“I was under the impresssion that the Dart was basically a Fiat.”
Fiat owns Alfa-Romeo (as well as Ferrari, Maserati, and Lancia).
As a result, there has been a lot of “blurring of the lines” between certain Fiat models and certain Alfa and Lancia models over the past few years. There is a lot of “blurring” between certain Ferrari models and some Maserati models.
Now, there will also be a lot of “blurring” between certain Chrysler models and the Fiat/Alfa/Lancia marques, in the same way that some GM models in North America are very similar (if not virtually identical) to GM’s Vauxhall, Opel, and Holden models from overseas.
As to parts availability, I seriously doubt that the Fiat parts problems of the past are still true.
Sergio Marchionne and the other folks who run Fiat nowadays are extremely savvy business people, and I am sure that they now understand the importance of parts availability on the other side of the pond.
To the best of my knowlge the Dart’s 1.4l turbo is the same engine that is in the Fiat 500. i read on online a road test of the turbo with the dsg gear box and they wern’t inpressed with the trans. but there are about 3 different trans used in they the dart drive them all , make sure youre ok with the way it drives and behaves. i will say this its a roomy small car and i’m 6-4 and over 350lbs. up to my drive the focus and ckeck out the new Kia Forte or the hyundia eletra.
I had a base model Dart as a rental for about a week.
It was a nice car, I felt there was no sort of power deficit whatsoever.
It felt like a high-quality vehicle, but it has less than 5k miles on it and most cars feel pretty good when new.
I thought that if I were in the market for a new car I would take a good, hard look at the new Dart.
@oblivion why should I definitely get Turbo?
You didn’t explain the difference in Ft-lbs or lbs-ft/
@asecular: Why should you get the turbo? Because you will be sorely disappointed over time with not getting the more powerful engine, IMHO. You won’t see much less mileage with the turbo, and you will have more power available. In my opinion more power=good, regardless of the vehicle. (within reason of course) Use full synthetic oil and change it when you’re supposed to and you should have no reliability problems with a turbo.
@EllyEllis Foot-pounds is a measure of WORK or energy expanded, while pounds-feet is a measure of TORQUE. Tightening wheel lugs requires so many pounds-feet of torque, which is the length of the wrench times the pull you put on it.
They’re the same thing.
Fifty pounds one foot from the rotating axis provides exactly the same torque as one pound 50 feet from the rotating axis.
Pounds per foot or feet per pound, it doesn’t matter.