A-Lister

What should you replace a clunky old Ford Fiesta with? Something from the top drawer, naturally: a tastily modified Alfa Romeo 147 GTA .

- Chris Rees

The Ford Fiesta has just notched up its eighth year in a row as the UK’s best selling car. You want anonymous? You got anonymous. There must be a gazillion of those boring blue oval-badged hatchbacks out there.

So when bicycle engineer and 1.6-litre Fiesta owner Kiran Winder was looking for a new car, almost anything would have been more interesting. What he actually ended up with is the very definition of ‘interesting’ – and a truly massive step up: an Alfa Romeo 147 GTA. Good chap!

It all started when he saw a 147 GTA local to him in Essex. Straightaway he knew he had to own one. Luckily in spring 2015, he managed to track down a 2003 example at a car dealer in Brighton. Of course, he decided to buy it post haste.

As purchased, it was pretty much all standard apart from an engine remap. This had apparently been done as a result of the engine having sucked up water at some stage. The car had been taken to Monza Sport Tuning in West Sussex for a full engine rebuild, with the ECU being remapped at the same time to give an estimated 275hp, around 25hp higher than the standard GTA’s 250hp.

Coinciding with this, a Q2 diff was installed – a mod that pretty much every GTA owner eventually does to cure the car’s tendency to torque steer, as well as the standard diff’s propensity to self-destruct. Boxes ticked all round so far.