You do remember correctly, and Clarkson himself said it when interviewing
actor Alan Davies of Jonathan Creek fame, who had a 147 at the time.

Mark

In the head to head between the Alfa 147GTA and the Golf R32 they came
to the conclusion that the Golf was faster, better built, handled better
and was marginally cheaper..... but they'd still buy the Alfa if it was
their own money.

Indeed he did. Specifically it was in a red GTV6

He's mostly right you know. The Alfa 3.0 liter V-6, either 12 or
24-valve versions is one of the world's GREAT sports car engines. It's
willing, practically bulletproof, has no real vices, sounds better than
any engine has a right to sound and with very little fiddling can be
made to produce prodigious amounts of BHP. My GTV-6 3.0 12-valve, for
instance has been dyno's at 232 BHP @ 6200 RPM and it redlines at 7200!
I get consistent O-100 KPH times of just under 6 seconds, and my top
speed (at 7.2K) should be about 257 KPH (can't say for sure. My 150 MPH
speedo is long buried at the top before the car stops pulling).  But is
the engine  really better than a Ferrari V-12? Well, I dunno about that,
but it is certainly better in some ways (like valve guides that don't
wear-out in 5000 miles). In other ways, though, its hard to beat the
Columbo 3-liter V-12 - especially sporting a brace of 6-2 bbl Webers.

Sounds like my kind of guy! What about Tiff Needell and Viki
Butler-Henderson? I saw her test an Alfa 156 GTA (when Speed TV was
running the series here in the USA) and she looked like the cat that ate
the cream. She couldn't keep the smile off her face no matter how hard
she tried to play "professional." She was obviously enjoying the hell
out of the car (and for an Avant Traction, it is very NICE). Then
there's Alain DeCadenet. A dyed-in-the-wool Alfisti if ever there was
one.