Alfa Berlinas

[C M Smith <cmsmith@domain.elided>]

Certainly in Calgary during Alfa's golden years from the early 60's to the 
late 70's plenty of Berlinas were sold, including the Alfetta sedan in that 
description as Berlina is just Italian for sedan. Most buyers may want a 
sports car but what they have to buy is a sports sedan.

The 164 was a fine successor to the Berlina, Alfetta, and Milano, except 
for the fwd not being as popular with the traditional Alfa drivers. The 
things that went wrong with the 164 related to design and dealer support. 
You just can't market a car in NA that has transmission, AC, and electrical 
faults, or at least you certainly can't if you're not willing to suck it up 
and fix it on an "extended" warranty basis.

Upon re entry to the US market, Alfa had a deserved reputation for poor 
assembly quality acquired by the time it had previously  left the market, 
and then quickly acquired an unjustified reputation for the same with the 
164. The problems with the 164 have been well documented on this board and 
amount to a handful of serious maintenance faults, but not build quality 
faults. These were simple component failures which combined with no 
reasonable anticipation of the required service by the design team which 
caused repair costs to be out of all proportion to the nature of the fault: 
little plastic stepper gears failing causing $1,000 repairs, plastic ball 
bearing cage in the manual tranny input shaft bearing failing causing 
$1,500 repairs, and the AC clutch bearing failing causing $2,000 AC repairs.

  The radical difference between the poor assembly of the last of the 
Milanos and the design defects but superb build quality of the 164 made no 
difference in the minds of the NA consumers, both resulted in failure in 
the market place. But, the root cause of the one (poor management of 
assembly work) was so different from the other (boneheaded design choices) 
one hopes that upon Alfa's return they will get both the build quality and 
the design done right. If they do, then the new Alfa's will sell well, 
because North American buyers like cars that are built properly (heck 
they've been buying junk from the big three for years, but at low prices!)
Michael Smith
Calgary, Alberta,Canada
91 Alfa 164L
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