One man's ode to a long-gone Alfa Romeo  

One recent weekend, I drove my friend's car to Nanxiang, a county near Shanghai. In that hour-long drive to Nanxiang, I was amazed at how easy and comfortable it was to control a modern car. That was a particularly striking experience as I haven't driven a car for almost 10 years.

Cocooned in the sheer luxury of heated leather-upholstered seats, thick-piled carpets and shiny wood trim, and with the multi-speaker high-fi system playing Mozart's piano concertos with gusto, both driver and passengers were well isolated from road bumps and wind noise.

Engine noise never rose above a murmur, even under hard acceleration, and the automatic system shifted gears with such finesse that each change was smoothly accomplished. I couldn't help but asked myself: What more could you want from a car?

The answer is passion. I just didn't feel that I was driving because so much of the dynamics of the car was controlled by the built-in silicon chips.