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Alfa Romeo Reliability Myth Has Been BUSTED!

This is a photo of my Alfa Romeo Giulietta Quadrifoglio (QV), I bought this car brand new in June 2011. It had zero kilometres on the clock, plus I was and will always be the single owner. My Alfa Romeo Giulietta Quadrifoglio (QV) has just reached 200 000KM on the clock. Furthermore, it will be my QV’s 8th birthday. You might look at kilometres driven and remark at how many kilometres I have raked up in 8 years, moreover they were eight incredible years of driving. Every opportunity I got to drive, I did. I have been all over the Gauteng province, including to KwaZulu Natal the land of my Zulu people. What I love about my Alfa Romeo Giulietta Quadrifoglio is that every kilometre that has been driven has always been exciting there has never been a dull moment or a time when I had enough.

My Alfa Romeo Giulietta Quadrifoglio
My Alfa Romeo Giulietta Quadrifoglio

My Alfa Romeo Giulietta Quadrifoglio (QV) still surprises me with every acceleration. Moreover, the handling has always been exciting. I am not sure what the Italians do when they create these fantastic sports cars. You can feel the passion and love that has been transferred to all their sports cars. This is my 1st Alfa Romeo, and I love it.

Before my Alfa Romeo, I had an Audi A4 B8 2TDi the car was good, well built, plus had an excellent sound system. After three years with it, I had enough. I was looking for something else, I was ready for another car. When I had the Audi, there was not much excitement after one year of owning it. The novelty had worn off. There are only two things I missed about the Audi, the sound system and after-sales service received after buying the car. One other thing which was unique about Audi South Africa was they sent me a gift after purchasing my Audi. I’m not sure about other countries, but I think this is where Alfa Romeo South Africa can learn a thing or two about after-sales service from other luxury brands. Or though I don’t want to dive too deep into this, also let me make it clear, I’m referring to the craftsmanship regarding servicing their cars, and I am relating to my experience on how well they managed the perception and their communication with their clients. Don’t get me wrong Audi’s are not perfect, they do break. Also, they’re after-sales people also do make mistakes. I can account two experiences that I had which backs this statement up:

  1. My Audi service representative told me that my Audi had break sensors; therefore, it will indicate to me when the breaks needed changing; however, this was not case plus this ended up damaging the brake disks.
  2. My Audi broke down in traffic, luckily I was still able to drive.
    However, these two experiences above were managed very well by Audi when the car was booked in for service.

Anyway, I digress from the topic, coming to back to the primary subject which is my Alfa Romeo Giulietta QV has made it to 200 000KM, therefore crushing the fears of “reliability”. Everyone who knew I had an Alfa Romeo, would congratulate me on my Italian car, then crack some clever joke like “at least your car will look pretty on the side of the road after it breaks down”. Now you can imagine the confidence this gave me in the start, knowing that someday I might be stuck on the side of the road with a broken car. At first, I brushed it off by saying it’s okay it’s still under warranty therefore if I do get stuck, the warranty will cover it. Moreover, do remember that this is my first Alfa Romeo. So it’s like these people (Alfa Romeo haters) were saying I’d never make it past 100 000KM. The fact that I have made it to 200 000KM proves to me that Alfa Romeo Reliability myth has been BUSTED.

My Alfa Romeo Giulietta Quadrifoglio
My Alfa Romeo Giulietta Quadrifoglio

To summarise, this is my first Alfa Romeo that I have owned. Moreover, I have been pleased with what my Alfa Romeo has been able to achieve. Yes, there were ups and downs, however, I can call recall more fantastic moments though. Every morning I am greeted with this beautiful car. Furthermore, it is at that moment I know I am about to have fun driving to work. Bellissimo, Forza Alfa Romeo.

Technical Details:
Name: Alfa Romeo Giulietta Quadrifoglio
Vehicle Mechanical Warranty: 5 years / 150 000KM
Service Plan: 6 years / 105 000KM
Year: 2011
Power: 173kW / 232Bhp

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Hard Work Overrides Talent

“hard work overrides talent” Curtis 50 Cent Jackson quote to Kendrick Lamar

I also relate to this a lot because I wouldn’t say that I was super talented growing up. I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by talented people, especially at Parktown Boys’ High School. I was blessed to have so many friends from different backgrounds.

It was amazing to watch my talented friends do their thing, in sports, academic, drama and other activities. Their passion rubbed onto me, so I became passionate.

I found my niche in computer programming, and I still remember the first time I saw a programming language. I had just started High School at Parktown Boys’ High (Best boys’ school in the world). One of my seniors whose nickname was snakey (because of His small frame) was at the computer centre working on His computer science homework. The screen was blue, and the text on the screen was yellow, and I remember seeing it and being so amazed by what I saw on the screen. I didn’t know what I was looking at at the time, but I liked what I was seeing. So I asked Andrew (Snakey) what is that? And He told me this is a programming language called PASCAL. I told Him I want to do this as well. He then said that I must work hard to understand programming basics because once I know the building blocks of programming and have a solid foundation, I’ll code anything. So my journey began.

In 2005 I started my professional software development career at a small IT company called amaDigital. There I was given the opportunity to work with clients and build entire web applications. Fast forward many years later, and I am now a Tech Lead working at a large corporate. As I said at the beginning of this blog post I’m not the most talented person, what I have is the ability to visualise what I want, and I put in the hard work necessary to make it happen.

Being a programmer is incredible. There’s so many cool tools & techniques being created by excellent programmers. I believe it’s my responsibility to use these tools & techniques to develop applications that will somehow contribute to society. It would be great to be known as “that zuluCoda guy” who created a fantastic web app that revolutionised how people do business in Africa. And When they ask me, How I did it? I’ll say Hard Work and self-belief.