Alfa Romeo Giulietta 1.8
My 8th Car that I owned was an Alfa Romeo Giulietta 1.8 litre 4 door saloon in a very desirable brown colour. Although the engine was full of character & quite powerful for its class back in the day, it wasn’t overall one of my favourite cars that I have owned. It was however an introduction to an Italian sports saloon & the Alfa Romeo Marque. I didn’t pay a great deal for this car & I think I sold it for less than £250. This car was an 1982 model & may even still be running to this day, which is hard to believe as the complete car was slowly being eaten away due to a severe rust problem.
Looking back at the stick-on go faster stripes & plastic wheel trim’s makes be wince – not my thing for sure at the present time! The gear-change I can safely say is the worst I have ever experienced, to describe the gear-change mechanism as very sloppy would be an understatement. Even with a rear mounted gearbox the rear wheel drive Alfa Romeo was pretty much useless in snow on any slope, no matter how slight!
When car engines were fully exposed, this was pretty good for the car enthusiast but not for this example of design whereby all the water & dirt were nicely directed into the engine bay!
I didn’t have the car very long but overall I enjoyed my initial foray into Italian car driving. The rear driveshaft universal couplings were on their way out & a very alarming clunk would result if you didn’t balance a progressive throttle whilst being in the right gear. The new owner of the car decided to floor the car in a high gear, with the resulting loud (very) clunk not being one of motoring’s most pleasant noises. The driver thought the car was great by the way.
