Pants!
I test drove a Stilo Abarth a little while ago. I've got a Bravo HGT at the moment and thought i'd give the updated version a go.
It's comfortable, and very well equipped, theres so many buttons everywhere.
Start the engine, sounds good so far, then you drive it, and it all goes down hill from there.
I thought the selespeed box would be good, I'm a racing driver and have driven all sorts of race cars with semi-automatic boxes so thought it would be fun on the road. It's horrible. In auto mode you have to take your foot off the throttle when it changes gear otherwise it lurches very uncomfortably - especially for passengers, and when it's in manual mode it takes ages to change, foot off the throttle, change gear, pause a bit, then put it back on the throttle.
Other than that its a good car, it's fairly quick, but the gearbox really lets it down. I thought it could be really good, but I thought it was awful to drive. I'm sure you could get used to it, but it just seemed wrong to me, a semi auto box should be off throttle, flick into gear, back on throttle nice and smooth.
It's not just me either, even the sales guy couldn't drive it right! I was in the passenger seat for a bit and it was very uncomfortable on gear change and he was driving in auto mode.
If they did a manual version or proper automatic version then it would be great, thats all that lets it down for me, every other part of the car seemed great.
That's just my opinion, but I'm interested to hear what others thought.
