Not many people look back at the Alfasud with any real fondness, but it is a car with a reputation that precedes itself.

It is that rather unfortunate reputation that makes these cars less desirable than just about any other Alfa Romeo to come out of the 70s and 80s. They simply returned to the earth faster than any other car, which is saying something because rustproofing was generally atrocious back then. What is so unfortunate about that was the fact that other than that particularly glaring flaw, they were excellent cars.

Alfa Romeo recognized the need for a small economy car in the late 60s, and they knew the future was front drive, they poached the best engineer from Fiat and contracted the best designer they knew to pen the car.

A New Factory For Alfa Romeo

Alfa Romeo Alfasud Medium
Medium

To take Fiat on at their own game, Alfa Romeo had to be really smart about how they went about the development of the car, or at least in business terms; cheat.

Their form of cheating was by getting a government grant to build their brand-new factory that would build the car. They did this by proposing to build the factory in the south of Italy, as most of the population was flocking North at the time, creating more jobs in the South was politically beneficial, so they got the grant. The Pomigliano d'Arco facility was built rather rapidly, and after breaking ground in 1968 the factory in Naples was already producing cars by 1971.

Up to this point in time Alfa Romeo had only toyed with the idea of making a front-wheel drive car, so before they started development they got who they viewed as the best man for the job; Rudolf Hruska.

Related: Here’s What Alfa Romeo Owners Keep Quiet About

First Front-Wheel Drive Alfa Romeo

Alfa Romeo Alfasud Pinterest
Pinterest

Hruska, an Austrian engineer, was the man behind the Fiat 124 (incidentally he also designed prototypes for the Nazis, but that is another story) and he had a wealth of experience developing a front-wheel-drive powertrain, something Alfa Romeo didn’t really have.

Adding some flair to the design side of the car was Giorgetto Giugiaro, working at Italdesign at the time. It was one of his more restrictive designs, but much like the VW Golf he designed later on in his career, his touches were evident throughout the car, and the combination of Hruska and Giugiaro gave the world one of the most unique looking mass-produced cars.

Alfasud Sprint Quadrifoglio
Via: Alfa Romeo

It got a boxer engine up front (pretty clear which car inspired that) but unlike other boxer engines of the time, this was water cooled and had a belt driven overhead cam. At the time this was a revolutionary design, it saved both weight and space but still met all their power targets. The small nature of the boxer engine meant that they were able to keep the center of gravity really low which had huge benefits when it came to handling, at 1,800 pounds it also weighed next to nothing.

Even though the first 1.2 liter engines only made around 60 horsepower, they were still fun to drive, something that can’t be said for all economy cars made in the 70s.

Related: Everything You Need To Know About The VW Beetle

Rust Issues For The Alfa

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Goodwood

After the car made its debut at the Turin Motor show back in 1971, it got met with rave reviews, automotive journalists who were able to test the little car could not get enough of it.

It was unlike anything on the road back then, the Fiat 124/128 cars were great, but this was on another level in terms of driver engagement without any compromises when it came to space or overall practicality. It would get bigger engines and a variety of different body styles as the years went by, it even got a GTA variant in the form of the Export GTA, a strange model that isn’t technically recognized as an authentic GTA but technically did get the badge! By all rights they had knocked this out of the park, they had made a successful “people's car,” or had they?

Rusty Alfasud
Via: Flickr

The Alfasud was indeed a commercial success, over the long 18-year production run they sold well over a million of these little cars, but throughout its entire lifespan there was always an elephant in the room that never got properly addressed; corrosion. Italian cars are infamous for rust issues, with several rumors of them using different versions of absolutely awful sheet metal, but for the Alfasud it was mostly down to the fact that they built these cars on the coast and subsequently left them outside without very much rustproofing.

Related: 5 Cars That Are Notorious Rust Buckets (And 5 That Never Rust)

They were all made cheaply by workers that went on strike periodically, got inadequate rustproofing even for a time when rustproofing in general was inadequate, and you had the perfect storm. Owners reported corrosion appearing within months, months, not years but months! Unfortunately, that is what the Alfasud is now remembered for, instead of the excellent car it really was.