Alfa 90 Gold Cloverleaf Goes for a Drive

you join me today at the wheel of an astonishingly rare italian car i love an alpha but i've never even seen one of these in the flesh before today i'm driving an alpha 90. proud to be sponsored by diamondbrite the car care products that have been keeping the furious fleet looking their best for a long time already to find all you need to keep your car clean and protected follow the link below to diamondbrite.cody uk this is a 1985 alpha 90 and it's possibly one of the rarest alfa romeos i've ever seen there are about 10 in the uk and this is the only one that works it was only built from 1994 to 1987 and it's only sold in the uk in 1985 and 1986 and even then only with one engine option so why is it so weird and why is it so rare let's take a look so in the early 80s alpha were as usual out of money and they needed a new car to replace the alpha because that had been on the market since what 1972 so it was a good decade old and looking a bit you know old hat by that point even though it was a great car but they had no money to invest in anything else so they went cap in hand to the government because they were state-owned at that point and so they had a bit of money to do something with what they had and that would make a silk purse out of well not a thousand a silver side of an old salt purse really so they took the basis of the alpheta which was front engined quite small and transactional rear which is a great basis for a car however they couldn't do anything about reforming the internal structure they were stuck with dimensions the frame much of the internal work so they used some of the alpha six um parts as well so put the alpha six bulkhead in it kind of the alpha six transmission tunnel even though there's no transmission in it it's a weird hodgepodge of things and to make it look exciting and interesting and different they went to their old friends bertone where it was re-skinned with an interesting very very very 1980s style look at these straight lines running front to back there's blockiness everywhere in some ways it looks like the 33 kind of styling family look but in other ways it's nothing like anything else in the alpha family range so my cello gandini at bertone had to take the internal dimensions and fixed hardpoints of the old alfeta and do this with it turn it into a car for the 1980s so it's very narrow and quite short for an 80s executive luxury car and inside it's extremely luxurious but very narrow interesting but most excitingly though certainly for us in the uk is here under the bonnet now although we've only got this engine in the uk there are actually five different motor options in this car over in italy there are two versions of the twin camera 1.8 and a two liter both brilliant engines they also got the v6 but in two liter form because up until 1993 there was a 38 v80 charge on any car with an engine bigger than two liters and there was a 2.4 litre vm diesel which is similar to the thing that wound up in the range rover back in the 80s and 90s but in here in the uk we got the good one we got the 2.5 liter v6 this is the aro1646 2496 cc v6 engine fitted with bosch electronic fuel injection which makes 150 horsepower and 210 newton meters of torque this is the motor out of the gt6 and of course the one i actually came out of is the alpha six which is the biggest thing that the alpha 6 donated to this project the thing only weighs 1090 kilograms and that means with that much power this will do 126 miles an hour i will just add i got my weight of this car 1090 kilos from a book which is the famous 100 years of alfred are written with help from alfa romeo none of these four weights here in any way are close to weight that i've got the styling of this car is surprisingly not bland that's the wrong word but plain for an alfa romeo we have got some traditional things we've got the alfa romeo heart the koara esportivo the sporting heart here at the front and the center of the grill and there were various grill options depending on the year the engine version and after 1996 they were revised into what they call the super range which got a different number of slats in the grille but there is some interesting alpha quirkiness you can't have an alpha without some weirdness going on in this particular case if you look down below this oso 80's bumper and square front end you find this little lower lip which is actually active arrow this lower splitter actually moves it's active airflow and above 50 miles an hour damped by a telescopic damper filled with wax apparently this float drops down and diverts flow into the engine to aid cooling bizarre and brilliant and the rear of the car is a slightly odd square blocky shape it's so so 1980s where it's just lots of angles it's almost like built out of lego on graph paper which was so much the thing back in the early 80s and look at this huge cut out for the number plates around after the facelift 86 this did become body color but here in 1985 that's still black and look at this full width red line of lights with the inserted reversing light this is just brilliant and can you see this down here the swan neck exhaust pipe like you find on things like the rover sd1 all the cool cars had it back then and look how high this boot line is though it's just a massive slab and this isn't a black bumper it's actually just very very dark brown now i'm going to show you inside the boot but i can't do that from here i've got to walk back inside because there's a bit of weirdness with that as well now one of the idiosyncrasies of this car and there are many is that they didn't bother changing the left and the right hand layout of the seats so the driver's seat on the right-hand side of a uk car is a left-hand driver's seat of an italian left-hand drive car so the boot release attached to the driver's seat is down here in the middle by the transmission tunnel the other thing you can notice is the driver's footwell heel pad it's also present on the passenger side because i didn't bother making left and right and drive versions of the carpet right this boot is hanging down quite low because you'll notice these support springs which are designed to hold the boat open and up which is a common design feature of almost every car in the world however unlike most other cars in the world where when the boot is shut they're under compression and not stressed on this car when they're shut they're in the strike position so they wear out in the boot group shot genius genius like an italian genius bullet now there's lots of other quirkiness here as well you'll notice the jack is strapped to the furthest extremity of quite a long boat it's a good sized boot and if you have business arrivals who you need to be taken care of you can fit maybe two of them in here quite happily although this lip is just so ridiculously high you'll struggle to get them into this commodious boot this does come with a broom attached so any gags in the comments about alphas and rust will be not kindly received this car's got a few very nice original details on it for example this dealer sticker from mario deleotti in birmingham i didn't know even there was a such an exotically named italian car dealer in birmingham sounds like a racing driver you've got the number plates from the same dealer as well front and back still original so these need to be saved now something you may notice of this badge down here is the cloverleaf it's a gold cloverleaf here in the uk we only got the absolute top-of-the-line version of the car with a two and a half liter v6 and the rear electric windows i can't stop without mentioning these door handles which are the least practical handles you've ever seen you think you're gonna pull that you don't you push the middle bit and the door springs open now the interior of this car is typically special and alfa romeo they always do an interesting interior which makes you question everything you've ever done in your life this one is clad in this beautiful very hard wearing velour nice little kind of dotty pattern very regular and geometric and that matches the crazy speedometer which is the thing i'm going to start with i don't normally start on the speedo but in this case i'm going straight there because it's too good to ignore this thing is just insanity it's a maths teacher's nightmare or possibly dream i don't know we've got multiple colors of graph paper mixed with diagonal slashes and a digital readout and a clock and other digital led reader it's just mind-blowing it's quite clear although not very accurate apparently you have to actually use the digital readout for the speed rather than the interesting graph line because the graph line is not very accurate but the number is i don't know why apparently if you're doing 30 miles an hour set to miles an hour and you move over to kph it will display 913. that's just one of the many interesting quirks of this car but not all the cars got this so a lot of the basic cars at the 1.8 for example only got ordinary standard boring needle dials who wants those so so 1970s this is the future this is the 1980s on the left-hand side of this whole graphy thing we've got three more sub graphs fuel water temperature and oil temperature which are all green leds which move left to right like a bmw service indicator light so very very very futuristic you can see the stuff on on doctor who or something this is just madness let's move over to the door into our usual beginning of the walk around the door is just mad it looks like a cross between the pompidou center and the lloyd's building the top is hard plastic the armrest is hard plastic as well the whole thing moves a little bit if you push it too hard unsurprisingly the same velour is in the seats is cushioning the door looks very nice indeed but it's just so angular so square so slashy this is everything about the 1980s which was brilliant in a door the door handled pull is solid square it's not even nice to hold it's just such a big square thing but it looks amazing and it goes down into this big slanted going fast even a standing still loud speaker cover with a tiny cutout this little tiny actually cast metal door handle which is barely like three centimeters square it's tiny and you have to give it quite a pull because it's such a small item this is all integrated into this kind of matching design flourish of lines running front to back and ahead of this you'll find a little nubbin which electrically turns the door mirror on the passenger side there's no switch to move left to right door because the driver's side one is a manual little nubbin up here that's electric that's manual which is better than a lot of cars in the 1780s which gave you an electric driver's side one next to where you're sitting and a remote manual when you had to lean over for which was stupid this was good there is no door pocket though there is nothing down here in the bottom at all to give you any kind of uh storage just nicely carpeted to match the kind of greedy brown i'm going to call it kind of baby diarrhoea brown carpet it has got the floor heel kick thing in both sides because they didn't bother making two versions it was such a short-run car then we move across to the actual full-on dashboard which is a sea of angles it's stepping back into the distance it's like perspective on a dashboard the big square binacle is angled at you looking very fierce and futuristic rubbish t shelf it slopes away from you rubbish t-shirt it just falls onto the floor a rubbish t-shelf it just drops into the footwell there's no t-shelf in this car at all i didn't even bother bringing a cup because there's nowhere to put one ah fail this is a minus five on the t-shelfer of this car and i was expecting so much from an alfa romeo my favorite brand i even wore my 145 t-shirt which i can't show you that getting undressed um however we do have multiple air vents we've got a a dual stack air vent on the two sides of the dashboard one is angled at 45 degrees with the dash top going out the window that one is kind of 90 degree or 89 degrees pointing out into the body of the car and we've got two massive vents here in the center flowing air like it's going out of fashion moving back to the wheel the wheel is a thing of utter beauty it's properly italian racing car ish a slim leather rim three hard metal spokes very very square and angular and this big soft nubbin in the center let's do a horn test oh it's a chill time two-toned but i didn't get two tones it should be a two-term but it won't two-tone it james you need to fix one of your tones you need to yeah in these towns countries that's the town version there is a country version coming maybe even country and western we got both kinds of music over to the right of the instrument binnacle we've got a panel of little warning lights indicators um lights on that kind of stuff but you cannot see any of it because the rim of this beautiful wheel is blocking it almost in its entirety and below that we've got a kind of a computery readout alpha romeo control panel giving you warnings about doors open lights parking brakes the alternator charging or not that kind of stuff all the important stuff that really does matter is blocked not only by the spoke of the steering wheel it's also blocked by the wiper arm so you really have no chance of knowing if the car is going wrong in the mirror position on the left we've got a couple of little dials and switches uh curiously labeled with pyramids in white and yellow so who knows what they do it alerts the aliens or brings the egyptians or something i don't know i think actually it may channel your inner mystic and puts a large pyramid over the car with a razor blade under it to sharpen your razor blade and slow the rusting who knows and we've got two stalks here both matching with beautiful slender arms and little round drums knurled at the top the one on the right side as i say is the wipers and typically of an alfa romeo it's confusing in its operation you have to drop it down and then turn the end because because our phone and then it's there's no check stops and it just turns randomly the one on the left is the indicator that's fairly normal the lights on it's fairly normal for a click turn it to illuminate and flash that's normal-ish as well if i turn the headlights on you hit horn button on the end but it's not actually sprung-loaded to turn off again you have to manually pull it out which is yeah actually takes more force than you imagine over in the center of the dashboard there's nothing up top just a little gold clove leaf badge to show you're in the best car in the range underneath we've got a little tiny bosch clock with my new little buttons and a panel of buttons for the front rear fogs rear screen heater virtually impossible to find it has the warning lights next to that the same size as this entire panel great big ash tray because you need that and below it enormous dials for your heating and ventilation the hvac uh the usual kind of stuff now this is where it gets very interesting because we have got a panel of three switches which looks like it's going to be the electric windows but it's not it's the electric seats because all these cars comes electric seats in the v6 which is fantastic but the controls as i say are down here in the center of the car randomly next to a cigarette lighter if someone had optioned a uh radio that would also be down there but they didn't this car has got a five-speed manual gearbox in it which has got a very strange feel which we'll talk about more when we're on the road over to the left now they were struggling for a usp with this car because it was fitting in replacing the alpha and the six but it didn't really have a strong image they didn't really know what they were doing with it and the 75 was coming and they needed to do something to make this car stand out from the crowd as the executive car of choice and what does an executive need a briefcase because because you do so this thing is instead of having a glove what has got a glove box i'm not saying instead of a glove box there's a tiny weenie glove box just big enough to put in well barely enough for anything really you've got this so you can take this with you you can hold your oh it doesn't open even very easily your alpha mayo documents your owner's manual and service records or you can put your important meetings or in the absence of a tea shelf you can put your biscotti and your coffee in here and carry it to a picnic away from the car now believe it or not these things are kind of a collector's item and go for thousands of pounds now this is absolutely essential about a quarter of the car here in the glovebox now here we get into another area where they're perhaps struggling for inspiration or they just i've been watching too many airplane films and like the idea because we've got an aircraft inspired handbrake it's like on a voxel zafira but i think the inspiration would have come from this not from the people carrier 25 years later so to release it squeeze a little handle inside down it goes actually clipping both front seats as it passes but yeah we've got this lovely aircraft inspired handbrake and underneath it we've got this weird concertina top covered little cubby hole this car is just so inventive with this solutions because a regular opening lid wouldn't open so i had to hinge it in the middle very very clever i suppose now above us we've got the aircraft theme continuing because no sunrooms were available as options on this car because we have this beautiful alcantara lined ceiling which is absolutely gorgeous you can sit there and stroke the headlining which is not a thing you say very often above you in the center line of the roof there's this full-length console which houses a weird green selection of courtesy lights so your night vision isn't obscured by opening the door in the dark we've got our spotlights in the front and this is very interesting just like an aircraft we've got a panel of buttons above the driver right to turn on the turbines and the engines power up engine one two and three and four we've got all four electric window switches up here so the driver and the front seat passenger can come on the ones in the back as well but they don't toggle up and down like the windows there are arrows showing up and down they talk left and right which is uh interesting and of course we've got switches for the internal lights glowing green one or two if you want or all three if you're feeling brave and of course a little spotlight up there and then finally there's a power cut off to the back windows what a great car this is just insanity i love it let's look in the back despite its diminutive dimensions this is kind of aimed at the executive market so the rear seat is really deep and comfy lots of well actually surprisingly large amounts of knee room and foot room so you're not feeling too penned in here it's quite narrow it's a three seater but it's about as wide as a current or early generation new mini so you're barely wide enough to fit people but like in the front we've got a panel of aircraft style consoles push them in the middle straight arrives with a kampari for you have two spotlights and you've got the actual window switches down in the front we've got the 12-volt lighter socket we're sorry cigarette lighter because it's the 80s little ash tray curiously we've even got zip up pockets in the back in case i know you're driving inverted and don't want stuff to fall out this is a kind of weirdly placed car in the market because you can tell it's designed as a driver's car but it's an executive car so the possibility that maybe you may be chauffeur driven and sit in the back of your car doing important executive stuff because you've got your briefcase in the front and your buttons in the room it's very odd but these seats are very comfortable there is a center arm rest or there's a center armrest which must be retracted during landing huh comfy car well the car starts instantly it's fuel injected so it's not going to struggle really now a gear shift oh listen to that a lovely v6 busso engine one of the all-time greats now this gear shift though is very strange because the linkage goes all the way from here into the boot or under the boot sideways and then forwards again into the transaction so it's uh yeah a little bit rubbery apparently quite easy to get the wrong gear if you're not careful oh this thing rides nicely okay when mph so doing oh okay both both readouts do seem to be about 35 miles an hour at the moment that's that's positive oh it's very light and soft on the road a lot a lot of pedal travel like a crazy amount of pedal travel on the brakes and the owner of this car has waxed it to within an inch of its life i realize it isn't in perfect condition i mean the interior is fantastic but the metal work is point eight of a millimeter thick and was not well um treated at the factory in fact i believe they went outside across from one building to another at one point so it was exposed to the elements during production with no paint on it so surface rust is common on these cars engine oh i love an italian v6 engine surprisingly grippy it's a little bit damp out today so very damp out today but it's surprisingly good grip it's got new uh brand new tyres on it so that's understandable now as interesting and as nice as this car was the 90 was basically doomed from the moment of its inception because it was kind of only a stop gap until alpha could bring out the 75. wow this thing turns well so it was announced and released early in 1984 but in late 1984 lancia brought out the fema holotemer which was a completely new car it was larger it drove well more more in a modern modern fashion and it was based on a completely new shell as well so that started stealing sales immediately from the poor old 90. of course the final death sentence for it though was a 75 its own stablemate which came out in 1987 at which point sales for this car just fell off completely oh let's turn the temperature down decent heater in this car now that amazing handling comes courtesy of the alfeta it may have been old but it was good it had the dion tube in the rear which is an amazing suspension setup which keeps the rear wheels always facing vertical so it's very very planted and great for road holding and at the front they had double wishbones hydraulic shock absorbers and a torsion bar so although the ride is fairly soft and it does lean into a corner the car really does grip nicely it just flows over bumps this is a trick alpha may have always had they could always build a car which felt too soft too comfortable to be a performance car but at the same time just absolutely gripped and really gave you a great ride if you were trying to push it through a fast road it is a small car and it feels small on the road it's 4 392 millimeters long and 1 638 millimeters wide which is really really little for a four-seater executive car that's absolutely tiny and as well as that clever suspension setup it's also got disc brakes around vented discs on the front you know this was a proper performance car and the owner has only just got hold of this car a few weeks ago and has already made a few improvements to it and he's going to be gradually improving it over the next few or years i guess the car has got a few spots of surface rust on it but it's a substantially solid car which is amazing because potentially it could have been so bad [Music] i mean interestingly for example in the rear uh passenger door shut they didn't actually bother painting it just just got undercoat on there no silver paint and there weren't that many color options on this car there's blue alpha red light beige metallic champagne metallic mid gray which this is a metallic opal which is all all very dignified colours very executive not very alpha male not very scarlet as you might expect the one downside of this magnificent via is that it's a little bit thirsty pretty it gets about 20 to the gallon which is not a lot and the fuel tank is really small so you can get about a range of 150 miles or so [Music] there's a little switch on the top of the dashboard which lets you switch it from mph to kph suddenly leap from 48 to 68 miles an hour because obviously in rs where they built this car in lombardy they use kilometers not miles an hour well thanks for joining me today in this absolutely astonishing unicorn of a classic car this thing is just amazing such a brilliant car to drive i've loved every minute if you've liked this please hit like and subscribe and the usual sort of youtube stuff smash those buttons as they say and i'll see you again next time driving something completely different

Channel: furiousdriving

Views: 24,954

Rating: 4.946785 out of 5

Keywords: car, cars, blog, vlog, retro, classic, classic car, retro car, motoring, alfa, alfa 90, alfa romeo, alfa romeo 90, cloverleaf, gold cloverleaf, italian car, 80s car, car review, road test, test drive, weird car

Id: MmWGliMvzvU

Length: 26min 17sec (1577 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2020