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In giro per l'Oregon con una delle ultime Alfa prima del gran ritorno e la nuova Giulia...
Articolo molto bello di Car & Driver.....alla "ricerca dell'essenza del brand" come scrivono gli autori.
Fianco a fianco lungo le bellissime strade rurali dell'Oregon per fare visita all'ultima videoteca Blockbuster rimasta in USA, si confrontano una delle ultie 164 vendute in USA e la Giulia.....da leggere e soprattutto da vedere, foto davvero molto belle....interessante soprattutto per chi vuole farsi un'idea della percezione storica del brand in USA...
Interessante, peccato non riuscire ad aprire il link per capire come percepiscono in USA un brand come AlfaRomeo.
Ma l’accostamento con l’ultIma videoteca Blockbuster ha qualche senso (es Alfa anacronistica per il mercato attuale) o è casuale?
We Take a Pair of Alfa Romeos on a Trip Back in Time in a Search for the Essence of the Marque
And to hand in a few VHS tapes we never returned...
By Jeff Sabatini
Oct 17, 2018
Time travel is not so difficult. Forget about paradoxes and the speed of light and parallel universes and all that other sci-fi blather. It does not require a TARDIS or Doc Brown's DeLorean. Really, any old car will do. You just need to find the right place to drive it to, which is also not particularly challenging, as there are parts of this great-again country of ours that have not changed so much from the way they were a rather long time ago.
Case in point: Bend, Oregon, where a Blockbuster video store stands in a nondescript strip mall just off U.S. Route 97. Its owners, Debbie and Ken Tisher, and the longtime manager, Sandi Harding, all got their 15 minutes of fame this past summer when the two other remaining Blockbusters in America—both located in Alaska—closed, and they found themselves explaining to the world how their franchise became the country's last outpost of a once-vast corporate behemoth.
The feel-good story felt good to us, too, not only because of its obvious root-for-the-underdog appeal, but also because we wanted to step into a video store for the first time in over a decade. Would the emotions of so many youthful Saturday nights come rushing back? Or would we just be disappointed that its only copy of Mallrats was checked out in 2009 and never returned? Apparently we're not alone, as the Last Blockbuster in America has become something of a tourist destination—the store now sells bumper stickers emblazoned with the phrase.
We needed a worthy bumper, a period-appropriate car as our vessel, and one up to the challenge of the many wonderful roads in Oregon's Cascade Range. We settled on an Alfa Romeo 164, not because the car is a paragon of the sports-sedan species (it isn't) or a highly coveted collectible (never), but because we were intensely curious about whether we could find any link between the 164 and its modern analogue, the 10Best-feted Giulia. Or in the words of Carl Sagan, who we're pretty sure understands time travel better than we do: "You have to know the past to understand the present."
According to the most recent edition of The Official Handbook of the Mopar Universe, the 164 no longer exists. Alfa's relaunched U.S. business operation wants nothing to do with the parts of its history that aren't Grand Prix podium finishers or prewar Mille Miglia victors. They certainly don't want to see '90s-vintage Alfas at dealership service departments, check-engine lights ablaze. This is easy to understand. By 1994, the 164 was the sole Alfa on sale in the U.S. Then in January 1995, after another dismal sales year, corporate parent Fiat announced that it was following the lead of the French and retreating to Europe. "Alfa Romeo's continued presence in the North American market has become increasingly economically unfeasible," Fiat told the papers, evincing a degree of understatement worthy of a British car company rather than an Italian one.
Our 1995 164 Quadrifoglio, one of the last few hundred Alfas exported to the U.S. after the announcement, was purchased new by Alfa Romeo Owners Club member Sam Hunter of Lakewood, Washington. Besides the useful addition of a dash-mounted altimeter and the stub of a long-disused CB antenna above its rear bumper, this 164 Q is stock. Which means it drives its front wheels with a 24-valve 3.0-liter V-6 that makes 230 horsepower and 202 pound-feet of torque.
The 164 Q was the top model in its day, as noted by the four-leaf clover on its trunk, but to give it a fighting chance at keeping up, we matched it with a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder Giulia rather than the current Quadrifoglio version, which makes an incomparable 505 horsepower. Thanks to its turbo, the rear-drive Giulia Ti still has 50 more horses and 104 more pound-feet of torque than the 164 Q. Given the latter's age and 98,000 miles of Hunter's hard driving, we expected the old car to be almost entirely outclassed by the new.
Well, on the road, at least. Pininfarina's styling was a bit wacky even back in the day, with the last vestiges of the 1970s wedge fad somewhat obscured by massive lower-body cladding, which gives the 164 the look of a Pontiac design proposal rejected by GM in the wake of the Cadillac Allanté fiasco. But parked together on the street in Portlandia, the 164 Quadrifoglio makes the pretty but unexceptionally styled Giulia Ti all but disappear into a background of Subarus.
Wondering why the 164's wonderful script "Alfa Romeo" badge didn't make it to the modern car's rear end, we eased into the deep and wide bucket seats of the old car. They are comfortable in the fashion of lounge chairs, and within seconds, we used the simple six-way power adjusters to set the perfect position—for an Italian. The 164 requires the sort of classic arms-out driving posture known in less politically correct times as the "Hey, Luigi!" This is absent in the modern and thus more comfortable Giulia. The greater feeling of spaciousness in the 164's cockpit is surprising, given these sizable seats and the huge, airbag-engorged steering wheel. Part of this is an illusion created by the dashboard, which slopes away from the front-seat occupants. A low cowl and thin A-pillars help, too, giving the 164 panoramic sightlines—all the better to view the breathtaking mountainscape on the drive to Bend.
The 164 was a mid-sizer in its time, a competitor to the BMW 5-series, whereas today's Giulia is a compact 3-series rival. Overall lengths of the two Alfas land at about 180 inches apiece, and it's actually the modern Alfa that has the longer wheelbase at 111 inches. The 164's stubby little axle span—some six inches less than the Giulia's and even shorter than an E36 3-series'—makes it nimble on the mountain two-lanes. Its electronically controlled dampers have just two settings, selected by a pair of dainty little buttons almost hidden on the console between the seats. Sport mode noticeably firms up the ride and improves body control, although there is still considerably more lean than in the Giulia. Sawing at the wheel in the 164 on the descent, after spending the uphill climb in the Giulia traveling at much higher rates, demonstrates the ease and capability of the modern car but also how much fun the old one is, even at lower speeds.
This is especially true when a third pedal comes into play, and all 164 Qs came with five-speed manuals. When we tested its slightly detuned sibling, the 210-hp 164 LS, in 1993, it covered the quarter-mile in 15.4 seconds. The Giulia beats that by over a second, but nothing the modern car can do is as exciting as engaging the 164's heavy clutch and shifting from fifth to third to hear its naturally aspirated V-6 sing. Between 5000 rpm and its 7000-rpm redline, the 164 Q wails like a jackal. The Giulia might be a jackal, too, but there is a rabbit stuffed in its mouth.
Now bad plastics cover the engine rather than the instrument panel. The Giulia’s interior should weather time’s ravages better than the 164’s has.
The Giulia's best trick is that it is a smallish car that drives like an even smaller one. This is thanks to the shockingly light and quick electrically assisted steering that responds so rapidly compared with the 164's heavy wheel and hydraulic assist. After driving the old car, we were always providing too much input in our first few turns in the Giulia. With its wonderful balance and a ride height that seems just millimeters from the road surface, the Giulia delivers genuine four-door sports-car thrills. And yet it is also a far more mainstream car than the 164, which itself was the most mainstream car Alfa had produced to date.
The 164 never should have been the end for Alfa. Co-developed with Fiat, Lancia, and Saab, the Tipo Quattro platform that underpinned it gave Alfa its first modern front-wheel-drive car; its U.S. launch in 1990 was the first step in "rebooting the franchise," to use the current parlance. The 164 was the car that was going to save the brand—until it didn't. The Giulia may yet succeed at that. Through the first seven months of 2018, sales are up 58 percent over last year and FCA is selling about 1000 a month.
By the time we get to Bend, it's obvious the Giulia and 164 share nothing in the way of lineage. But for all their differences, they have mutual interests. Both of them are drivers' cars, machines crafted with the same spirit but from entirely different blueprints. Their few similarities, such as a lack of rear-seat legroom, are coincidental. Each car has character. Neither disappoints in any way.
Nor does the Blockbuster. Well, okay, maybe a little. It appears to have been preserved in amber sometime last decade, with the only tell that we're in the present coming in the titles of the new-release DVDs, films such as Breaking In, Life of the Party, and The Rider. It's more like 2004 than 1994 here, but this sort of time travel is not so precise. We can't really expect the good people of Bend to still watch VHS tapes now, can we?
Non mi ero accorto di una cosa.
Ai suoi tempi la 164 mi sembrava un traghetto (come dimensioni percepite), oggi mi impressiona il fatto che di fianco alla Giulia appaia molto più piccola, nonostante le misure molto simili.
We Take a Pair of Alfa Romeos on a Trip Back in Time in a Search for the Essence of the Marque
And to hand in a few VHS tapes we never returned...
By Jeff Sabatini
Oct 17, 2018
Time travel is not so difficult. Forget about paradoxes and the speed of light and parallel universes and all that other sci-fi blather. It does not require a TARDIS or Doc Brown's DeLorean. Really, any old car will do. You just need to find the right place to drive it to, which is also not particularly challenging, as there are parts of this great-again country of ours that have not changed so much from the way they were a rather long time ago.
Case in point: Bend, Oregon, where a Blockbuster video store stands in a nondescript strip mall just off U.S. Route 97. Its owners, Debbie and Ken Tisher, and the longtime manager, Sandi Harding, all got their 15 minutes of fame this past summer when the two other remaining Blockbusters in America—both located in Alaska—closed, and they found themselves explaining to the world how their franchise became the country's last outpost of a once-vast corporate behemoth.
The feel-good story felt good to us, too, not only because of its obvious root-for-the-underdog appeal, but also because we wanted to step into a video store for the first time in over a decade. Would the emotions of so many youthful Saturday nights come rushing back? Or would we just be disappointed that its only copy of Mallrats was checked out in 2009 and never returned? Apparently we're not alone, as the Last Blockbuster in America has become something of a tourist destination—the store now sells bumper stickers emblazoned with the phrase.
We needed a worthy bumper, a period-appropriate car as our vessel, and one up to the challenge of the many wonderful roads in Oregon's Cascade Range. We settled on an Alfa Romeo 164, not because the car is a paragon of the sports-sedan species (it isn't) or a highly coveted collectible (never), but because we were intensely curious about whether we could find any link between the 164 and its modern analogue, the 10Best-feted Giulia. Or in the words of Carl Sagan, who we're pretty sure understands time travel better than we do: "You have to know the past to understand the present."
According to the most recent edition of The Official Handbook of the Mopar Universe, the 164 no longer exists. Alfa's relaunched U.S. business operation wants nothing to do with the parts of its history that aren't Grand Prix podium finishers or prewar Mille Miglia victors. They certainly don't want to see '90s-vintage Alfas at dealership service departments, check-engine lights ablaze. This is easy to understand. By 1994, the 164 was the sole Alfa on sale in the U.S. Then in January 1995, after another dismal sales year, corporate parent Fiat announced that it was following the lead of the French and retreating to Europe. "Alfa Romeo's continued presence in the North American market has become increasingly economically unfeasible," Fiat told the papers, evincing a degree of understatement worthy of a British car company rather than an Italian one.
Our 1995 164 Quadrifoglio, one of the last few hundred Alfas exported to the U.S. after the announcement, was purchased new by Alfa Romeo Owners Club member Sam Hunter of Lakewood, Washington. Besides the useful addition of a dash-mounted altimeter and the stub of a long-disused CB antenna above its rear bumper, this 164 Q is stock. Which means it drives its front wheels with a 24-valve 3.0-liter V-6 that makes 230 horsepower and 202 pound-feet of torque.
The 164 Q was the top model in its day, as noted by the four-leaf clover on its trunk, but to give it a fighting chance at keeping up, we matched it with a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder Giulia rather than the current Quadrifoglio version, which makes an incomparable 505 horsepower. Thanks to its turbo, the rear-drive Giulia Ti still has 50 more horses and 104 more pound-feet of torque than the 164 Q. Given the latter's age and 98,000 miles of Hunter's hard driving, we expected the old car to be almost entirely outclassed by the new.
Well, on the road, at least. Pininfarina's styling was a bit wacky even back in the day, with the last vestiges of the 1970s wedge fad somewhat obscured by massive lower-body cladding, which gives the 164 the look of a Pontiac design proposal rejected by GM in the wake of the Cadillac Allanté fiasco. But parked together on the street in Portlandia, the 164 Quadrifoglio makes the pretty but unexceptionally styled Giulia Ti all but disappear into a background of Subarus.
Wondering why the 164's wonderful script "Alfa Romeo" badge didn't make it to the modern car's rear end, we eased into the deep and wide bucket seats of the old car. They are comfortable in the fashion of lounge chairs, and within seconds, we used the simple six-way power adjusters to set the perfect position—for an Italian. The 164 requires the sort of classic arms-out driving posture known in less politically correct times as the "Hey, Luigi!" This is absent in the modern and thus more comfortable Giulia. The greater feeling of spaciousness in the 164's cockpit is surprising, given these sizable seats and the huge, airbag-engorged steering wheel. Part of this is an illusion created by the dashboard, which slopes away from the front-seat occupants. A low cowl and thin A-pillars help, too, giving the 164 panoramic sightlines—all the better to view the breathtaking mountainscape on the drive to Bend.
Perche´non ha una linea laterale retta ma in forma di piramide, poi
serviva a versare l aria centrale anche verso destra se il guidatore non desiderava averla tutta su di lui o solo centrale in direzione bancata dietro in piu potevi muovere se ben ricordo le alette interne anche i modo orizontali oltre che verso l alto e in basso. il resto e solo effetto occhiometro
