Why Did One Of Italy's BEST Cars End Up Ruining Alfa Romeo? The AlfaSud

hello everybody welcome to number 27 i'm jack and today i'm going to be talking to you about the alpha sug but more importantly how it is possible that a car that was pretty much the undisputed class leader of its day and i'm not just talking for two or three years but for much of the 70s still was part of alpha's downfall how could that be possible well first of all let me give you a little bit of a history incredibly alfa romeo was owned by the italian government from the 1930s until 1985 i think when fiat finally took over so to be quite honest as a state-run industry it is a miracle that they managed to survive quite that long and they managed to make some really fantastic cars but towards the beginning of the 70s they had financial issues production issues and they wanted to get a car which could be mass-produced and at a lower price because most of the alpha stuff was really high-end one of the caveats from the italian government is they wanted to improve the south of italy which was vastly underdeveloped compared to the north so they said to to alpha okay you can produce this car we'll give you a load of investment by modern standards i think is about two billion pounds worth but you will have to produce the car in the south of italy now alfa romeo already had a small factory in pomegliano close to naples they decided that they were going to expand that factory and produce the car there hence the name alpha alpha south [Applause] now these little suds had a number of firsts for many cars and definitely for alpha the first one is it was four disc brakes which was almost unheard of in a car of this size at the time secondly alfa romeo produced an engine specifically for this new car the boxer was designed for the sud and it enabled the incredibly low center of gravity you can see in the engine bay it is crazy how low down just how low down the engine was also it was designed for the time to be economical to perform well to be a nice review engine so it really suited this car perfectly it was of course also alpha's first ever front drive car and oh my in terms of handling for a front drive car they really pulled out all the stops we'll talk about that a bit more in a minute [Applause] the sud was launched in 1971 but there were issues with the factory the problem was that they had started a new factory right in a place in a part of italy but there was no tradition in manufacturing cars so it was quite difficult to get the quality right there were poor worker relations so that kind of blunted what the numbers that they were able to produce [Applause] despite being phenomenally expensive at the time the sud was a sales success but let me just give you an idea how expensive it was when it came out i think in 72 the list price in the uk was 14 000 pounds 13.99 and morris marina launched a year later i know it's not a great car i know it's slightly bigger actually but the same engine size that cost just 939 pounds so about 40 percent more expensive really pricey now i absolutely love the way these suds look especially these earlier models with the thinner bumpers it's just a very cohesive design from some angles i think some people think maybe it looks stumpy but i don't i think it works really well and you've got massive amounts of room inside for the size journalists at the time were absolutely gobsmacked at how this thing handled now you have to think about what was around at the time i've mentioned the marina but the allegro was another car that would have competed with this in the 70s and this was deemed to be an absolutely fantastic handler for a little hatchback at the time there is another legend really the first version of a volkswagen golf but even that didn't handle in the twisties as well as these do the golf was definitely better in some respects overall it was definitely more of a successful car it was built better and the driving position was better but these handled better and they had nicer engines so is this reputation for handling justified this is the 1.5 super which has about 85 horsepower so not a huge amount of power but they were quite light i think around 800 kilograms which does help the engine is quite nice and zingy it doesn't rev up particularly quickly but it's you can feel it's an older unit but it's nice the driving position isn't ideal my knees are sort of tucked up but i've got the right sort of length to the wheel the interior even by 70s standards isn't fantastic but it's pretty functional at least uh it doesn't have too many switches that are tucked away in unfathomable places where it is really quite something is how it goes down a twisty bumpy road like this one the brakes are nice and firm they work really well you get lots of feedback modern cars just don't do that the steering is pretty slow but you got this big wheel as well but once it's turned in it feels really tenacious and it handles the bumps really well it just sort of seems to flow over everything it's quite a loose-limbed little car and i can't quite see why at the time the sort of like the road testers were so enthused because if you drive something else from the early 70s honestly it feels this feels leagues ahead of any cars around those times and even the aforementioned golf and even the gti that i drove a couple of years ago felt much heavier less agile this is quite lithium on its feet now this still had quite skinny tires and i think that suits it quite well because it doesn't lean too much in corners and i think that that is also because the limits aren't that high and it kind of helps it just it flows it reminds me a little bit of my citroen bx although that was the steering on that was assisted it didn't have quite the amount of feel that this does but it's a similar sort of sensation where you can kind of just go down the road you don't need to worry about the bumps too much it just kind of deals with them so on the whole a massively impressive package and it did continue to sell well throughout the 70s despite a huge amount of problems so why am i saying that this sud was still part of alpha alpha's downfall well that is because managing to produce a class-leading car with a good design good performance good economy lots of room attractive it suffered from several big problems which are typical of alpha at the time one was quality as i mentioned that new factory had a lot of inexperienced workers as well as this oh this little s for a little old front driver it's amazing how it goes through that anyway that old factory it had a load of workers who weren't really you know who were just starting out working on cars plus there were terrible labor relations so there were constant strikes and crucially the paint shop was in a different building and they just used to wheel them between one building and another bare shells even if it was raining some of the metal was stored outside and of course the infamous russian steel played apart as well between the fact that they weren't really very well rust proofed the quality wasn't there it just carried on maintaining that negative momentum for alpha which was to stick for years and years and still does today i love this little car i think it is fantastic and i'm so glad it's one of my heroes and i think in this spec it is just absolutely perfect so i'm really glad that i'm happy uh that you know i haven't driven one for quite a few years so i'm really happy i've been able to drive it today and it's it's lived up to my expectations i think driven hard it's not quite a gti but driven hard it really i think it really rewards it's one of those cars that is just fantastic just gonna butt in quickly here because i completely forgot to say in the original recording that i have also recorded an owner profile for this alpha sub harry who owns alfred the alpha sud uh there's a really short segment that will be coming up in a couple of days so do keep your eyes open for that video when i released it if you enjoyed this one thank you all so much for watching i really appreciate it if you have a car that you'd like me to review something unusual or if you have a personal history as well if you're someone who has a an interesting story about the card do get in touch with me instagram is the best way i really look forward to seeing you for the next one

Channel: Number 27

Views: 50,288

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Id: OIApxOG0l2Y

Length: 10min 9sec (609 seconds)

Published: Thu May 19 2022