sprintblue
New member
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".
VW managed it. Never understood it...I believe it's half a Gallardo engine, like the Passat W8 is half a Veyron.
well the range of vw engine were VR5 i believe, like the VR6...seat also had in the toledo. I think they are 2.3 170bhp
Yep, it is indeed a straight 5straight five ?
Surely theres no such thing as a V5? It wouldn't make a "V".
The 1.4 Tjet feels like a small turbo engine, the 2.4 feels more meaty. The fuel consumption is alot better on the smaller engine.
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.
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