RE: Alfa Romeo Alfasud | Spotted

RE: Alfa Romeo Alfasud | Spotted

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integrale_evo

13 posts

53 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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You do see / hear the allegro comparisons a lot. I think the alfasud is how everyone remembers the allegro looks, and then you see one and realise how dumpy they are. Obviously there are similarities to the shape, and typical shared early 70s styling touches but for me it’s the curve over the front of the bonnet and around the lights when viewed in profile which is most ‘allegro’





AC43

11,435 posts

207 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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integrale_evo said:
You do see / hear the allegro comparisons a lot. I think the alfasud is how everyone remembers the allegro looks, and then you see one and realise how dumpy they are. Obviously there are similarities to the shape, and typical shared early 70s styling touches but for me it’s the curve over the front of the bonnet and around the lights when viewed in profile which is most ‘allegro’

How strange; I'd never noticed the similarities in the styling but they're there.

However, what the Allegro didn't have was cool advertising from Amersham Motors in Car magazine.


2xChevrons

3,159 posts

79 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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integrale_evo said:
You do see / hear the allegro comparisons a lot. I think the alfasud is how everyone remembers the allegro looks, and then you see one and realise how dumpy they are. Obviously there are similarities to the shape, and typical shared early 70s styling touches but for me it’s the curve over the front of the bonnet and around the lights when viewed in profile which is most ‘allegro’
All the moreso when you look at some of the very Sud-like front-end treatments that were considered for the Allegro - it's the Austin's inset, square 'pig-eye' headlamps that really hamper the styling more than anything else.



I did a very quick and very dirty mockup of an Allegro with Alfasud lights for a twitter conversation a while back. Even with such shonky photoshop skills it immediately lifts the design.


Theraveda

400 posts

27 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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coppice said:
- the little red light that went out when the engine was warmed up
I loved that, too!

2xChevrons

3,159 posts

79 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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Theraveda said:
coppice said:
- the little red light that went out when the engine was warmed up
I loved that, too!
A nice little touch. Same with the brake fluid warning lamp that also served as the choke light - a neat way of providing a test of the light and saving Alfa the cost of an extra bulb and lamp unit! The heater blower being activated by the column stalk (and, in fact, the ergonomic 'finger grips' for the stalks themselves) is also a lovely little quirk.

I think this is why I like the 'Sud so much - it has the same conceptual brilliance and holistic engineering thought of a Mini, the weird mix of practicality and weirdness of an old Citroen, the focus on handling and dynamics of a Lotus and the style, character and flair of an Alfa Romeo, all in a practical little package. Everything I could ever really want in a car.

AC43

11,435 posts

207 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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2xChevrons said:
I think this is why I like the 'Sud so much - it has the same conceptual brilliance and holistic engineering thought of a Mini, the weird mix of practicality and weirdness of an old Citroen, the focus on handling and dynamics of a Lotus and the style, character and flair of an Alfa Romeo, all in a practical little package. Everything I could ever really want in a car.
That's a great summary.

AC43

11,435 posts

207 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
quotequote all
2xChevrons said:
I have the same issue with my 2CV (another car with inboard front brakes...), where unless you're carrying two people or 250kg of potatoes and goat in the back the rear brakes are essentially pointless and the drums go rusty. One the 2CV they solved the airflow issue on the front discs by having forced air cooling ducts from the engine fan going to each disc.
Ah - I had a feeling that Citroen ran inboard front discs on some of their cars like maybe the GS? But I had no idea they were fitted to the 2CV. With air cooling ducts no less!

230TE

2,506 posts

185 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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2xChevrons said:
A nice little touch. Same with the brake fluid warning lamp that also served as the choke light - a neat way of providing a test of the light and saving Alfa the cost of an extra bulb and lamp unit! The heater blower being activated by the column stalk (and, in fact, the ergonomic 'finger grips' for the stalks themselves) is also a lovely little quirk.

I think this is why I like the 'Sud so much - it has the same conceptual brilliance and holistic engineering thought of a Mini, the weird mix of practicality and weirdness of an old Citroen, the focus on handling and dynamics of a Lotus and the style, character and flair of an Alfa Romeo, all in a practical little package. Everything I could ever really want in a car.
Was the choke control under the steering column? I can't remember now. I had the thought it might have been between the seats but I think I'm confusing it with the Fiat 500. The 'Sud was my fourth car after a Morris Minor, Herald 13/60 and Land Rover Lightweight: it seemed impossibly stylish and luxurious. The only car I have owned that ran it close in my affections was the Mk1 Golf GTi 1600 that I had for a year when they were cheap (£300) and disposable (rust in the sill ends was enough for me to scrap mine). The Golf's sales success showed how well the 'Sud could have done if Alfa hadn't made it from cheese in the wrong part of Italy.

Flying Phil

1,578 posts

144 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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I had this Sud back in 1976-8. (I bought it having been impressed with the engineering in the straight six Alfa 2600 engine that I put in my drag racing Comp Altered).
The Sud was great to drive and business trips up to Scotland were a delight, little traffic and smooth curvy roads are still fondly remembered.
Mine was only the "slow" 1186 single carb 4 speed. However on a late night trip up the M1, just North of Sheffield, the speed rose steadily up to 90 on the long downhill stretch and it was nowhere near "foot to the floor". This speed was confirmed when the following headlights overtook me and switched on their blue flashing lights.....
Years later I did scratch the 5 speed twin carb boxer itch when I bought a 1.7 Sprint. Then a second Sprint, to put a 146 16V Fuel Injected engine in...and then I went the Busso V6 route with a third mid - engined Sprint.

2xChevrons

3,159 posts

79 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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AC43 said:
Ah - I had a feeling that Citroen ran inboard front discs on some of their cars like maybe the GS? But I had no idea they were fitted to the 2CV. With air cooling ducts no less!
The 2CV (and variants), DS, GS and SM - all the Citroens with longitudinal drivetrains and front-wheel drive except the Traction Avant and the H-Van, really) had inboard front brakes. Early 2CVs had inboard drums, all the others (and late 2CVs) had discs. For the usual reasons of reducing unsprung weight, transmitting braking forces straight to the drivetrain and chassis rather than through the suspension, eliminating the need for flexible brake lines and keeping the brakes out of the way of water and dirt.

When I was helping Dad with his Alfasud restoration it was really striking how much of the basic engineering was very similar to the 2CV - a boxer engine mounted longitudinally, slung low and right in the nose, ahead of a longitudinal transaxle with inboard discs, a high-mounted steering rack and an obsessive use of clever engineering to reduce weight.

I've often said that if you were to purpose-build a car to go quickly down a typical English country road and be fun to drive it would basically be a 2CV with a BMW bike engine and some anti-roll bars. All the other elements are already there. And that is pretty much what an Alfasud is - the only major divergence being that the springs are carried vertically in struts rather than horizontally inboard and the use of a beam axle at the back rather than trailing arms, although on the Alfa the beam combined with the Watt's linkages basically forms a giant anti-roll bar that gives the 'Sud its uncanny flat cornering ability (and which the 2CV is so famously lacking!).

230TE said:
Was the choke control under the steering column? I can't remember now. I had the thought it might have been between the seats but I think I'm confusing it with the Fiat 500. The 'Sud was my fourth car after a Morris Minor, Herald 13/60 and Land Rover Lightweight: it seemed impossibly stylish and luxurious. The only car I have owned that ran it close in my affections was the Mk1 Golf GTi 1600 that I had for a year when they were cheap (£300) and disposable (rust in the sill ends was enough for me to scrap mine). The Golf's sales success showed how well the 'Sud could have done if Alfa hadn't made it from cheese in the wrong part of Italy.
Yes, the choke was tucked under the steering column on the 'Sud - and the knob had a symbol which every other car maker uses for Main Beam (straight lines radiating from a headlamp bowl) but which Alfa clearly expected you to know was a petrol jet with a spray of fuel coming out of it!

The Alfasud being a commercial disappointment wasn't just because of the rust/quality problems - in many of its key markets corrosion wasn't really a problem. The biggest issue was that they could never get the Pomigliano d'Arco factory to build them at a sufficient and consistent enough rate to meet demand. The 'Sud had massive waiting lists in its early years but buyers drifted away and the Alfa lost a lot of sales in that key period in the mid-70s when it was so far ahead of anything else. The economics of the whole Alfasud project were based around making at least 175,000 per year. The best they ever managed was just over 100,000, and by 1976 (when the production total should have been more than 700,000) only 360,000 'Suds had been made.

That's why Alfa pushed the 'Sud upmarket in the late '70s. Originally it had been conceived as an advanced but basic small family car with modest performance and running costs and a low entry price. The two-door bodyshell had originally been intended to be introduced in a budget base model. It ended up appearing only in Ti form, and the engine size, specification and price of the 'Sud was raised almost every year as Alfa realised that they couldn't make enough of them for the high volume/low price business model and so had to go for a low volume/premium price approach. The 'Sud was very much driven by the Italian government (through the IRI) rather than Alfa itself, and the folks in Milan were always a bit standoffish about the cheap, small, low-performance saloon they were being forced to build. That's why early Alfasuds didn't have 'MILANO' on their badges, why they didn't have 'ALFA ROMEO' on their valve covers and why the badgea on the dashboard and bootlid said 'Alfasud' - they were treating it very much as a sub-brand. Not a 'proper Alfa'. When the specification, performance and price of the 'Sud was raised to be considered more in keeping with the marque's values all these features returned.

helix402

7,832 posts

181 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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Who can forget the Arna/Cherry Europe:



All the rage at the marina. I had one. It was free. It was my first car. It was an 1186cc, same colour as in the pic. 33 front brakes. Cherry rear axle. 33 front suspension.

BogleDog64

109 posts

56 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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I think I read somewhere that the Sud was built in southern Italy (hence sud) as a government initiative to provide employment to the region. However, car building skills in the area were a bit thin on the ground. Add that to poor quality materials and lack of corrosion resistance resulted in their fairly short lifespan.
Mine was a red 1993 1.5. The headlights and grill tipped forward when the bonnet lifted. Front footwells were often full of water due to corrosion around the windscreen. The ignition developed a tendency to cut out randomly and momentarily (once when I was overtaking a truck on single carriageway whilst I had a mattress strapped to the roof). The driving position was classic long arm, short leg. The seat back reclined on the move. And the ground was visible through holes in the inner front wheel arches. Amazingly, it got an MoT as the holes weren’t too close to the suspension turrets.
The engine was lovely and raspy and punched above its weight. Handling was delicious. In my two years of ownership, I replaced rear wheel bearings, rear dampers and numerous sets of front brake pads, which were a pain to set up. Being mounted inboard, they had a tendency to overheat and fade. One journey down Kirkstone Pass required copious engine braking because the middle pedal ceased to have any effect.
One of the head gaskets leaked and it got shunted up the rear by a Mk2 Escort whose stopping ability was no match for the Alfa (when not overcooked)! I sold it to a guy who said he was going to restore it. Good luck with that I thought. However, a few months later I saw it on the road looking so much better. I’m sure it’s dead now but it was great fun when I had it.

helix402

7,832 posts

181 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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Yes, the Sud was build in an area known as the MezzoGiorno to give employment to an impoverished area. Many of the factory workers came from agricultural subsistence backgrounds.

coppice

8,562 posts

143 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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AC43 said:
How strange; I'd never noticed the similarities in the styling but they're there.

However, what the Allegro didn't have was cool advertising from Amersham Motors in Car magazine.



I bought my second Sud as a result of that ad , and Amersham Motors were one of the reasons I never bought another Alfa. Them , and my local Alfa dealer Up North, who was reluctant to do any warranty work 'because everybody knows (I didn't) that your bloody car was sat in a field before you bought it '.

2xChevrons

3,159 posts

79 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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BogleDog64 said:
I think I read somewhere that the Sud was built in southern Italy (hence sud) as a government initiative to provide employment to the region. However, car building skills in the area were a bit thin on the ground. Add that to poor quality materials and lack of corrosion resistance resulted in their fairly short lifespan.
Precisely.

At the time Alfa Romeo was owned by the Italian government via the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI), an agency originally set up by Mussolini to rescue failed banks and industrial firms and then used by the fascist government to buy and control large swathes of the Italian economy. It was retained by post-war left-wing governments to handle the nationalised sectors and handle things like the development of the autostrada system, the modernisation of the Italian telecommunications network and oversight of the steel industry.

One of the IRI's biggest programmes was an ongoing attempt to address the huge economic and social disparity between the industrial north of Italy and the impoverished south - still primarily agricultural and almost feudal in many respects. Ever since the IRI had taken control of Alfa in the 1930s it had never sat entirely well that a government agency owned a company that almost exclusively made high-end sports and racing cars and this is why the post-war era saw Alfa make a succession of ever smaller, ever more mass-produced and ever more affordable saloon cars.

This culminated in the concept of the Alfasud - a new 'clean sheet' design for an affordable small family saloon that would provide a 'people's car' that was more in keeping with Italy for the 1970s than a Fiat 500. It would be a totally bespoke design, using no carry-over parts from any existing Alfa and it would be built in a dedicated high-capacity modern factory - and that factory would be in the south to alleviate unemployment and provide a hub of modern industry. It was designed by an independent design team and managed by a new holding company, Alfasud SpA.

The site chosen was the airfield at Pomigliano d'Arco near Naples, where Alfa had a factory making aero engines (latterly used by Finmeccanica - another IRI subsidiary - to make jet engine parts). This became a site of a vast new car factory, costing hundreds of billions of lire and with a maximum production capacity of 300,000 cars per year. Initial production was set at 175,000/year.

From the start there were huge problems finding staff and workers for the new factory - a core of experienced foremen and managers were 'recruited' from Milan to oversee the training of the new workforce and the start of production. These were mostly chosen by the IRI rather than their direct employers, and Alfa and the other Milan car makers often took the opportunity to get rid of some of their less capable or more awkward employees by recommending them for transfer to Naples. Moving to Naples was not seen as a plum posting and many of those who did go to the new factory did so somewhat reluctantly, convinced by high wages and guarantees of job security. The same went for the shop stewards that the trade unions recruited for Pomigliano d'Arco, ensuring that workforce started off with low morale, poor motivation and a bolshy, resentful streak.

The new workforce consisted mostly of smallhold farmers and labourers from the brickfields of Campania. Neither had any experience of modern industrial manufacturing and even the idea of shift work and waged labour was alien. Although their living standards were atrociously low these people by and large owned their own farms, passed down through each family generation and were self-sufficient in terms of being able to grow and harvest enough food, plus a small surplus to sell. There was a long cultural tradition of only doing 'enough work to live' and mutual informal work in exchange for whatever food or goods you couldn't supply yourself. Management at Pomigliano d'Arco had relatively little say in who they recruited since this was done by the IRI, which basically took anyone who applied on the promise of what were, for the region, fantastically good wages.

This caused chaos when the newly-recruited workers were expected to clock in for a ten-hour shift and do ten hours of consistent work that they'd been assigned to. Workers would wander around the factory, swapping jobs with each other when they got bored. Paid weekly, many would work for two weeks of the month and then not turn up for the other two since they'd earned enough to pay their bills and could relax at home. If they didn't fancy coming into work or some matter at home was more pressing to them, they'd send a family member or friend in their place. Many of the workers simply couldn't conceive that working in the car factory was full-time job and not just another bit of ad-hoc labour like volunteering to plough a neighbour's field or dig a friend's draining ditch, so when the tomato harvest season arrived around half the workforce simple didn't turn up for weeks on end since they had, by their standards, more pressing things to attend to back home.

Understandably this caused chaos with car production and is why the production totals for the Alfasud factory never got better than just under half what had confidently been set as the initial starting figure. As management tried to enforce punctuality and 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' that set the stage for huge labour relations problems, eagerly seized on by discontented shop stewards and political organisers who already had an axe to grind for being forced to leave Milan and take up a job overseeing a bunch of illiterate peasants outside Naples. So stoppages, strikes and disputes were rife whic caused further chaos with production and quality levels.

The quality of the steel used in Italian cars was never great in this period - partly due to the infamous trade deal to use recycled Soviet steel and partly due to industrial issues within the Italian steel industry. This included widespread use of reconstituted steel to account for shortages of raw materials and higher-than-expected demand. Reconstituted steel contains all sorts of trace elements and compounds depending on whatever was melted down to produce it, which with poor quality control can lead to the metal undergoing galvanic or electrolytic corrosion within the metal itself. This is why Alfasuds (and other Italian cars of the 1970s) are capable of corroding spontaneously from the middle of a panel - the corrosion is inherent in the very metal itself and all the primer, paint and wax in the world won't stop it. It also means that when something like a boot badge, chrome trim strip, stone chip or key scratch does break the paint that oxidisation happens quickly and spreads extensively.

The stoppages at Pomigliano d'Arco didn't help, since unpainted or part-painted shells were left unprotected in the humid Neapolitan air whenever the line stopped, and panels and shells were stored outside (with varying degrees of protection) if the body shop was working faster than the assembly line. When the paintshop was subject to a planned stoppage the ovens that 'baked' the paint onto the panels would be switched off, and as they cooled all the moisture in the atmosphere (added to by the steam from when the panels were washed with distilled water) would condense. When production started back up the panels were usually given little more than a quick wipe down before being sent on their way.

The Alfasud's design emphasised minimising weight and maximising rigidity. As well as this meaning that much of the metalwork was of the thinnest metal possible (making it prone to tineworm), the car had been intended to use a stressed windscreen, where the glass is bonded into the frame and carries some of the structural stresses. But this required very accurate positioning of the glass and thorough application of the adhesives, which Pomigliano d'Arco was unable to achieve in practise. So the design was switched to using a non-stressed glass with a rubber seal. But the windscreen frame and pillars were not redesigned to account for this, and with the glass no longer sharing the load this let the pillars and the front bulkhead flex. Combined with the inability of the factory to get even a standard rubber windscreen seal seated correctly a lot of the time, this let water into the bodyshell on the inside, causing severe structural corrosion as well as other classic Alfasud problems like ill-fitting doors - again, the factory often didn't get this right in the first place, but the door frames distorting made the problem worse.

Alfa did try and tackle the problems - for 1979 all Alfasud bodies and panels underwent electrophoresis and received zinc-chrome electro-coatings and phosphate primer. The doors, bonnets, boot lids and petrol filler caps were changed to be made from zincrometal alloy and the door frames and window surrounds were pre-treated with a zinc coating before painting. Completed cars received a thicker layer of underseal, the welded joints between panels were fitted with plasticised sealant, the major box sections in the body were injected with foam and more rubber gaskets and seals were used to prevent contact between metal parts and trim. Bumpers, rain channels, handles and boot hinges were swapped to be made of stainless steel. Which is all well and good, and the later ones are relatively less rust-prone than the originals, but it all still relies on the metal not being full of oxidants, the panels not being left outside for a few days and a tomato farmer turning up to work and actually fitting the windscreen seal the right way round!

Edited by 2xChevrons on Wednesday 2nd March 17:34

soxboy

6,060 posts

218 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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Brilliant info, interesting reading. Makes BL look like Mercedes!

courty

401 posts

76 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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soxboy said:
Brilliant info, interesting reading. Makes BL look like Mercedes!
Also, I believe, from things I've picked up, reading different things over the years that, despite its engineering genius and sales success, all the production and warranty problems with the 'Sud, brought Alfa Romeo to its knees financially and ultimately the bailout and Fiat takeover.

Lancia went the same way in the late sixties, with over engineered cars, and extremely expensive build quality and components. Alfa also had very expensive engines and component parts, hence their performance compared to BMC/Ford etc of the day (late sixties through to mid seventies), but the 'Sud was the attainable dream for blue collar working families...about half the price of a 105 series Coupe or Spider, but it cost AR its life as an independent company, even as a state subsidised one.



Edited by courty on Wednesday 2nd March 19:24

integrale_evo

13 posts

53 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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One of the small quality control issues I have spotted on mine was on the boot floor. There are sound deadening pads shaped to fit the rear inner arch tubs, all suds I’ve seen have them. The right hand side one on mine is fitted properly, what was clearly supposed to be the left hand one is haphazardly slapped into the spare wheel well.

It’s under the factory paint so must have been there from day one, it just gives me a mental image of a worker peeling off the adhesive backing and about to carefully place it when the dinner bell went off so it was stuck wherever it landed.


biggbn

22,819 posts

219 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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integrale_evo said:
You do see / hear the allegro comparisons a lot. I think the alfasud is how everyone remembers the allegro looks, and then you see one and realise how dumpy they are. Obviously there are similarities to the shape, and typical shared early 70s styling touches but for me it’s the curve over the front of the bonnet and around the lights when viewed in profile which is most ‘allegro’




Look at an allegro estate and an alfasud estate for real comparison, very, very similar!!

biggbn

22,819 posts

219 months

Wednesday 2nd March 2022
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In my horse trading days I bought a red sprint 1.7 green cloverleaf from an old fella who had 'restored' it and sold it to a lovely fella from a car forum we both used at the time. He has restored it properly, a real labour of love. He is a member here also and has shown some pics of the car, looks stunning now.