Faults:

Oil pipes to and from the oilcooler and the cooling pipe from the turbo to the radiator had to be replaced at 11000 because of bad corrosion.

In between I got a few electrical faults. Luckily it has got nothing to do with the engine or other things that could prove to be hazardous while driving. After all it's Italian ;-)

Changed the air conditioning fluid last year because it was of no use anymore. Seems like I have the same problem again after only a year?

General Comments:

Incredibly low 2nd hand price.

Same space in the cabin as in a regular Mercedes S-class.

The car can easily do more than 10km on 1liter of petrol (mixed) - that's more than the manufacturer promises. That's not seen very often these days.

Turns from luxurious family cruiser to mean machine when the needle passes 2750 rpm and turbo kicks in.

220hp/310Nm don't come much cheaper than this.

Last summer the car drove 5000km (Denmark-France-Italy-Denmark) in 12 days without any problem at all.

The cooling system is extremely efficient. Constantly the engine is held at the same temperature no matter if its driving at high speeds or stuck in traffic.

A Volvo T5 (the model with 225hp) is a bit faster from 0-100km/h. But the Kappa is faster on the 1km distance. There is a quite large amount of good old fashion turbo-lag, but when its over it just don't seem to stop accelerating.

The car is quite silent. Only when accelerating hard the engine gets louder (great sound though). That's how all cars should be made.

Faults:

To soon to tell, but service history of car indicates no problems up till now.

Recommended change of transmission belt at 80.000-90.000km rather than the 120.000km factory standard. This is a relatively expensive operation (400euro+)

General Comments:

With near-on 162kW this car is powerful.

The interior is well-equipped, even luxurious and the external appearance is very stylish. I was looking for small car and ended up buying this as the price was so low. A real competitor to BMW/Mercedes at a fraction of the cost on the second-hand market. Used prices vary greatly so look around.

Faults:

At 100.000 kilometers the clutch has been replaced.

At 102.000 the turbo has been replaced.

General Comments:

Because of the bad reputation of the bigger Italian cars it is not to expensive. Second hand prices vary a lot though.

It's a very well balanced car. Comfortable and equipped with many features.