Alfa Romeo Alfasud Sprint Veloce, 1979
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Updated: 11-December-2024 16:24

Alfa Romeo Alfasud Sprint Veloce, 1979

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Alfa Romeo Alfasud Sprint Veloce 1.5, year 1979. Colour brown (Bruno Silento AR 834) combined with a brown / ochreous interior. Ochre yellow cloth seats, brown carpet, and dashboard. This now rare Alfa Romeo Alfasud Sprint was delivered new to Switzerland on 16 November 1979. On 26 March 1981 it was first registered in the name of Mr. A. Pocopio. On 11 June 1984, the car was exported to Italy where it ended up in a Sicilian car collection. In September 2019, the Alfa was shipped to the Netherlands. This Alfasud Sprint Veloce is in a wonderful and fully original condition! The original interior is excellent. The perfectly preserved bodywork shows a shallow dent on the left front wing, and it presents its original paint which is still in exceptionally good condition! The underside of the car shows its incredibly good condition in all honesty. The front wheel arches where repainted in the original colour as were small parts of the sills near the wheel arches. This Alfasud Sprint may be named a “true survivor” with slight sings of previous use, these cars are seldom seen in our modern days and increasingly rare. This “time travelling machine” drives and handles very well, and the boxer engine sounds amazing! The car comes complete with an “Alfa Storico” birth certificate, number AS5611. This is a rare opportunity to acquire a rare Alfasud Sprint Veloce 1.5 in incredibly good and super original condition! The car still comes with its Italian registration and papers, this original car can be exported to any country globally.

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The Alfa Romeo Alfasud was first presented at the Turin Motor Show in the year 1971. The bodywork was designed by Giorgetto Giugaro's Italdesign and the Austrian Rudolf Hruska was responsible for the development of the car at Alfa Romeo. The Alfasud was Alfa Romeo's first front wheel drive car in the compact class. Alfa Romeo especially engineered a brand new flat boxer engine for the Alfasud. Those days Alfa Romeo was in hands of the Italian government. To stimulate employment in the south of Italy they decided to erect a new factory to build the car near Naples. The name Alfasud was derived from this location (Alfa south). The Alfasud came onto the market in the year 1972 and the car was received very well. People highly regarded the looks and the road holding of the car. After some time quality problems surfaced, the early Alfasud models were prone to rust severely. Or bad quality steel was used or the naked body shells were not treated right during production. In the year 1978 the problems were solved but it was too late; all Alfa Romeo cars got stuck with a rusty image for decades. A faith this great make did not deserve. As a result of the rust problems not many early Alfasud models survived. The first models were four door sedans with a normal boot lid (no roof hinged door). In 1973 the two door TI (Turismo Internazionale) was presented and in the year 1975 a 'Giardinetta' station car saw the light of day. In the year 1976 a special 'Sprint' model was presented. The Sprint was based upon the same platform but it was given a lower, less rounded and more sporty bodywork. In the year 1980 the Alfasud type 2 was presented. These models were altered in detail and the cars were fitted with plastic grille and bumpers.

Technical data*:

Four cylinder boxer engine (SOHC)
cylinder capacity: 1490 cc.
Induction: 1 x Weber
capacity: 84 bhp at 5800 rpm
torque: 120 Nm at 3500 rpm
top-speed: 101 mph - 165 km/h.
gearbox: 5-speed, manual, front wheel drive
brakes: Servo assisted disc brakes around
weight: 925 kg.

*Source: Carfolio.com

Alfa Romeo history

The marque Alfa Romeo is one of the most important names in the history of the automobile."Alfa" (Sociètà Anonima Lombardo Fabbrica Automobili) was founded in the year 1910. The company was given the name Alfa Romeo after Mr. Nicolo Romeo bought the firm in the year 1915.

Alfa Romeo started building small automobiles for "everyday" passenger transportation. In the early 1920'ies Alfa Romeo also started engineering and building sports- and racing-cars.
The automobiles built by Alfa Romeo were all technically refined and far ahead of their competitors; New inventions and technical discoveries were engineered, tested and introduced in the production models right away. A good example is the introduction of the double overhead camshafts (DOHC), all Alfa Romeo engines from 1929 up to today are fitted with this superior overhead valve operating principle.

During the thirties and in the end of the forties of the ninetieth century Alfa Romeo was the dominant marque in racing competitions. Alfa Romeo racingcars were able to win all racing competitions which they competed in like Le Mans and the Mille Miglia. In the early thirties Enzo Ferrari was racing for "scruderia"Alfa Romeo and was promoted to be team manager in the late thirties. Alfa Romeo decided to put an end to the racing activities in 1938 and Enzo Ferrari decided to start his own racingcar business in 1940...

Before the second world war Alfa Romeo produced primarily rolling chassis as technical base for passenger automobiles. These rolling chassis were in most cases fitted with body designs created by the famous Italian bodywork artists like Touring and Zagato.
The rolling chassis type being manufactured by Alfa Romeo during these prewar years was the 6C. The 6C chassis/engine combination through the years: 1750/55 bhp. (from 1929), 1900/68 bhp. (from 1933), 2300/68-95 bhp. (from 1934) 2500/ 87-110 bhp. (from 1939).
Next to the Alfa Romeo 6C chassis/engine-combination Alfa Romeo introduced the 8C in the year 1931. The 8C chassis/ engine combination was primarily used for racing- and sportscars. The 8C engine featured eight cylinders-in-line, dry-sump engine lubrication and a blower (compressor) giving the engine a power output of 150 bhp.!
All Alfa Romeo models built before the second world war were fitted with the steering wheel on the right hand side of the car.

After the second world war Alfa Romeo started producing the 6C 2500 again which had been in production for over ten years already. Just in time the people in charge of Alfa Romeo realized that the industry had changed and that the market for large, expensive "tailor made" automobiles was increasing rapidly.
To survive they decided to reconsider their position and started preparing for standardized industrial automobile production as other manufacturers did before following the ideas of Henry Ford.

In the year 1949 the first result of the new Alfa Romeo era saw the light of day; the Alfa Romeo 1900!
The Alfa Romeo 1900 was the first Alfa Romeo built with a unitary bodywork construction (without separate chassis). The car was also the first fully industrial -mass- produced car to come out of the Alfa Romeo factory.
In the early fifties of the ninetieth century Alfa Romeo started to compete in racing-events again...racing their old prewar competition-cars and WINNING with Fangio behind the wheel! Soon thereafter Ferrari, Jaguar and Mercedes were back in winning position.

1954 was the year of introduction of the Alfa Romeo Giulietta series. The Alfa Romeo 1900 was still in production then but production was ceased in the year 1958. The Giulietta series included some very fine classics like the Bertone Sprint, Giulietta SS (Sprint Speciale) and the Pinin Farina Convertible.
The year 1962 saw the introduction of the Giulia series with a handsome, modern and sporty, four-door saloon, a Giulia Spider Veloce (successor of the Alfa Romeo Duetto), a Giulia GTV coupe model by Bertone and an impressive Zagato 1300 junior. The Giulietta SS was prolonged and renamed Giulia SS.

All Giulietta and Giulia models were characterized by their unitary bodywork construction, their powerfull aluminum alloy engines, double overhead camshafts and five speed gearboxes (with floor shift!), excellent roadholding capabilities and excellent body designs.
Alfa Romeo has the honour together with Mercedes Benz to have the greatest racing and sportscar history which continued over many decades. Regretfully it was that in the 1980'ies not very much was left that symbolized that great history. The cars coming out of the factory those days (Alfetta series) were more or less dull (many saloons), not very inspiring - except the Alfetta GTV, quality was poor and no one at Alfa Romeo was thinking of racing anymore for decades.

The Alfetta series was not the bestseller the Giulia has been for Alfa Romeo. Alfa Romeo did have a potential best seller; the Alfasud (a tremendous driver with boxer-engine!) Over one million were sold but overall quality was so bad, the car already rusted during production, that the Alfa Romeo name was crushed. In the mid-eighties Alfa Romeo was ready to shut the factory gates as it was reluctantly taken over by Fiat. It took Fiat/ Alfa Romeo almost fifteen years to rebuilt the old Alfa Romeo image by good marketing and by building better Alfa Romeo cars every generation. It started with the Alfa 33 (with boxer-engine), 75 and 164 (both with rear-wheel drive). Then the new generation 145, 146 and 155 followed (all front wheel drive) Specials were introduced at the same time which hit bulls eye; the GTV and the Spider!
The third generation put Alfa Romeo really back on the map of modern motoring enthusiasts; the Alfa Romeo 156, the 166 and the 147. All well designed by Alfa Romeo the then chief designer Walther de Silva.

© Marc Vorgers

 

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