'Suds and 'Nords'

[<JHertzman@xxxxxxx>]

My most bilious critic (that I know of, enyhoo) says I have too much time on
my hands, and he may be right. The other day an old-line Alfa Romeo
traditionalist (old-line enough that he fulminates about people who improperly
refer to Alfa Romeos as 'Alfas', as I do) and I were chatting about the
validity or invalidity of referring to the upright-four engines, in their
north-south applications, as 'Nords', reflecting their distinction from the
general class of 'Suds'. So, curious, I ran totals of various types from the
figures given in d'Amico-Tabucchi, starting with the 2000 cars of 1972,
(contemporary with the first boxers) and stopping with the east-west 164,
which many would agree was the beginning of a new era. The numbers I got for
that range may be of some interest to North Americans who tend to think of
Alfa Romeos as all being the familiar fours and sixes.

The numbers are:
V6s, all three sizes: 51,079
Turbodiesels: 305,975
Boxers: 2,313,785
Upright fours: 1,428,793

That isn't a totally fair comparison, since it omits those 1300 and 1600
models which started before 1972 and ended later, like the GT Juniors, Spider
Juniors and Giulia 1300 Supers. These have starting dates all over the
calendar, so I threw limits to the wind and added all of the upright fours
from the first Giulietta through the last 75, for a total of 2,518,731, barely
nosing out the boxer category which started eighteen years later.

Nitpickers will observe that I unfairly stacked the deck by leaving out the
ironblock 2000s, 2600s, Montreals, and 33 Stradales, which together would have
upped the numbers of non-boxer gas engines by over 22,000. And the Renaults
built under license (which d'Amico Tabucchi does include as Alfa Romeo cars
produced) would tilt the figures by another 112,000.

Now, back to things that matter.

John

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End of alfa-digest V7 #32
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