Engines....

[Eric Storhok <alfa@domain.elided>]

I hope you all don't think I love push rod engines- I don't.  But in the 10 
years I've worked in the industry, I've quickly become a realist.  Both 
Ford and GM each have one line of cars that people actually care what is 
under the hood in the US (Focus and Saturn).  Other than that, they don't 
seem to care much.

Mind you, most of you reading this are not our core buyers.  Which is sad 
for me, as that means that Ford will never make that really cool small 
sedan besides the Focus- which isn't all that bad, but its stops there.

2 examples- lets say you had a chance to buy a car with a really good 3.0l 
4V V6.  This engine is a good one- revs nicely, and even Alfa Romeo 
considered this for a future powertrain (no kidding...).  I would bet that 
90% of you have not bought this car, or if you did, it was not because of 
the engine.  Taurus.

next- how in the world can you explain that we sold 200k+ Tempo/ Topaz cars 
a year???  That has to be one of the worst cars of all time- crappy engine, 
crappy handling, disconnected steering.  This is more cars than Alfa made 
in a year.  Oddly enough, when the Contour/ Mystique was introduced, it was 
not very popular- it did everything the Tempo did, but at $5k more.

The auto industry is all about money.  Whatever it takes to make as much 
money as possible in a industry that the competition is more fierce than 
most other.  So if you had a choice of spending $1B on making a really nice 
OHC engine or  $25M updating your current design which will do 85% of the 
OHC engine, its an obvious choice.  And $1B would be realistic if GM were 
to part ways will ALL of their pushrods.  Even Alfa made these choices- 
here in the US, we never saw the new TS I4 line- heck the I4 design was 
never seriously updated in its essential design since '54.

For all of us, though, the whole package that we got was greater than the 
sum of the parts.  The BMW 2002 was a much better car from a technology 
standpoint, but the 2000 GTV kicks its butt all over the place.

More recently, Alfa chose (or was forced) to use the Fiat cast iron 
block.  I hate that, but I see that economically, it was a sound decision.

Anyway, the above are opinions, so take them as you will...

Eric


AROC Detroit Homepage:  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~alfa/index.htm
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