General performance comparison bravo 150 t jet sport v stilo abarth

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General performance comparison bravo 150 t jet sport v stilo abarth

sprintblue

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anyone driven both?.....the baseline comparison figures seem similar but i wonder how torquey the 1.4t will feel compare to the v5 in the stilo abarth?(which i love) and what actual performance differences there are....
 
Surely theres no such thing as a V5? It wouldn't make a "V".

Volkswagen introduced the first V5 engine, though this engine is not a true twin-bank V engine, but rather a VR5, or staggered bank straight-5 engine, and therefore not a true V5. It does not have one cylinder bank with 2 cylinders and one with 3; rather, it has all 5 cylinders sharing a single bank. The engine is derived from the VR6, and is thus a staggered 5, and has much in common with Volkswagen's earlier straight 5 developed in the 1980s for the Passat and Audi Quattro.

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V5_engine"]V5 engine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

And this describes it really well with pics of the VR6 it is derived from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VR6_engine#VR5
 
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never knew it was a straight 5....you learn something new every day....now back to my original q....
 
Sorry to revive such an old thread but it's been bothering me how unresolved it is.

So I have recently had the opportunity to drive a Bravo 150 T-Jet Sport and a three-door Stilo Abarth back to back, this is what I took home.

Engine.

The 1.4T in the T-Jet is quite lively, because of the turbo it gives an entirely different feeling to the 2.4 in the Stilo. Where the 1.4T gives you a classic turbo push in your back, the Stilo is a lot more linear but gets more crisp; howling and electricifying as you push it closer to the red line.

The 1.4T is known to really kick in from about 2 500rpm up till about 5 000rpm after-which it seems to run out of breath a bit. The redline in the car is marked as 6 000rpm but it will push beyond that (something I wouldn't recommend you do but I did by mistake once or twice). I drove both cars at high altitude so I wouldn't be surprised if the Bravo got to 100 km/h (62 MPH) quicker than the Stilo did, it certainly feels quicker but the Stilo most likely has the Bravo when it comes to highway acceleration by my assessment; as soon as I can drag race them I will let you know the outcome.

The Stilo has a very linear but powerful engine; it is exciting how long you have to rev it before you need to change, it is a guilty pleasure to rev with such abandon and not have to change when every single fibre in you has you screaming to do just that. You can feel a definite surge in power from about 4 000rpm till its rev-limiter kicks in at almost 7 000rpm. The engine sounds wonderful and I would say that this car feels more italian in character than the Bravo does. I think I need a bit of practice taking this car around the twisties as I didn't fully push it in the corners (more about that later) but on coming out of the corner I was generally in the wrong gear and so the next corner appeared before I could really get into the power band.

Handling.

The Stilo is definitely the older car between the two but I was a bit surprised at the differences between the cars considering that the Bravo's chassis is based on the Stilo's chassis. The front end of the Bravo feels more certain than in the Stilo. In the Stilo Fiat didn't do a great job of hiding the fact that the car has electronically assisted power steering and it feels a bit vague most of the time, the Bravo's steering is not stellar either compared to some other cars out there but it trumps the Stilo when in Sport mode.

That said, the Stilo has superior handling in every other respect. The back-end of the Stilo is magical in corners, I shared the ride with a BMW driver and he could not contain his excitement at how the back-end felt. It felt flexible and could probably come down to the slightly more sophisticated rear-suspension setup in the Stilo or the shorter rear-overhang or simply the fact that the three-door Stilo is about 200mm shorter than the Bravo.

I could take corners with more gusto than in the Bravo once I learnt to trust the very vague steering. On entry into the corner, the Bravo may come trumps but once inside the corner it feels at its limit while the Stilo felt like it could take a lot more.

I had more fun in the Stilo and spent the entire day with it looking for any reason to drive it again, I did miss the push in the back I get from the Bravo but the overall driving experience is more interesting.
 
Sorry to revive such an old thread but it's been bothering me how unresolved it is.

So I have recently had the opportunity to drive a Bravo 150 T-Jet Sport and a three-door Stilo Abarth back to back, this is what I took home.

Engine.

The 1.4T in the T-Jet is quite lively, because of the turbo it gives an entirely different feeling to the 2.4 in the Stilo. Where the 1.4T gives you a classic turbo push in your back, the Stilo is a lot more linear but gets more crisp; howling and electricifying as you push it closer to the red line.

The 1.4T is known to really kick in from about 2 500rpm up till about 5 000rpm after-which it seems to run out of breath a bit. The redline in the car is marked as 6 000rpm but it will push beyond that (something I wouldn't recommend you do but I did by mistake once or twice). I drove both cars at high altitude so I wouldn't be surprised if the Bravo got to 100 km/h (62 MPH) quicker than the Stilo did, it certainly feels quicker but the Stilo most likely has the Bravo when it comes to highway acceleration by my assessment; as soon as I can drag race them I will let you know the outcome.

The Stilo has a very linear but powerful engine; it is exciting how long you have to rev it before you need to change, it is a guilty pleasure to rev with such abandon and not have to change when every single fibre in you has you screaming to do just that. You can feel a definite surge in power from about 4 000rpm till its rev-limiter kicks in at almost 7 000rpm. The engine sounds wonderful and I would say that this car feels more italian in character than the Bravo does. I think I need a bit of practice taking this car around the twisties as I didn't fully push it in the corners (more about that later) but on coming out of the corner I was generally in the wrong gear and so the next corner appeared before I could really get into the power band.

Handling.

The Stilo is definitely the older car between the two but I was a bit surprised at the differences between the cars considering that the Bravo's chassis is based on the Stilo's chassis. The front end of the Bravo feels more certain than in the Stilo. In the Stilo Fiat didn't do a great job of hiding the fact that the car has electronically assisted power steering and it feels a bit vague most of the time, the Bravo's steering is not stellar either compared to some other cars out there but it trumps the Stilo when in Sport mode.

That said, the Stilo has superior handling in every other respect. The back-end of the Stilo is magical in corners, I shared the ride with a BMW driver and he could not contain his excitement at how the back-end felt. It felt flexible and could probably come down to the slightly more sophisticated rear-suspension setup in the Stilo or the shorter rear-overhang or simply the fact that the three-door Stilo is about 200mm shorter than the Bravo.

I could take corners with more gusto than in the Bravo once I learnt to trust the very vague steering. On entry into the corner, the Bravo may come trumps but once inside the corner it feels at its limit while the Stilo felt like it could take a lot more.

I had more fun in the Stilo and spent the entire day with it looking for any reason to drive it again, I did miss the push in the back I get from the Bravo but the overall driving experience is more interesting.

thanks for sharing, i like the idea of a Stilo Abarth but have never had the pleasure

old skool high revving engines like the Stilo 5 cyl and Alfa V6 really were lovely engines, but the current boosted downsized engines offer a lighter front end, this is probably why you found turn in improved (y)

i really like the handling on the Bravo, and it gets better the quicker you go. the car responds well to deep braking to set up inertial drift, in fact it 4 wheel drifts entirely predictably. the longer wheelbase than say a Abarth 500 gives better high speed stability and real confidence to carry huge speed into corners.
i speak from experience on racetracks including Silverstone, Bedford and Nurburgring Nordschliefe (y)
 
Years ago I thought about buying a new stilo but the steering was so absolutely bad that I gave up on the idea altogether just for that reason, our current chrysler delta still has numb steering but it is ok nowhere near so awful

i test drove a Stilo, in comparison to the Brava i had at the time

the steering was the one thing that really put me off, also didn't like the throttle and grabby brakes

so i kept the Brava a while longer
 
Is the steering in the Stilo that bad? I know it's not the ultimate set-up, owing largely to being electrically assisted, but in my JTD 3dr it feels a heck of a lot better than Renault Megane's I've driven which share the same TRW system, and is much less vague than my Sisters 13 plate Alfa MiTo.

Even a Mk2 Focus I had as a hire car didn't feel a great deal better than the Stilo, which noisy suspension aside still feels quite fun. I think the trouble is that 3 & 5dr Stilo's and petrol & diesels all felt quite different, so it depends what version people tried. A mates 1.2 petrol 5dr felt dull and artificial compared to mine.
 
Don't know I only drove the stilo a JTD for a test drive but it put me right off, had a few cars with electric steering and most were ok tbh I can't follow the argument as to why it should automatically be inferior hydraulic. Chrysler Delta is ok not too light but not a lot of feel. For a day to day a to b machine it's ok
 
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