What is your favourite Alfa Romeo?
Mine, for nostalgic reasons, is the Bertone GTV.
My father used to have a dark blue GT Junior 1974, like the one in the picture. Amazingly beautiful car that unfortunately was a victim of corrosion.
also had a 147 myself that I quite liked.
Favourite? Hard to choose between the GTV and the 75.
I do like the 1750 GT Veloce, never had one though. Sweet little car. Easy to work on, fun to drive... just get one that someone else has paid to have the rust damage repaired.
My own favourite is the Alfa Romeo Montreal. Superb 200hp V8 by Carlo Chiti and elegant styling by Marcello Gandini at Bertone. Fewer than 4000 built.
Maybe it would be my 1990 S4 Spider, the most reliable car I ever had (she took me from Kent to Seville and back on my first honeymoon and then every day commuting into London for 3 years). But then again, my 1962 Giulia Spider was also wonderful (exotic but not reliable and the hood leaked and made me wet too often) . My 3.0 V6 164 might have been my most favourite, until she almost lost me my license on the A1 in Herftordshire. The police persuaded me to ditch her.
And then my 1.6 GTV in dark metallic blue - I had to dump her when I moved here. But thinking of it, the least exotic Alfa I ever had gave me the most driving smiles. My 1.6 155 (very much like this) was the sweetest.
33 Veloce 'Cloverleaf' (had it about 1989 ?)
My Yuppiemobile when I lived in the Smoke. Loved it to bits.. except when I took a corner too quick and bumped the front right wheel. No big deal .. I thought.. until the garage said I'd crumpled the sub frame and it'd have to be put on a jig to straighten out.. and the only jig that would do that was in Milan
I have to admit I had a prejudice against Alfas. Starting to like cars in the 90's, Alfa was a turn off because it only had FWD cars. I thought that they would drive crappy compared to a BMW.
However, one day I got a ride in a 164 3.0 24V and WOW, what an intoxicating engine! Still, I was skeptical that an Alfa could be as fun as any other German car. Then one day I drove a 155 Super 2.0 Twin Spark, that prior I thought was just a Alfa-badged Fiat Tempra. WOW! That car was really impressive! The engine would effortlessly rev to 7000rpm, the steering wheel was extremely direct, and the brakes were outstanding.
I am considering buying in the near future an Alfa with a Busso engine and a manual transmission, but I am undecided on the model: 147, 155, 156, 164, or 166...
Lately I fell in love with the facelift 166:
About 20yrs ago, my OH owned 23 cars at once. 17 of them were Alfas. He did own a garage/service station at the time, but the 23 were his personal collection.
3yrs ago, I took him to the Coventry Transport Museum for his birthday, because there was a meeting of the Alfa Owners Club outside. He recognised 2 of the cars as having belonged to friends of his, and spent the next few hours discussing all the work that had been done on them, by which mechanics, etc, with the current owners. He was as happy as a pig in muck.
I don't know his favourite, but the one his niece and nephews always remember was a red Alfa Spider. I can't count the number of times they've told me about him turning up at his niece's birthday party with a boot full of gifts and a 6ft tall teddy bear strapped into the passenger seat.
I'd therefore nominate their design studies, particularly the "BAT" series (thats the actual name) in the 50s.
Here's 2 of my ex sweethearts together with my ex wives BMW, now that was one hell of a dull car to drive.
The current Giulia Quadrifoglio trashes equivalent AMGs and BMW Ms...
Tom
Plus most of the people think the same way, some are good looking, but unreliable.
For me a car that is unreliable fails as a car, the car should be able to take you from Point A to point B, if it fails to do that, what the design is going to help you in that?
At least thats what I have to keep telling the mrs
That's the first time during my life time that Alfa has a somewhat competitive product (if you are the type of customer that does not care about resell value...). And I am not that young. The brand survived on the image it got in the 60s and 70s. There are reasons why they werent exactly successful the last 30 years. Yeah, they got some die hard fans who are willing to trash talk anything out there... but the simple truth is that they did not produce competitive or particularly good products pretty much since the late 70s and I'd exclude the Alfasud even before that. And it's not because people were against them. Everyone including Germans always hoped they'd come up with a "real Alfa" again... but they never did.
Alfas once used to be a serious competition for a Porsche, not an AMG (which is never track focussed anyways).