still think they look shite

Your MR2 was a Jap import where they don't use salt on the roads... that's what causes a lot of British cars to prematurely rust.

Compared with most British cars registered in 1992, the 75s stand up very well.

You may think it's ugly, but they have an ultra-reliable all-alloy

150bhp twin-cam up front, with an LSD transaxle at the back, which means you get balance and handling that BMW spend millions on achieving and shouting about....

Personally, given that that one has been stored for a few years and needs an MOT, I think it's a few hundred quid overpriced.

If it were being sold with full MOT, then anything up to £1500 would be achievable.

I have to agree they're a bit on the fugly side, but you can't argue with the oily bits. Having driven a heavier, less powerful, open diff'd and probably more roly-poly rear transaxle'd car I reckon the Alfa must be a hoot to drive. I'd like to own a V6 at some point to get the added bonus of some V6 howl and power.

Yeah... but your MR2 was but Toyota. Did they engage in circuitbattle ? On rallye stages?

Having owned three 75's (and crashed one quite heavily) I rate the 75 quite a bit higher than a MR2. Just you try with an MR2 hauling up your girlfriend with her parents. A black 75 does that in style. And when you deposed the reassured to-be-family-in-law it puts donuts down at demand.

Now? I suspect the 75 is a thing of the past. Those still around should probably stay in the past as a kind of good memory. But ... if I would stumble across a stripped out 300 HP 1.8 Turbo 75 this might easily change. I might shed some years and become a tail-out, rubber-smoking lunatic once again.

NEver liked regrets. The 75 holds none for me. It still rates as one of the better cars around. Let me put it this way: the M3 E30 I drove around the Spa circuit in 1990 was better but not five times better while it costed that amount more than the 75 Turbo Evoluzione.

The 75 is about mechanical principes. Hard to fight those buggers. No: it hasn't got cupholders nor a central dash. Sports a quirky handbrake handle though.

F-word I am really getting old...

Tom De Moor

Style? Ewwww. It's fugly.

Heh.

Hard to judge, though. I still see lots of K-registered Fords, Vauxhalls, VWs, Rovers, Hondas, Toyotas (repeat). Some are rusty. Some are very tatty.

I very, very very rarely see K-registered Alfa Romeos. Presumably because, like this one, they're kept garaged and only driven to shows.

And that are still seen on the road 16 years later...

I don't see many K-reg anythings these days.

Can't recall the last early E36 I saw. Most have fallen to bits or rotted away by now. Same goes for the C-class of that era - not many around at all.

Be interesting to know how survival rates compare in percentage terms.

Some don't like it, some do. I don't like the Scorpio whale nor Smarts and positively hate the sight of older Saabs but then again : other people might like them.

However I have parked my 75 at top restaurants and it looked at ease there. A Renault would been sniffed at, the black Alfa received the appreciating look.

And then my criterium on which a car is judged: the way it cleans the road of slower trafic in front of it. The 75 was good at that, on par with it spiritual predecessor the GTV.

Overall I have but fond memories of our 75,s which even in a crash proved themselfs: my little brother crashed the first at speed, totalling it but escaping with only minor injury. My second one went through 2 (brick) garden walls after spinning on black ice. Car dead but I hadn't a scratch.

My third 75 I bought for twice nothing for a elderly lady who husband had died. The car was brand new: 5000 km on the clocks and 13 years old. But I moved on and the 75 TS wasn't quick enough anymore. Time lacked to perform the needed tuning in order to upgrade suspension and engine. SOld it for chips to somebody I wanted to do a favour. He still has it, waxes it every week :-)

So I guess there are other fools who like the 75-shape too.

Tom De Moor

I see (well, saw 6 months ago when I was last on the road) the odd E36, I don't think I'd notice the C-Class. I see very few cars of like, K-Reg and older. I mean there are the odd few of course, driving past the 6th form in town at kick out time for example brings a few ropey student sheds, ditto with the Uni campus. It seems that, more than ever, the older cars I see these days tend to be quite tidy. Not the student ones and the like, and there is still some sheds if you drive through certain, shall we say, less affluent areas of Scarborough. I mean I see more cared for old cars than I used to as opposed to them being all sheds I think. For example a blacl Saab 900 Turbo that is local - I feel as though that has a red sticker or something on it as well saying Turbo or something...? I could be wrong on the red bit, but it only lives round the corner and it looks very tidy indeed, some owners club sticker in the window too iirc.

I used to see a lot of aging diesel Pug 405s, 306s etc but they seem to have suddenly got rarer, and 205 GTis are even rarer still. Although there is a

1.9 that belongs to a guy who lives locally, and also has a mint Clio Williams, which is very nice. Really, when they're freshly cleaned, they look showroom mint on the outside. Not a hint of a rusty scab on the Williams, and I wouldn't expect a none-crashed 205 to rust really, but this one is red and doesn't even have dull paint...

I haven't seen any of the older Escort models (not the cooler RWD ones, later crap ones), or having said that, newer Escort models for a while. Mind you, no surprise there, in 2003/4 my mate had a V reg Escort that was rusty... Also there was an, iirc R reg, Ka at my local indy garage round the corner that had failed it's MOT on rust and was having the sills fixed, and also, it had rust on the roof! Just a few inches of small scabs along the top of the windscreen

Again this is all like, when I was last driving around several months ago unfortunately, and I'd still never seen an Alfa 75 on the roads! Although, the older Alfas that I used to see quite often, the 155s/33s and stuff seem to have all gone and taken all older Fiats like Tipos and stuff with them.

Playing it fast and loose with the word 'interesting' there dude ;-)

That is of course bollocks, as there was 3 or 4 at the 'Ring, all appeared to be road legal cars driven there. They had some talented drivers who knew that course bloody well, no idea about the power and stuff, I let them by right near the start of my first lap as they were in a group containing some other track prepped stuff and Porsches and stuff. I never saw them on track again, but I got a few pics in the car park, and they were pretty prepped for the track -

- note the cage etc :-)

The 3SGTE in Vamps car was the basis for the same engine used by Toyota for the Safari Rally? Is that strong enough?

Curious; you're well traveled too. That said, if you mostly travel into business districts and avoid housing estates and large car parks, I'd imagine that 90%+ of the stuff you see is inside four years old. Maybe five.

Wow. On the estate where I live, what seems to be the trend is that the current machine is a typical company car steed - 3-series, C-Class, A4, Mondeo, Vectra, Avensis. Lots of houses with two cars have a five to seven year old former fleet car machine. But plenty of houses have J through to N registration stuff.

On the walk back from church this morning I went past two Primeras, one a K, the other a M... just by example.

Two different reasons I'm sure. One is that they're exported to Africa or Eastern Europe, the other is that they're sadly crashed, or "preserved."

C'mon the 205 shouldn't be preserved, it should be driven!

That's the kind of machine I looked at and passed over back in 2001, when hot hatches were more polluting and killed more puppies than climate change.

Our neighbour traded his TD in for a new Golf in the summer.

Sounds like "one careful lady owner from new" heh...

I occasionally see 155s, 156s seem to have disappeared and I don't remember the last time I saw a 33 or 75.

Although the 156 looks over-styled, the 75 is (sorry to say) butt ugly and the 33 was okay, they are all *far* more interesting than yet another silver

320d and the world is a poorer place without them.

LOL!

You're right, I should have put a disclaimer. Although to my eyes the 75 is unattractive, I would appreciate a good conditon one. It would still be ugly as a butt, but I can enjoy ugly things. Especially if it has that glorious "well used, enjoyed, but maintained" look.

;)

Or... avoid looking in shop windows when driving it? And can cope with the control panel and switch layout... ;)

Perhaps you should move somewhere less pikey ;-)

Oldest car I can remember seeing around here, aside from my 75 and even Katie's 156 is probably the early 2000s MkIV Golf GTI Turbo around the corner. There's a MkI IS200, too, but it's on an ageless plate, so not sure how hold that is.

Certainly nothing as old as an N-plate, though.

On our drive we've currently got a G reg Golf GTI, a K reg Sierra estate, an N reg Xantia, an S reg Avensis and a 57 reg Ka in the garage. Counting my

54-reg van which stays the night at work 99.9% of the time, that's roughly one car for every three years worth of new registrations since 1989.

"DervMan" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Vice-versa round here.

Indeed.

There are loads of 156s around. I see the odd 155, too.

I think there's a bit of a bias in your neck of the woods as there are a few very good Alfa specialists around the northern part of the M25.

Saw a Giallo Fly 75 somewhere between WGC and Harpenden the other day and passed one on the M4 a few weeks back.

Not seen a 33 for ages. There again, it haven't seen many of its contemporaries around, either. (Thinking MkIV Scrote, MkII Ashtray - only the MkII Golf appears to be surviving in any numbers from that era)

Maybe! On the other hand as Charlie observed, most people put their pride and joy in the garage and the rougher stuff lives outside.

Having driven the same 150bhp LSD '75 in legally drive-it-like-you-stole- it conditions, I'd have to say it's the nicest car I've chucked about by quite a way. You could steer it sideways on the throttle without thinking about it, snap it back straight from full sideways on gravel without snaking and even confidently chuck it horribly fast into a 90 degree corner without using the brakes.

Which is just as well, because the brakes are pap.