Alfa vs Porsche

[Dana Loomis <dloomis@domain.elided>]

I've never owned a 911 or particularly wanted to, but I have a great deal
of respect for them.  That respect is largely the result of the sustained
and successful effort that Porsche made to develop the car over its long
production run of roughly 35 years.  The 911 began life with a design that
was old even then and had severe flaws, but through successive iterations
it became an extremely competent road car with few bad habits, and achieved
a record in racing which, as Paul Mitchell correctly states, cannot be
matched by any other production car.   Unfortunately, the 911 also became
heavy, complicated and expensive in the process, but that story is grossly
off topic.  

The contrast to Alfa Romeo's efforts over the same time period is
interesting.  The 105 spider, although a car with very different
intentions, appeared within a year of the 911 and was in production for
almost as long.  The Spider, with other 105 cars, was based on a mechanical
design that was conservative but state of the art in the mid-1960s,
underwent successive mechanical improvements for 5 years or so through the
appearance of the 2000 series, then settled into a sort of comfortable
obsolence for the next 20 years.  Changes to the Spider from the mid-70s
onward were cosmetic or driven by regulations, and Alfa was content to sell
a few thousand copies a year to whoever wanted them--including, no doubt, a
number of balding, middle-aged men.  

The GTV 6, which was the subject of the original question, was also
underdeveloped despite inherent merits that were arguably greater than the
911s at the start.  In almost 20 years of production from 1974 through the
last 75s in 1992, there were significant changes concurrent with the
introduction of the V6 engine as an option in the early 80s, incremental
improvements when the 75 was introduced, and tweaks for the last run of 75s
and the ES 30 SZ.  Other than the introduction of the 3.0 liter
displacement, there were no significant changes to the V6 engine during
this period.  The Alfetta coupe was produced for about a dozen years, never
got the 3.0, and benefited only from the first round of chassis changes.
As far as I know, the factory never made any serious effort--and perhaps no
effort at all--to campaign the production GTV 6 in racing.  There were
earlier efforts with Alfetta coupes, some versions with Montreal V8s and
others equipped with turbochargers, but again nothing to compare with the
sustained support for the 911 by the factory and private professional and
amateur teams.  It's hard to know how the GTV 6 might have fared had it had
the opportunity, but it's clear enough that it never got it.  

The only production Alfa Romeo to have competed directly with the 911 was
the 105 coupe.  As production cars, they were not in the same class (Paul
Frere said of the 2000 GT Veloce when it was introduced that it was a very
nice sports coupe, but not a true GT car, because it was neither fast nor
luxurious enough).  On the track, however, the factory team of GTAs held
off the 911s with enough success to win championships for two (1967 and
1969) of the three years the two cars competed head to head (1967-69) in
European touring car racing.  In the US, in contrast, the much more
modestly-funded private teams that campaigned GTAs in those years could not
beat the Porsches and had to wait until the 911 was desclassified as a
sedan in 1970.  

That's the historical view.  From the perspective of present-day
performance, it's awfully hard to generalize about how 911s stack up
because there have been so many different models for such a long period of
time.  In club track weekends, my race-prepared 1750 GTV will outrun or at
least match competently-driven, street-legal 911s.  These Porsches are
enthusiast cars, typically modified to a degree, but older cars from the
'70s and '80s.  In wheel-to-wheel racing, it depends to a much greater
degree on the driver and the level of preparation of the individual car.
My GTV can beat less modified or more conservatively-driven 911s, and the
cars' relative strengths and weaknesses are essentially the same as they
were described 30 years ago: the 911 has more straight-line acceleration
and better brakes, but the Alfa is faster in corners.  On the other hand,
the Alfa can't come anywere near the faster 911s, which are in a completely
different league in terms of performance.  

Dana Loomis

--
to be removed from alfa, see /bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe alfa" to majordomo@domain.elided