As an owner of many Alfas over the years & the current owner of a Spider S4 I am clearly an Alfisti. So why do I have so little interest in current Alfas? I'll tell you why, front wheel drive! Now, I will say that FWD is great in certain applications where packaging & economy of manufacture are critical, and I have owned several Minis (real ones). However these mundane criteria have never informed the purchase of any of my Alfas. I want exotic race bred engineering wrapped in the finest creations of famous carrozeria, NOT some warmed over FWD Fiat chassis with an iron block motor!

What exited me about Alfas as a youngster was the idea that you could realistically own something like a Spider, engineered by Puliga, styled by Pininfarina basically a great looking car with an all alloy twin cam motor and a close ratio five speed box. The Montreal had a race car engine, the Alfetta had a trans-axle box & De Dion rear suspension! To a young man like me this kind of thing was seriously appealing, particularly when mixed with a bit of that Nuvolari, Farina & Fangio heritage.

I thought it was such a shame that they dropped the Alfetta chassis & Nord motors when they released the 916 series cars, imagine if that GTV had been RWD, it could have been an incredible little GT car.

If Alfa are going to move forward they need to re-focus on advanced engineering for the keen driver. Going out & winning some races would help too.