Admittedly, my parents know the methods of purchasing a used car in Malaysia better than I, so they arranged the transfer, insurance and financing. All I did was funnel the cash. Thanks to them, we picked up the car from its owner in KL who reluctantly handed over the keys, and then we drove back to Ipoh, one day before Aidil Fitri.

First Impressions

The car was blue. As you may have noticed, all my Alfas are blue; this was indeed a good thing. The previous owner had spent tons of money making it "cool". These were not your rice-boy tacky add-ons but rather tasteful upgrades to an otherwise already excellent car. First, there were the wheels. He replaced the stock 15x6.5 wheels with 16x7 inchers. Then, he replaced the stock shocks with Bilsteins. The biggest bonus, in my way of thinking, was the addition of the Supersprint DTM exhaust. More on these later.

On to the interior, everything was left stock except the stereo. A Clarion head unit with an in-dash CD player replaced the stock Alfa-Clarion tape deck. Two amps were added to the system to drive the upgraded speakers and the additional 6x9s in the rear deck. While I frown upon most stereo installations as they are usually hack jobs, this one seemed to have been put together professionally and all the car's components were reinstalled correctly. Well, mostly.

Engine

The 2.5-litre V6 in this car had been left completely stock. While Alfa had left the bore and stroke of the 155 V6 at 88x68.3mm, the heads of these cars are no longer the same as those in the GTV6 and the Alfa 75. The compression ratio is up to 10:1, versus 9:1 for the GTV6. Factory quoted horsepower is up from 154bhp (US-spec) in the GTV6 to 163bhp in the 155, both with catalytic convertors. This is largely due to the better flow in the heads, the Motronic M 1.7 fuel injection system (versus the L-Jetronic in the older cars), and the completely different engine breathing setup (both intake and exhaust). The V6 in the 155 pulls more strongly from lower rpms than a GTV6, and loses the peakiness at 4,000 rpm.

However, I am not implying that there is no peakiness at all. The mellow andante ticking of the tappets tat-tat-tat-tat quickly grows into a frantic tatoo with rising revs. Once past 4,000 rpm, you can clearly tell that this motor gets interested in swallowing in even more fuel and more air as it spins its crank faster and faster towards redline. Furthermore, this particular Milanese symphony is now enhanced with a new wind instrument section, courtesy of Supersprint. The lows are stronger, much stronger; and at 5,000 rpm the score is clearly fortissimo with the climax coming very quickly indeed.