I have a memory of the Alfa Romeo Alfasud that, wait for it, doesn't involve watching one disintegrate into millions of tiny brown particles before my very eyes. Yes, rusting was one the Alfasud's preeminent features that made them perfect for illustrating the theory of entropy to science students, but it wasn't the only thing that made the car famous.
The little Alfa was an inspired piece of design and engineering. The Mk1 Golf GTI was the genesis of the hot hatchback, but the Alfasud represented the first sporting front-wheel-drive hatchback - albeit with one tiny bone of contention, which was that it wasn't a hatchback at all. The first series of cars were, in fact, saloons with a hatchback shape, but that didn't stop them being incredibly practical.
As was the technical brief that Hruska set himself. A front-wheel-drive Alfa had been mooted since the '50s but never materialised due to a gentlemen's agreement that Alfa wouldn't step on Fiat's mass-market toes. The Alfasud was, at last, a democratised Alfa Romeo for blue collars and upwards. But as an Alfa it had to be born with a sporting soul. So Hruska used a four-cylinder, horizontally opposed engine that kept the weight down low and the frontal section small.
As a result, it blew its rivals clean out the water dynamically and received a rapturous reception by the press. Even those sceptics that believed a front-wheel-drive Alfa was sacrilegious were won over by the car's obvious charm. Of course, there were many upgrades along the way, including bigger iterations of the flat-four that culminated in the Ti Quadrifoglio Verde - the car that wowed me.
Of course, the Alfasud's legacy will always be tainted with the colour brown. Yet this stunning piece of silverware shows no signs of that and is a welcome reminder not to allow the Alfasud's poor execution to completely overshadow its fundamentally excellent engineering.
My dad had one from new in the eighties. Eighteen months old, the tailgate came off in his hand as the hinge bolts pulled out of the rusted bodywork.
My dad had one. We went out for a drive the night he got it, my mum screamed at him for driving too fast, to pull over she she would drive. My mum proceeded to drive just as fast! She loved that rust bucket 😂
My first car…back in 85, check the one door mirror as standard. Crashed it then got a brown one
My mum had a brand new one back in about 1978. She sold it within six months as it was already starting to rust.
Had an 80 1.5ti in 83. Huge fun. Spent every other Saturday morning picking out rust pinheads with a Stanley knife. Inboard front brakes seized in the heat withou frequent lube. Stopped whenever it rained. Drove me mad. Loved it 😄
Bought one & put the engine in a Baja Beetle. Bloody thing still was doing a wheelie in 2nd gear with the standard bug ‘box
The best worst car I've ever had, and the worst best car I've ever had. There're probably still some bits of it in the garage.
I had a pre-plastic Ti & it was great Then I had 2 pre-plastic Sprints & they were great too The pre-plastic Sprint is 1 of Guigiaro's best ever designs Ok, bits fell off & they had comedy electrics but I still want one
Bought one...it came with a pair of rear wheel arches & The exhaust fell off on the way home 😀