first lane and ignore the fact the revs sit at 4k doing 75mph or stay off the motorway altogether. But it's just what we need (I keep telling myself), cheap as chips, quite a good finish except for a couple of plastic surfaces and a lack of any finishing piping around eg. the boot floor cover thing. List of options? Really it's too long to type here.