The Alfa 75 was the last car Alfa Romeo produced on the Alfetta Chassis, and as such is the ultimate evolution of the design and it is considerably more refined than its predecessors with most of the major design flaws addressed. The Alfa 75 was released to mark the 75th anniversary of the company, hence the name, and was the last car produced by Alfa Romeo as an independent manufacturer.
Initially the car came with either the trusty 1.8 twin carburettor, twin cam engine or the 2.5 litre V6 12 valve engine. These were soon replaced by the 2.0 litre twin spark and 3.0 litre V6 engines, the 2.5 litre V6 engine remaining in service in the first automatic Alfa Romeo ever produced. The car is front engined with a transaxle gear box at the rear, both the 2.0l Twin Spark and the 3.0 Litre V6 came with a limited slip differential (LSD). This transaxle set up gave the car very good weight distribution and the LSD made the car very easy to control when pushing on.
Suspension is by double wishbone at the front while the rear has a de-dion tube located by a watts linkage, which all helps to keep the wheels perpendicular to the road, while keeping unsprung weight of the running gear to a minimum.
The gear change was improved using a modified and much more positive gear linkage, this was one of the major flaws with the Alfetta chassis and its modification was long overdue.
The interior of the car retained some very quirky Alfa Romeo features with the front electric window switches mounted in the roof, the radio mounted behind the gear lever so you could not easily remove a tape when in 1st ,3rd or 5th and a very interesting oddly shaped hand brake. The seating position is very Italian in style with the pedals off set towards the centre of the car and the steering wheel, which is adjustable for both height and reach is still slightly to far away for UK tastes.
The Alfa 75 was styled in house and came in a first and second series. These are easily identified externally with the series 1 having yellow rear lights and flush front grill, and the series 2 had red rear lights and a slightly recessed grill; internally the dash lights turned from red to green. There were however a number of models offered with the Veloce being a very popular option. This had front and rear bumpers derived from the European 75 1.8 litre turbo evolution which was never available in the UK, while the V6 was offered with the cloverleaf and Veloce options.
The 75 Twin Spark engine is of particular interest as it deviated from what was becoming the norm in the way of performance engines at the time and instead of going down the 16 valve route they exploited their experience with twin spark technology and came up with a twin spark design, further enhanced by giving it a variable inlet camshaft controlled by the engine management system. This brought power up to 155 bhp while improving torque and fuel economy as the engine was able to run a lot more cleanly than single plug designs. The twin spark is also probably a better balanced car than the V6, the weight of the V6 tending to make the V6 under steer unless the driver had a very heavy right foot.
This is the last rear wheel drive car Alfa Romeo have produced and while not as affectionately remembered as Alfa Romeo Spiders and Coupes the 75 marked a renascence after the low period of the late 1970's
JP
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