Ok I bought a car… not on the list…

Tina sounds a bit like my partner with the encouragement rather than resistance and those words have left my partners mouth on more than one occasion.

Her house sale completes in a few days (we hope) so funds are also readily available - it’s me being the ‘boring’ sensible one (although I was just browsing Maserati Granturismo again!).

Anyway, congrats whatever it is. I’m guessing something like the Alfa but it full fat QF form. Maybe this one: www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202308311385392

If it is, what a superb choice

Yep. It was your doing, you made me….

Presuming it’s only just out of warranty? (iirc all 18MY+ came with 5 years warranty)

Can you/are you going to extend?

Not driven/been in a Guilia, but have a Stelvio QF and the engine is mighty, and a worthy replacement to the XFR

He/she traded it in yes, my salesman didn’t know what for. They knew nothing about it really, but it was a good price for the mileage, a nice colour, a great location and being from a main dealer means 12 months warranty. Warranty and road tax (180) alone saves me £1700 in year 1 vs the jag… it may cost me a chunk of that to service but the tyres were all good and tonnes of brake friction material also…

It has less FG than the jag, but a lot standard. I like the teledial wheels more than these, but I’m reading these were upgrades and 5lbs per corner lighter and presumably were not cheap new! They seem to be $4250 a set in the US aftermarket. Maybe I’ll get a of teledials as winters as I will keep up the winter tyre thing…

I’m very excited - as much as when I bought the first XFR!!

Yes - the consumer choice seems to be these Goodyears, many for sale have them…. Obvs I’ll fit Potenza Sports when they wear out, a very similar tyre. They felt great actually, it’s a much nimbler car than the XFR and more foolproof in traction etc…

Thanks ! My insurance policy is the Boxster, which I don’t really need, but like…

at highway speeds the QF felt identical in speed to the 8 speed XFR. The salesman was blown away but I was like “no, that’s exactly normal for me….” That’s why I couldn’t drop a lot in performance, I’m used to it now and can’t get off the ride…..

Very jealous. Well done.

Hopefully it’s not too long before there is 2 QV’s on the forum but I’m very lazy to get my car on the market.

Excellent choice! I've liked the Giulia from launch, just not brave enough to try for (a lower spec!) one after the GT.

Enjoy sir. 

Very nice .Lovel looking things,don’t see that many either .

Ok, a bit more now I'm driving a proper keyboard!

As per my previous post I was down to three serious options, but I was struggling a bit as the XFR is so special, and I had a busy week last week and was using quite a lot of the horses on a regular basis and still loving the car. I parked next to a XE S at a work event last week, had seen a colleague's 430d GC at a meeting, then parked next to a Veloce on Froday outside Waitrose. None of them had that brutal motorsporty look of the XFR, especially from the back with the massive tyres, diffusers, 4 exhausts, etc, and while I liked the GC's with the M sport add ons and exhaust/power upgrade etc, they were not coming up for sale.

Then like some sort of divine intervention, when I came out of Waitrose, the red Veloce was gone, replaced by a black QF, parked nose first, 2 spaces from me. Now that was a rear end I could get excited about! I had a chat with Tina, whose opinion I genuinely rate, and she asked how much more the GF's were (I had been looking up to £30k only). I had previously thought they were all >40k for lower mileage examples, but had a look within 100 miles, and there were a few for high 30's. The lowest mileage one was the one I bought, the fact it was 45 mins away, at a Jaguar main dealer (making the whole handover/purchase so much easier and more pleasant) meant I called them immediately. There had been some interest in the car so I basically went to see it straight away.

I drove there with the XFR in dynamic mode, fairly peppily, and the Giulia was parked in space in their car park. It had not been prepped at all yet but the alloys had only the slightest marks and it looked well cared for. The interior has some hard plastics ( and manual seat adjusters!!) but mostly in places low down/back of front seats where the kids will scuff anyway. Driving position, dash, and seats are lovely, the seats in particular suiting my quite Italian shape, and mostly Alcantara so very grippy and comfortable. IT has great space inside and a nice wide boot opening, but (in a good way) the doors and bonnet all feel really light weight (the roof and bonnet are carbon). I love cars in black - this is a very metallic carbon black - but usually disregard them for needing too much cleaning. This really suits it though, and while I prefer the teledial wheels, these are much lighter optional ones (and journos do like to go on about the benefits of less unsprung weight). They started it up - in "normal" mode, and it sounds like a V6 but way quieter than the XFR which is properly neighbour-enraging on startup. To their credit they they let me take it out for a good long test drive, me driving from the off, no instructions on modes to use, etc. Refreshing. I don't drive other people's cars like a tit but let's just say the guy noted my familiarity with very high-performance cars. It sounded like the garage people were not allowed to drive it and the salesman was visibly eager to see what it was like.

Throttle and steering are a little sharper than on mine, and it feels light and eager. We got to the motorway, and it does indeed had a wonderfully supple ride and great refinement. I felt I was doing 50 on the sliproad, the speedo said 75... I gave it some beans, and while it took off like a stabbed rat (the 8 speed ZF being even quicker/smoother in this application than the XFR's) it made less noise than we expected. We looked at each other, I switched it to "Dynamic" on the Alfa DNA dial (with the lovely little button in the middle that lets you soften the dampers off in Dynamic or Race), booted it again, and all hell broke loose. The sound seems to come from all around you, bassy and loud but somehow smoother than the rattly sound AMG's make. All I can think of to describe it, is the noise a dragon might make if you kick it in the nuts. Nothing like anything I have heard before, but deeply lovely!

In this mode it changes gear super-fast, and is very eager to change down through the box under braking (making all sorts of snarly crackling noises while doing so). The XFR handles well, staying flat and neutral, but the QF feels miles more eager to change direction, it pivots with an almost track-car urgency and both ends feel utterly tied down, its limits must be astronomical. It breathes with the road unlike some German cars I've driven that are so stiff they skate across the bumps disconcertingly. Those F1 Supersports have some grip too... It's a much sportier and more engaging car and would do everything for me bar the open top and manual gearbox of the Boxster, which could be sold if needs be (but is not planned).

By which time it was just time to haggle on price! WBAC and Carwow and the likes had an average of about £13k suggested for the XFR, the Jag dealer started at £10k and acted out sufficient suprise at the former (while truthfully pointing out their rates are by no means guaranteed). I got to that trade in, with a full prep with all wheels refurbished, full ceramic/interior protection, and wheel and tyre gap insurance. They were keender to include the latter two, and a year's warranty, and drop the purchase price to nullify them, than just take them off the order sheet, they must get comission for them but have more leeway on the purchase price, but I was not complaining for getting them for next to nothing.

So my third daily driver bought from a Jag main dealer, and three extremely positive experiences, all were lovely people and proper car enthusiasts to boot. Hopefully I'll collect it Friday, the only complications being money transfers and getting the telematics unit and camera out of my car....

Lovely thing, well done.

Good point about theft protection. The Stelvio/Guilia range are very easy to steal as the crim starts the car through the radar cruise access port at the bottom of the bumper. 

There are ghost immobilisers you can install or theres a very long thread on Alfa Owner that has another solution in place but they are very secretive about it. 

Nice write up ALF, it sounds right up your street.

On the subject of sound....being an 18 reg means no GPF which will really help, isn't it supposed to be even louder in Race Mode and do you think you will miss having a speaker upgrade on longer journeys?

What ceramic coating are they applying? I'm a big convert having lived with a gtechniq coated car for nearly 4 months. In the summer at least (with plenty of rain), it massively reduces the effort of keeping it looking good thanks to 'self cleaning'. I've only washed it twice plus a separate wheel clean, normal for me is every other weekend as a minimum. Normally after leaving a car at the airport for a week it is filthy, but it looked cleaner when I left that it did when I parked up!