Re: rwd-fwd

[George Graves <gmgraves@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Alfa switched to FWD, because after Fiat took over in the late 
eighties, that is what all of Fiat's chassis were. Alfas became "shared 
platforms" with the Fiat takeover because most Fiat-built Alfas shared 
chassis with Fiats, Lancias, and in the case of the 164, the 
aforementioned two as well as the Saab 9000. In a mass production 
environment, if you think about it, you will see that FWD cars are 
cheaper to assemble. The entire drive-train is a complete sub-assembly 
that just gets bolted-in at one operation. The Japanese pioneered this 
style manufacturing and in the late eighties most modern automakers 
were following their leader. It's probably safe to say that any modern 
car, German, American, British, Swedish or Italian has a lot a Japanese 
automaking procedures in them and it affects the way they are designed. 
Even a new Ferrari has a lot of Japanese building practice in it. While 
I'm sure that if Alfa had been able to remain on its own, they likely 
would have never gone FWD (after all BMW, Audi, and MB didn't), 
nonetheless, even a modern independent Alfa Romeo would probably look a 
lot more like a Toyota under the skin than it would look like a '70's 
Berlina.

As far as the Milano (75) being the last "true" Alfa, It's either this 
car or the SZ/RZ of the early nineties. the Milano (75) was designed in 
the early to mid eighties and introduced in 1986 (IIRC). Fiat didn't 
buy Alfa Romeo until 1987, so it's unlikely that they had any real 
input on the car's design. But the SZ/RZ were also RWD Alfas, and were 
certainly the last ones to date and even though they used many Milano 
components, they were quite unique in their own right. I had the 
pleasure of riding in one in Italy, two years ago, and it was so quick 
and so fast that it puts my hot-rod GTV-6 3.0 to shame.

George Graves
'86 GTV-6 3.0S




On Tuesday, April 15, 2003, at 10:01 AM, alfa-digest wrote:


> Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 02:16:18 EDT
> From: MRAXLROZE@domain.elided
> Subject: rwd-fwd
>
> why did alfa decide to switch to fwd?  they say that the last true 
> alfa was
> the 89 milano..becuase after that fiat took over..is that true?..
>
>
>
>
> John
> nyc
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