Saab is another car brand from Sweden that was known for making unique and interesting cars. They had a strong fan base but eventually went out of business.
Citroën is a car brand from France famous for making unique and unusual cars. They often have interesting shapes and features that set them apart from other brands.
AMC was a car company in America known for making unique and sometimes odd cars. They had some interesting models that stood out from the usual offerings.
The AMC Concorde is a car that was made by AMC in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It had a distinctive look and was one of the many unique cars produced by AMC during that time.
The Dodge Monaco is a large car made by Dodge that was popular in the 1970s and 1980s. It was often used by police and as a taxi because of its size and comfort.
The Alfa Romeo 9000 is a car that was made by the Italian company Alfa Romeo. It was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s and is known for its unique design and features.
Giorgetto Giugiaro is a famous car designer from Italy. He has designed many well-known cars and is respected in the automotive industry for his creative ideas.
The Lancia Thema is a larger, more luxurious car made by Lancia that was available in the 1980s and 1990s. It was designed to be a more upscale option compared to the Fiat Chroma.
The Chevy Cavalier is a small car that was made for many years. It came with different engine options, including a stronger V6 and a smaller four-cylinder engine.
Servotronic is a special steering system that helps you turn the wheel more easily when you're going slow, and gives you better control when you're going fast.
ABS is a safety feature in cars that stops the wheels from locking up when you brake hard. This helps you steer better and stop safely, especially on wet or slippery roads.
The PRV V6 is a type of engine that was made by three car companies: Peugeot, Renault, and Volvo. It was known for being reliable and was used in several different cars.
The Ford Sierra is a car that Ford made between the early 1980s and early 1990s. It was known for its unique shape and came with different engine options.
The Porsche 911 is a famous sports car that many people admire. The 964 is a specific version of this car made between 1989 and 1994, known for being fast and stylish.
Ferrari is a famous car brand from Italy that makes very fast and luxurious sports cars. They are known for their stylish designs and high-quality interiors.
Hi, I'm Lexi, your friend and jeweler at Shane Company. If you're planning to propose this holiday, we're ready to make creating your engagement ring a warm, welcoming experience. At Shane Company, we're all about your style, your budget, your dream engagement ring. Explore the widest selection of diamonds and ring settings ready for you to see in person. Or visit us at shaneco.com. You'll have your ring in days, not weeks. Our friendly jewelry consultants don't work on commission. There's never any pressure, just perfect proposals. Shane Company, your friend and jeweler.
Bonjour, no. I don't know. Say, hey, isn't that how you say hi and Swedish? It's HEJ. Well, that's what they always had at Kia. Yeah, that's why I know it. That must be true. Sorry for the European pronunciation, but the Ikea, like Kia. Okay. Today, we talk about the... Oh, do you want to see? I'll go to Swedish. We're going to talk about three car four cars that are...
Actually, the same car that most people... I don't think our realiser even remotely related. Is that so? I always have known. I just don't know what their most people know or care. It might predate. Almost every true died in the whole car person I talked to had no idea in preparation for the episode that we're talking about. We're talking about a revelations episode that just should have launched last week, hope it did. Had no clue that the Alfa Romeo 164 was the sob 9,000, which also then was the launch of Tama.
The Fiat Chroma. Really? I'm surprised that that is esoteric knowledge, but I live in esoteric... Esoteria? Esoteria? Yes. The land of population. The land of population. So... Okay. Yeah, revelations that we're going to talk about those cars. Ignore the thing in the background. It's Honda. We do talk about Honda, although we didn't mean to. Yes. And certainly not this one. Not this one. Definitely not this one. Just ignore that. Because sadly, we had to give back the TPO quad thrill cars, which are the aforementioned quadruple cars.
That's the quadruple that's separated at birth. And so let's hop to it. Okay. That's Jason Camisa. I'm Derek Tim Heifetz-Gott. This is the Carmage and Show. Part of the Haggerty Podcast Network. Now, I will make an attempt to clap. I want this extra floor. I want to throw it from a D minus to a D plus. Jason will now clap. That one was also shit. Jake, help.
I can't. I'm missing. It doesn't work. Right. Right. Right. Right. Four. Five. Four. Uno. Now, four. The original TPO car was... Was it the Fiat Chroma? It was TPO Zero. So the TPO quadril platform is actually very imaginatively named. There was TPO Zero, which was Fiat's first ground up new
platform. And then there was TPO Uno, TPO Duel, TPO Trey, A TPO Quadra, where those all sequentially to replace existing
shit. So were they different sized cars or were they different iterations of the same car? Maybe. Okay. And I say that
knowing that I have that information in my notes document from the Revelations episode that I could pull
up. If I can reach my phone. I can reach my phone. So, yeah. So basically, what year is this happening? I
don't know these questions. Oh, we're supposed to be doing an intelligent thing about TPO Quadro. So the whole
TPO quadril thing happened because Lancia needed a new full-size car. And what was it replacing?
You know the Lancia ancient history. My Lancia drama. Okay. Probably. I don't know. Some large car.
Okay. Probably the year was 1978. That I can tell you. Okay. So TPO Zero became the Fiat Panda.
TPO Uno became the Fiat Uno. Oh, I could have seen that coming. Get this. The TPO Duel became the Fiat
TPO. So they used TPO Drei became the Fiat Tempura and Lancia Deidre. Okay. And the TPO Quadro became the
Fiat Chroma, Lancia Tama, Sauv 9000 and Alfa Romeo 64. But not in that order. No. Correct.
In the order, the order was actually Sauv 9000 Lancia Tama, Fiat Chroma and then Alfa Romeo. In terms of
introduction, not the inception of the development. So 1978, Lancia needs a full-size platform. Fiat
had purchased, this is probably a gamma replacement if I had to guess. I mean, I don't know. I mean,
you've showed me fliminias with extra wipers in the back. No, this is from this generation. Yeah.
But that's literally all I know about Lancia's. When I do a revelations on like 50s and 60s,
Lancia then I'll tell you. Okay. 70s. So the year is 69 or 68 Fiat purchases. 69. So it's about a
decade later. Lancia needs a new car. They don't have the money to develop everything. Of course,
they're in financial ruin because Lancia. Volvo and Sauv almost merge. I think it was more of a
Volvo takeover of Sauv that failed. Sauv is like, ah, shit. So Sauv had only ever made one car
and then the 99 was their only other second car. And at this point, which was a replacement,
which was a replacement for that first car. And this became the 900. Right. Well, in 1978,
they needed to do something to make an all-new car and the merger fell through with Volvo. So
their emergency thing was oh shit, re-engineer than 99 to pass future rollover tests and crash
tests. And that became the 900. So now they have that, but they really wanted a large car. That's a
heavy redo of the 99. It is a 99 with a lengthened front end as all it was. I mean, the hatches
are swathable. They change in the two cars. So Sauv has no money, no ability to build a car. And
one way I don't remember how it happened. But one way or another, they want to have been talks
with Lancia and they both wanted a full-size family sedan. You know what else they both wanted
to survive? To sell the Delta in Sweden. Yes. Which led to the Swedish market only
Sauv Lancia 600 GLS and other variants. Yeah, this is something that didn't make it into the
revelations episode because I just for time. But I love that you can buy a Lancia Delta iE the car
that became the integrale, the four-wheel-drive version of it. Yeah, the hot version became the
integrale. There were many non-hot versions of the Delta. But badges as a Sauv. Yes, that's so
cool. The Sauv 600. There was another, they did another project. There was another car that they
co-branded, whatever. So they were in bed together. And Fiat's plan was. I do not want a normal car
department department. Yeah, I mean, who are the two weirdest car companies in the world in 1978?
I mean, Citroën had to be out there. Yes, you could buy the CX and the GS.
But otherwise, I mean, the three weirdest cars. Every country has a weirdo, right? Italy's
weirdo is the Lancia. Sauv is definitely weirdo. They were getting less weird, but they were
still quite weird at that point. What about, does America have a weird car company? Talker.
Yeah, but during this period, it would be like the remains of AMC. That's true. Yeah, the eagle was
pretty weird. Yeah. And the Concorde AMC Concorde, which is the trunk version of the non-wagon version,
which is the one that became the Renault alliance, which was actually a Chrysler. No, no,
the Chrysler was a... Dodge Monaco, although those cars were Renault. You know all the Chrysler cars
that are actually Renault. If you open the hood and it's got a longitudinal front-wheel drive car,
then it's a Renault. Yeah. So that even went to the 300M was still based on the remains of what
would have been the Renault 25, I think it was. I don't even remember the alliance. Anyway,
so you have the weirdo Lancia from Italy and the weirdo Sauv decide they sign a memorandum
of understanding. And I think it was October of 1978. They're going to work together on a new car.
Fiat groups, it's fine. We'll take one. And so they decide they'll market this full-size
family sedan as the Chroma. Lancia will market theirs as the Tema. If you ever hear anyone
call it, the FEMA punch them. Just like if you hear anybody call it a Lancia or an Audi,
then you punch them. Yeah, yeah. A lot of punching going on. Sorry, guys. We'll just learn to speak
the language or pronounce the name in the language from which it originates. Somebody made a comment
on one of the previous podcasts. Like as a European, I want to punch myself for the pronunciation
that you two do. I don't know what it was. Someone objected to Coupe and also Jaguar. Jaguar.
You can't. I mean, we're usually pretty good at the pronunciation though. I was kind of surprised
to hear. Well, these are words that we have an alternate pronunciation for in English. They are
English words, they have entered the English dictionary. Coupe, Coupe, right? It is pronounced
Coupe. It's in a recognized pronunciation in English in the same way that Jaguar is a recognized
pronunciation in English in America. Yeah, you don't look at the cat type thing and say that's a
Jaguar. As Americans, we don't. Jaguar. Yes, but we also say, I mean, it's just regionalized,
just like we say schedule. Schedule America. But these are the words in this language as opposed
to foreign words. So if you object to our pronunciation, go fly your schedule. Sure, an alternate
pronunciation for kite. Go fly your key day. Anyway, Lancia and Slob joined forces. They decided
to make the car. Fiat makes its own. And there's a great. I found during the process of research,
I found a great interview with a saw high level. These end all up end up as sort of bad heavily
badge engineered versions of the same car. Yeah, we will have said that in the intro. But the big
surprise is that we have three four cars technically having nothing to do with the name Tepo Quattro,
the Quattro has nothing to do with four four cars that are badge engineered but have very different
personalities. But the, Slob tends to, first of all, the Italian labor unions kicked
saw out of the development process. This I love. So like a bunch of interviews, some people
like, yeah, well, we sign a memorandum of understanding that we're going to jointly develop this
platform. And then they kicked us out. And then made a bunch of decisions at Trateria's at night,
Frittoria if we're fucking up pronunciations. And that we had no say in it. And they just gave us
the final product and like, here's your car. And the styling of the Tepo Quattro cars was done by
Giorgio. All of them? Yes. All of them? Except the alpha male. Okay, we're not there. We're not
to alpha yet. So the three original, the chrome, the Tema and the 9000, Giorgio did and then handed
them over to the car companies and allowed them to tweak and finalize the design but then had to
give it back to Giorgio for sign off. That I think is pretty cool. Okay. He had also done work for them
elsewhere in the fiat sab launcher group like the Delta. Yes. That's it. Oh, well, I was just saying
thinking in common ground between launcher and sob. And also, by the way, if you hear anyone ever
pronounces last name as Giorgio, punch him. I don't just punch him. Giorgio Guigiario. I've heard it all.
Anyway, so Giorgio designed these cars, hands it over them. And then I read this great interview in
Swedish trends. Thank you, Google translate. Sobs head of safety attended the first crash test.
And it was all the launcher guys and because fiat really has nothing to do with this. It was genuinely
launcher plus, you know, the sob came in. And his quote was that the launcher guys were squealing
with joy after the crash test. And while they were all the Swedes were holding their heads in horror
because passenger self completely collapsed. And the Italians were judging it by some other
standard. It didn't blow up. It really shatter. Shatter into it. Two tons of rust. I thought it
was so funny. So basically the hand on this car and the Swedes are like, ah, fuck, we're going to
have to re-engineer the whole front end, which they did. And still beat the launcher to market.
If you want to understand how Italy works, there you go.
Yeah, they gave them a finalized product. Italy gives Sweden a finished product. Sweden
unfinished is it refinishes it and launches it before Italy can get the original one.
And so the big difference between the fiat chroma and launcher tamer, the
tamer came a couple months after the sob 9000 and then the chroma came eight months, I think, after
that. But in the hierarchy, think of the fiat as the Chevy version and the launcher as the
Cadillac version, Cadillac. So the fiat started with like a 1.6 was, I believe, the smallest engine
of the bunch and then topped out at a two liter, which then was the bottom motor in the launcher.
So the launch has sort of picked up an equipment level and power where the fiat left off.
Otherwise, the same car, just different front end treatment. I think that's more differentiation
than you'd get it within GM. I feel like you'd get more powertrain overlap in GM.
Yeah, because you could get a cavalier V6 and you could get a four-cylinder
similar on. Yeah. And there were like 3,100, but if you're talking
bretas or whatever era of car you're talking about there, you could usually get a big motor in the
Chevy that would just put a Z in front of it and give it Euro look, grill, and alloy wheel,
and a red stripe and then say it was sporty. And then put a Euro badge on it.
Yes, the Euro Lumina. Oh my god. So they made more of a concerted effort to differentiate
and stratify-ish. I mean, I don't think it's a product. Yeah, but like the engines and stuff.
Yeah, in equipment level, there was a lot of stuff that like the launch had servotronic, which
is Bosch's variable assist power steering, like speed sensitive power steering. Launch had a bunch
of stuff, optional ABS. I think it was the first time car with ABS. It was not available on the
Chroma. Chroma was initially four-cylinder only and you can get a V6 in the launcher and I love
this. Could you ever get a Chroma that had more than four cylinders? No, Chroma was four-cylinder.
Always four-cylinder. Tamai, you could get a PRV V6. So the Pujo Renault Volvo 2.8-liter 2849 CC
90-degree V6 that was in the Pujo 505 and the Renault 610, a610, a610, but also the later 25 and 75
and then I guess not 75. And then the 25, and then that was in not Volvo 960 GLE had that motor
and the DeLorean of course. And the 262. 262 had that motor too I think. But it was when I was doing
research, I realized this is the only European V6 in production at the time. It was also in the 504
coupé. Am I wrong about this being the only European V6 because didn't Ford have
Cologne? Ford had outdated to the 1960s. Yeah, they had the Cologne V6. Well, it's not
kind of European, maybe it's not European. You need to call the editor. My phone is going,
hey, why remind me to hit 6 p.m. to call Rob to unfuck the fuck up about the V6 in production.
Getting to see the sausage be made. Thank you.
It's evening at 6 p.m. Of course.
Shit, yeah, I did my research and there was no other European V6, but I bet that search excluded
Ford. What year? This would have been 1982. That's also right around the time the Alfa Romeo
say came out and the GT Voussay Alfa was 82.83. Yes, but these cars were earlier.
That's why I just asked you what year and you said 1982. Because you could get the GT V6 in 1981.
But it was out. Yes, the only other European V6.
In two ways. I fucked this up in two ways.
Yes, so there was not a lot of options for V6.
Not to have it anyway. I think I fact checked this one. Glad we're doing this episode.
But interestingly enough, later in the... So Alfa Romeo was not part of the FIAC group when
this whole thing started. Alfa Romeo joined... Alfa Romeo joined the People Cultural Program
later on its own, having nothing to do with anything, and then became part of the FIAC group
right before the 164 launched. At that point, FIAC group, IE Lancia,
had gained access to the Voussay V6. So the Tema, you could get either a PRV V6, which was a 90
degree V6, or the Voussay, which was a 60 degree V6. Sobs were always their own force owner,
which was pretty amazing. Or GM 54 degree V6. So the Tepo Quattro was available now with three
different V6 engines, each with different parentage and degreeage. Yes. Plus. But that was actually
also the V6. The SOB V6 wasn't until the end. I think it was until 90-3. Yeah, the last two years.
Because SOB had been GM'd. GM'd. So I mean, I love that right off. One of my favorite
things about doing this research is that you have four cars that are effectively the same.
When I started counting the number of engines available, there were four six and eight cylinder
engines all within 113 CC and displacement. Yeah. So these are the three V6s and the V8, which was a
Ferrari V8. So also two Boussos. It was the two and a half liter that was in the Tema. The three
liter was in the in the 164. And then you had the twin cam, a four cam Boussos three liters. So there
was a two and a half liter Boussos. I think there was a two liter turbo. Yes, there was a two liter
turbo. Two and a half liter three liter and then a three liter 24, about four different Boussos.
There's so many engines. There were 15 different four cylinders gas engines and then I think
there were five different diesels from three or four different manufacturers. Yeah, VM Motori.
I'm sure it was one of them. So theme. I think it was the other name of the company that
that absorbed VM Motori. And then there was I, I don't remember, there were two other. The amount
of engines in this car was just insanity. Anyway, so chroma debuts. It's a full size car.
Chroma Tema. It actually got pretty good reviews. It was quite avant-garde looking, which is hilarious
because to us, they just look like boxes. Yeah. And it was quite a lovely car. But the sob,
I don't think I realized, I never thought about this in 1984 when I debuted in the US,
the 9000. And they, it took them a little bit wild, of a while to get it to the US, to get it to
their cars. I think 85 model year. 84 as an 85 or 83 as a way for some, somewhere, one of those two.
Think about it this way. In 1984, Ferrari had just gone to 4 valve persona in the
Quatharavolic cars, the 38. It was an 83 model year. This was not only double over at CAM,
4 valve persona, but it was turbocharged and intercooled and had APC, which was the knock sensor,
boost control on top of it. They were like complete spaceships, technology-wise. And that's something
you, we don't think of with sob, especially given that all of the cars in the Tepocultural platform
had an independent versus pension, except the sob 9000. And I don't think I knew this.
The sob 9000 used a B-Maxle. And I don't mean a torsion beam the way front-wheel drive cars do
right now. Like an actual B-Maxle with a washful image and, yeah, totally nuts.
It's just basically holding the back of the car off the ground. And yet it was the best handling car
of the bunch. Did you confirm that? No. I mean, yes, I did drive. So for the revelations episode,
we had the three fastest variants of the cars. There were no performance fiat's.
Had there been a fiat available to us for filming, I probably would have gotten one,
but we could not find a single fiat chroma anywhere in the US.
Does anybody out there who is consuming this know if there is a fiat chroma in the United States?
I would be interested. Don't tell us because I don't want to know. It's too late.
I'm just curious if anybody knows of one. I mean, put it in the comments.
We, whatever. I asked the insurance guys. Hagrid does not ensure a single fiat chroma.
Not a one. Not a one. And you know, I found a Tama 832 like that. A sob 9000 Aero like that.
And a 164 Q. So what we had in the studio was the Q4.
I found a Q first and then we got the Q4. We had in the studio was the three fastest cars,
which each each of which for its time was either the most powerful or quickest or fastest front-wheel-drive
car on the planet on a debut. And so the first we think unless there's some other V6s we've never
made. I'm going to hang myself and shame. You said do this episode now before the it's not done
yet. I'm kidding. No, before the research wears off. Other research wore off long ago because I did
another revelations worth of research afterwards. And now I'm doing two more. So if I get anything
confused with Mercor XR4 Ti and Ford Sierra, which I think had a 1.5 liter. And so that was when I
just said the smallest engine was a 1.6. Don't believe me because I don't remember. I think it was a
Lempredi 1.6 in the fiat chroma, but I might be confusing that with what the smallest engine in a
Ford Sierra, which was I think a one. Well, you're certainly not confusing it with the smallest engine
and shes at a marauder. We don't know. I can't believe any. Yeah, so these are all fucking speedy
means that the sob 9000 arrow arrow was the top spec fastest one of the bunch available from 93.
So there was a heavy facelift in 93 for the sob 9000. There was a smaller facelift in like 87 or 80.
And but they were turbocharged from the outset. And I think for memory, yes, available turbo
charging early on with like 188. So it was 1660 horsepower two liter 16 valve.
Became it eventually got balance shafts to smooth it out and then was bumped out to 2.3 liters.
And the two three the highest output version of the two three was the arrow motor. When did the two
three arrive? Sorry. Sometime between 1984 and 1993. I feel like it was at that facelift.
There was a 1990 turbo, which was the predecessor of the arrow. And that one had 200 horsepower.
I was just wondering if that was a two liter. The 200 was the two liter. Oh, it was the two three.
Okay. Right. And actually, if you got the 2.3 arrow with an automatic, it was de-tuned down to
200 instead of 225. Carner, we've got a six two to 60 out of the out of the arrow.
The 225 horsepower of five speeds. So all the cars we had with five speed, you know,
this is top spec stuff. Except for the Q4 was not five speeds. We're not going to talk about that.
Okay. We're not there. We're doing a separate and the and but more importantly, 148
at 96 miles an hour through the quarter mile. That was a seriously fast car. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I think at that time of 9.11 would have been in the 13s.
Severely in the 13s or barely in the 13s. I don't know. Yeah. I feel like maybe.
No, I guess 996 was almost out. So 964. 964 would be 0 to 1649 and a quarter mile is in the,
I think, the first half of the 13s. Okay. Yeah. It was the fastest front drive car. I mean,
the only thing that I could find that was even remotely close. Randy Post was like,
Dodge Omni GLH 75. But the only other car that I could find that was close was Taurus Show,
which was yeah, fast. And that was not 62. I think that was 6465.
And what I didn't realize about 9,000 is that it's actually shorter than sub 900.
What? Six inches shorter. I bet the wheelbase is longer. It is longer. The wheelbase is longer,
but the overhangs are shorter because nine, the sub 900 isn't composed entirely of overhang.
Yeah. The wheels touch each other in the center. Yes. And then there's just overhang on the side.
It has what the 9,000 has one and a half times the interior volume. And I'm not talking
including cargo. I mean, just interior volume. It's a car that feels huge inside. It's
massive. And the hatchback when you fold it down massive also. Yeah, we did. We were going to
record one scene with me sort of lying in the hatch and it was very reminiscent of the
Rover S1. And we thought, forget it, I'll just sit in the driver's seat like a normal human being,
but it's huge inside. Plus, I think the Aero had big has well, I know the Aero's big bolsters
on the rear seats and it doesn't easily fold all the way down. And so we just let it go. But
the car is enormous on the inside and six inches shorter than the 900. We never thought that.
Yeah. That surprises me. And it won. So it debuted and immediately one car driver had done a 10
best episode or issue and it won best engine of the year, which was the original two leaders.
Yeah, because it's so sophisticated, right? Yeah. It was ABC and all those. But then the 9,000 one
went up on the 10 best list four years in a row. And the reviews were just like, I think
I feel like they did 12 at least 12 road tests of 9,000s towards life. I mean, I just was buried
in magazines going through all these reviews. They loved it. I mean, everyone just loved that
car. One all the comparison tests always. It just it did really well. And I've always thought the 9,000
was cool. I just didn't know how cool it actually was. I didn't know how good it was. Yes.
Right. Just fundamentally good. You owned a 9,000. No, my mom had one when I was a kid. Oh, really?
Yeah. A turbo? No. Why not? I thought your mom was cool. What happened? My mom had a 900 turbo.
So she this was in the era when gas broke $2 for the first time. And she was daily driving a
Range Rover. And she said, I just want something that is going to be like responsible or more
economical from a fuel perspective. And I found a 9,000 CDE for her called diplomatic CD. Yeah.
The sedan that the so that it was extra uncool. Not only was it naturally aspirated, but it was also
not a hatchback. Yes. CD means diplomatic body, you know, falsely in French fry, which was the
subterm for the sedan. So it was a sedan manual. Nope. Get out. Yeah. She get out. Give me your
mother's phone number. We need to check. Well, hold on. You found it for her. You get out. No.
Well, she I did what she asked me to do. I said, I never do what anyone asked you to do. Do what you
want? She replaced it three years later with a Jaguar. So that last is really well, as you can see.
Two and a half years actually. But amazing to me that the all of the handling praise for that car.
So they did some pretty cool stuff. We're moving the watts linkage around to the front side of
the leading edge of the solid axle, which gave it some rear steer characteristics. And so it
actually had some lift off oversteer and was really well balanced. And I'm guessing it was the
reverse suspension basically from the 900 that they just carried over with a bunch of changes.
And I think they probably did that as a cost savings measure to undo all the expense they did on
crash. Sure. Yeah. And I mean, it was an engineering sort of familiar. Like they knew what levers to pull
on to get certain characteristics to change. So if the concept wasn't like ground breaking or like a
whole bunch of uncharted territory for them, that makes sense. Just they, I mean, you get in one of
those cars and immediately all of the controls are just perfectly where you think they're going to be.
Yeah. Like sub ergonomics were amazing. Everyone bitched in period and it certainly pissed me off
that every time you turn the key on, it reverted to fan. Like the fan was on high for the not high,
but obnoxious. Yes. And so every track comes on every time you turn on the car. That is beyond stupid.
Yeah. I mean, other than that, I just think it's kind of a marvel of packaging and I love
stopgages and I love that the headlights which like illuminated right where you needed and the big
junky buttons. It's ergonomically nice. It's I think aesthetically attractive also has that sort of
cockpittiness to it where there's this sort of area that is for the driver that's very delineated
that where all the controls are. I didn't like that the ignition switch was on. I mean, so
that some of the period reviews, the bad stuff that people wrote was where's the weird?
Oh, yes, because that was a characteristic. That was like a sob trademark and it was sob trying
to mainstream themselves and become commercially viable. So they turned out a lot, well,
compared to the 900 is not where they were doing it or was it because it was forced upon them
because it was shared. Yeah. Sure. I mean, but I also think if they want to sell it volume,
they have to make more mainstream their products a little bit for sure. I mean, I don't think they
had a choice. Well, I'm curious what they would have done. But yeah, the key, the ignition.
I said that a conventional location because it was shared with the other cars. You didn't have
to put it in reverse to get the key out. That kind of stuff. But sob did a bunch of literature
from back in the day. Sob was very proud that they made their own transmission for the car. So they
did do a lot of stuff on their own. And remember that the 900 was a longitudinal engine that was
flipped 180 over 15 degrees more backwards. I mean, it was just complete batch at change driven
transmission. And this was an entirely conventional transverse front-wheel drive layout. So they did
have to make a new transmission. It was being, yeah, I had become standardized for that time for front
wheel drive cars. I think this was probably one of the first applications of that in such a physically
large car that concept emerged like with the Mini. Very small car. And then it was, I think,
fiat with the 127 also small car. The Delta, which was a size smaller than this, was like kind of a
big car to have that arrangement. It was just, they were seeing how far they could go with the
transverse conventional, now by now conventional front-wheel drive arrangement. And I think this was
one of the bigger tires, bigger cars at that point that it ever used that layout. Yeah, and of course
it's not big by today's dinner, but it was enormous. These are full-size cars. Yeah, there were
executive cars. I mean, they were like sort of probably slotting somewhere bigger than the three
series and smaller than five series in terms of external dimensions. I don't think they were that far
off of five, certainly not with their wide cars. The weird thing to me is you said attractive
before, and I thought you were talking about the exterior styling for a second. I think they're both
attractive. I did too, until we were looking at the, we were looked at the Lancia for a while,
the Tama, and we're like, okay, it's kind of, this car's a little bit mobster because it had
tidied windows and it's beautiful, like an orangey red with Ferrari looking wheels on it, factory wheels.
And then we get the sob and we're like, oh my god, this is so much more styled and it's so much
more modern and whatever. And then we brought the Lancia back in and realized that by comparison,
the sob looked overinflated bulbous and awkward. I was really interesting to see how the Lancia
just looked tailored, and you talk about the interior of the exterior. Yeah, that was a facelift.
They blobbed it as they got into the 90s. I think the earlier 9,000s a little crisper,
right? Anything about the shape of the rear lights on that car. And it's a little bit more
flat surfaces, I guess. They rounded it when they did the 93 facelift because that was the
rage. Everything went extra arrow and blobby. I think maybe in large part in response to the Ford
Taurus, which came out in 1986. So that arrow thing, the aerodynamic blobbyness was
represented in the facelift. But I think the earlier 9,000 is a more sleek. Yeah, it's more
straight lines. It's more rational. It's more 124 adjacent Mercedes 124 or Audi C3, the 5,100 adjacent,
where there's this sort of smooth straightness as opposed to just full-on rounded blobbyness,
which became very 90s. The time of retained its entire lifespan, despite getting a facelift
allegedly to. Yeah, this one was a series to the 832 only got one because I think they didn't come
out early enough to get the pre-faced first facelift. Yeah, and they basically ignored the second
facelift. But the table was much more, the table looked a decade older than that facelifted.
So it was interesting. Okay, so Tema comes out with that PRVV6, a bunch of Lumpredi twin-cam
four cylinders. And then somehow talk Enzo into giving them the 3.0-liter V8 from the Ferrari 308
Quattrovole. Clarkson mistakenly said it was a 3.2 liter. It was not. It was a 3.0.
And when you look at the timeline, that engine had been retired the same year.
In favor of the 3.2. Yeah, so you see the Enzo agreeing fine, you can have the 3.0 liter,
we're using a 3.2 now. It's exactly the same thing he did. Well, he didn't do it, but Ferrari did
it a decade earlier. Did Enzo actually do this or was this... I just heard of it.
Hugo Gobato or somebody at Fiat who was actually doing this. I mean, Enzo was still a
sensibly in charge of Ferrari, I don't know. Not really road cars. I mean, after the Fiat
takeover, he was really focused on race cars. And then like, there was, I think there was a guy
named Hugo Gobato, who was a Fiat man who was responsible for Ferrari road cars. I have to sign off.
When the holidays start to feel a bit repetitive, reach for a sprite winter spiced cranberry
and put your twist on tradition. A bold cranberry and winter spiced flavor fusion
sprite winter spiced cranberry is a refreshing way to shake things up this sipping season.
And only for limited time. Sprite, obey your thirst.
Absolutely refused to let them call it the Ferrari launch at 8.32. So I know he was at least
he was now at that point no longer like the guy who couldn't control or who couldn't maintain
control after the Fiat takeover and he was like an old revered figure. So I can imagine they would
give him sort of that type of control. But a decade earlier, the Ferrari engine ended up in
Aloncha, which was the Stratos. And that was another thing that the Ferrari had to approve. And
they were like, okay, we're done with these. You can have them. That was kind of part of the reason
why it was okay. Because the Stratosists were all built as the Dino's production was wrapping up.
So same thing just a decade earlier. So yeah, so they shoehorned, I mean, if you think about it,
the PRV V6 was a 90 degree V6. So and mounted transversely, that means it's wide front to rear
in the engine compartment. Yes. And then all of the four cylinders were long,
right? Four cylinders. Right. And so you have something that's four cylinders,
you know, as long as the four cylinder. And as wide as the V90 V6, well, the V8 is going to fit.
Dude, that barely fits. I mean, the cooling fan is within a half or three quarters of an inch
of the valve cover on the front valve cover. It's tight in there. But Ferrari did actually do
Coddy built a lot of those engines towards the end because Ferrari didn't have a capacity to do it.
But they were busy making three twos and then three fours. But it was crossplane crank version.
So why did they do that? They, for what the answer I'm putting my phone on, do not disturb because
things are going crazy. My weather station is texting me because there are gusts of wind over 35 miles
an hour. Hopefully your weather station hasn't blown away. It's telling you that it's on its way
into orbit. Yeah, if you guys hear weird noise in the background because the weather station is
the weather station is trying to get in because flying through the window. They did it for
NVH noise vibration harshness. I mean, ostensibly. And it could be maybe that Ferrari didn't want,
you know, his sports car motor in or for I didn't want its sports car motor in the launcher.
But actually, flatplane crankshaft V8s vibrate like two four cylinders arguing basically,
it's two four cylinders vibrating together. So you have twice the vibration of a four cylinder
which really isn't appropriate for a luxury car. And the Taymo was very much a luxury car.
And you know, you'll find that the same thing that Maserati did with the Costa Porte and all
of the Ferrari V8s have crossplane cranks in the Maserati. And I just don't think a flat plane
works. I haven't driven a GTC current, not the Luso. The GTC4 Luso is V12. But the regular GTC
is a flatplane V8. And I just can't imagine that engine matching that body cell. For example,
I just, you know, you get a luxury car like that or you know, some luxury. Because it sounds like
a Honda four cylinder. Yeah, it's just not the most pleasant noise and it's not the most pleasant
feeling in a automatic sort of sedan for today. For back then, this was just, you know, they,
I believe that Taymo used exactly the same transmission as the Alfa did, which later,
which tells me it's just an off-the-shelf, you know, fiat group 5-speed, traditional
layout, but right into the front wheels. And so it's a crossplane 3-liter 32-valve V8, 215 horsepower,
which made it the, at the time, because this came out in 87, 86, 87, was the most powerful front
wheel drive car. Yeah, because the sob had 200 horsepower in 90. And the Alfa didn't exist yet.
Torsho was not for sale in Europe. The what? The Taurus. The Taurus. So that was 220 horsepower,
but I think that was two years later. Anyway, 89. 89, yeah. So I think this was 87, and that was
89. So 215 V8 horsepower to the front wheels, what could possibly go wrong. But the wildest thing
about the Tama, to me, is two things. Number one, how incredibly subtle the differences are between
it and the regular Tama. Yellow badges and a yellow hand-painted pinstries from the factory,
all done in Ferrari yellow. It's color of the Ferrari badge. And mode in a yellow.
Mode in a yellow, which is, yeah, exactly that yellow is taken from the mode in this flag, right?
But just an egg-crate grille instead of the lines. Yeah, a great grille because Ferrari always used
egg-crate grills back into the 50s, maybe 40s, even. So that is a nod. A little bit of a nod.
Ferrari-looking five-spoke wheels. Yeah. It had four or five logs. Five logs, and all of the other
Tama's were four. Okay. So that's a bit of a giveaway. 20 exhausts. I mean, not just two pipes next
to each other. And then the world's first motorized rear spoiler. Yeah. Which is like the coolest part
of the entire car, I think. Maybe the entire coolest part of the back of the car. Yes, exactly.
Of the part after the firewall. The way it works is the coolest because it's a flush-mounted thing that
pops up and out. And together with it in one piece is another sale. What would you call it that
actually pops up and then reseals the trunk? Yes. So what was previously the top of the trunk
lid now becomes the top of the wing once it has deployed. With another false floor that comes in
and completes it. I just think that's just the beasties. It's really, really cool. And it doesn't
take that much space in the trunk, you think it's going to be quite sort of, you look at the
underside of the trunk lid and you're like, oh, it's not that substantial actually. It's impressive.
It's pretty cool. Car had adaptive shocks, or excuse me, two-mode electronically controlled shocks.
And the soupiest, five-speed linkage, I think I've ever touched in my life. It's very much like
we made a lovely tomato sauce and some meatballs in there and you got to kind of figure it out.
Yeah, and you're like, oh, we've bumped up against a meatball. Let's try over here.
Yeah, I'm going to get mine a gear over here. Yeah, exactly. What a cool car, though.
The interior, I think, is the part of the car that just really differentiates it.
The whole thing is lined in leather. Yeah. And it's all this saddle color, this very Italian sort of
brown color. That's the only interior color I think that was available. Did they come, were they
very complex? I don't know. Maybe the base interior was actually Alcantara. So I don't, I don't know,
but it was, I mean, if they were to do multiple colors, when I say everything is leather. They
center console, the ship, the visors, the visors, the A pillars, the roof was handles. Yeah,
the roof was Alcantara inset in, I think that's like faux stitching. Unbelieved. It's very premium.
And Briar would train the center console. So when you're, you know, the sort of upper dash
has three Ferrari round circle vents. When the regular car had a big blocky rectangular ones.
They really did change this interior. Yeah. The funny thing is that I think a lot of people
would buy that, I don't know, if you're buying that car, did you own a Ferrari or would you come
from a launcher like those cues, you have to know where those cues come from. And when you get
in that car in order to recognize them. And if you haven't spent time in a Ferrari before, you
might miss the fact that there's a bunch of Ferrari cues inside that car. Yeah. But I like that
for those who know. Yeah. Yeah. The rear headrests are worth mentioning. Headrests are, okay, rear
headrests are motorized. So everyone talks about like the 124 Mercedes era headrests that you can
sort of erect them. Yeah. You manually pull them up and then they lock in position. Right. And if
you, or they have another position, which is just retracted when they're flat on the personal
shelf. Right. And if you, from the driver's seat, you can hit a button which uses a little vacuum
solenoid to just unlock them and they drop down. Yes. With a terrific bang, that sounds very
not expensive. Yeah. It's a very jarring and crashy. Yeah. These are motorized. And they,
it's not the most expensive sound in the world if I'm honest either because Italians. But as they come
up, they come up slowly and they come up, but each of them operates individually based on that door.
So if I open the left rear door, the that headrest motors up. And then if, after I close the door,
after a certain amount of seconds, if nothing is in the seat, I think it's a 20 kilo sensor. So 44
pounds. If there's more than 44 pounds on the seat, it stays up. Otherwise, it goes back down.
I know that was a really nice touch. Yeah. But there's also that sensor will trigger it to go up.
Like, for example, I moved across the seat to the back side to the other to the back,
other back seat from the left door to the right. And then the headrest came up. I thought that was
very cool. It makes what a noise. Yeah. What a noise. It does not sound Italian because you're
expecting Italian V8 to be a flat plane. And it doesn't sound like that. It sounds like an American V8.
It is. Yes. It's small block. And it's one of them. I don't think I hope when I see the final episode
or the final edit of the revelations episode, we do the drama. Which you have perhaps consumed already.
View viewers have consumed already on YouTube should be should have done bin out for a couple days now.
I don't think we did a great job of capturing the sound, which is very difficult to do with
equipment on the car. The best way to capture sound of a car is outside to have it drive by.
One of the most musical V8s I've heard in the mid-range. And there's plenty of good stuff on YouTube.
There's lots of clips of them. There's a black one in like the Netherlands or something where the guy
clearly took all the mufflers off of it or something. And it just sounds like the most sinister.
Like, you do not want to meet this at night in a dark alley because it's going to eat you.
Like, it's really, really meaty sounding. It sounds like an American V8. It's very, very cool.
And fast. Fast. I was shocked at how hard that thing pulls to 7500 RPM.
Like it moves. Which is funny because the chassis doesn't as far as I can tell have a lot of sporting
intent. So on a scale of zero to 10 in terms of sporty, if like a Taurus show is a two and a
sob nine three is a two. This was a one. This is definitely not. So this car had Coney's
shocks on it. I'm pretty sure the front springs have sagged with time because it sits really low.
It didn't like bumps in the middle of a corner. Like, you know, once you're leaned over. So I kind
of think that suspension on the particular cars could be updated. I would. I'd raise the front
certainly. But it did not very much struck me as in the same way as the Taurus show. It's a luxury.
It's, it's there for ride quality and brute force power. Yeah. This is a beautiful sound.
It's like a 6.9, right? Yes. Like a limousine that has a big motor and it's not a sports sedan.
It's just a fat, a sedan with a lot of work. A sedan with a jet back on it. Yeah. Which
I was kind of hoping it would be like genuine sports sedan. But everything I've ever heard
about those cars is that they are luxury cars with a lot of horsepower as opposed to a sports
sedan. You should go drive this car. It is for sale. The seller is a wonderful guy. He name
is Euroclassics is the place it's actually on Craigslist. Advertise for sale has been for
quite a while. And this guy loaned the owner of Euroclassics owned us the Alpha-Z that I did a
revelation on a couple years ago. Total sweetheart of a guy. The car is fucking so cool.
Yeah. So it was the one that was the group that I wanted to meet more than anything else.
Yeah. Really, really neat car. And then there's the Alpha. Yes. The Alpha is designed by
a pinion freight now, I guess we can. Which I find very interesting. So remember the other cars
were done by George Edo Giorgio. It's all designed. The there was a Tama wagon. And the Tama
wagon was done by pinion for you know. And so you can imagine I have seen someone who made a
832 wagon. There was one officially made for Anielli. That makes sense. Silver with blue interior.
Yeah. Sold a couple years ago. And I'm going to call our combo as his
testerosis convertible that he had made was silver blue. I think so. There's definitely silver.
I think it was blue inside. Interesting. I fucking kill for a Tama wagon. That's so cool. But not
only did pinion for you to design the wagon, but they built it. So you can imagine Giorgio must have
been like furious. Like I'd be so pissed. I designed a car. And then did Giorgio ever have
manufacturing facilities? Actually don't know the answer to that. Did it's how design actually
build anything? Or did they just design them? Yes, M1. I think they coordinated the
building of BMW M1. That was Giorgio, wasn't it? They designed it. I don't know. I think they
actually wanted to be in the company that assembled it. They organized everything. They orchestrated
everything. But yeah, I would be pretty pissed if like I designed a sedan and they give it to my
cross-town rival to do the wagon version of it and then have them build it. But yes,
so an alpha, alpha joins the Tepoquattro program because as usual, Alfa's bankrupt doesn't have
any money. They start on a project called the 154, which was their replacement full-size sedan
for the Julia, I guess. No, for the Milano. For the 75. Milano hadn't happened yet. What,
sorry, what year are we talking? We're talking 1980. Okay, this is 81-82. So this would be replacing.
Is full full-size sedan? Well, the biggest sedan they made would be the say, which is a big
six-cylinder V6. Maybe it replaced the boost, so I've appeared. It must have been the replacement
for that because this was before Milano, before the 75. And they start working on a rear-drive
car. I mean, they're effectively done with it in terms of layout and everything's transacted.
The whole sort of alpha experience ran out of money and set off fuck and they joined the Tepoquattro
program. Have they been bought by Fiat? No. That's the wild thing is that the 164 debuted two months
after Fiat bought Alfa Romeo. But the whole project was done before they were actually related to
each other. And Alfa didn't like a bunch of things about the car. They wanted a lower roof,
a sleeker design, and so they basically chopped the center section out of the car and made their
own. The roof line was 1.3 inches lower than the launches. Pretty significant difference.
But they use the front rear structures, meaning the independent rear suspension from the Tema
Chroma, not the solid beam from the sob. But the front suspension from all of the cars,
which was a strut, they modified it ostensibly for a lower hood, but I don't think it actually has
a lower hood. And I'm going to look at where the shock towers are on the same. But of the cars,
this is the only one that has its own doors. So the doors on the 9,000 Tema and Chroma are effectively
interchangeable, effectively. And so on, then Alfa has Pinterfarin to design it. And
wow, when you see that car next to the others, like the difference an inch makes. In terms of height,
it looks long and low and sporty and fucking elegant and gorgeous. And holy
yet, that car is beautiful. That's funny. I always liked that car. I never thought it was beautiful,
though. I'm talking about a relation to the others. I mean, yeah. I think it's a great looking
car. Yes, I think it's great looking. I think it's very handsome. It's so incredibly sort of
wedgie in the rationalness of all the straight lines. It's very sort of unfussy in most respects.
Certainly the fundamental shape. I think it's too rectilinear to be beautiful, but it's aged
very well now. And now I actually see it. But as a child, I never thought it was beautiful.
But my definition of what a beautiful sedan was when I was a child was an XJ6. Yeah.
A voluptuous and old and soft and feminine. Yeah. And when you see it relative to the other
cars, you just see this is they were, for me, the 164 always looked a decade newer than the
other two cars. Then then then Tamacroma, right there. Those were very sort of upright,
big head, tall headlights, tall windows, very 80s looking. And to me, the 164 is 90s looking.
Huh. I don't get that at all. It looks very 80s to me because it's so straight lines. There's
nothing blobby. There's nothing arrow. There's nothing. I guess it's about it. I must be.
I mean, it was the best aerodynamically of the of the bunch. But I guess it's, to me,
it's reads 90s because it has flush headlights and just a very like smaller flush headlight. I don't
know. No, girl. What is your favorite design characteristic of that car? Till it's the back end.
That Toyota did for the nine, copied for the 96, 95 camera. Oh, 96. The Titanium in 97, 96.
97. One of that was that full with rear tail. I think the back end of the car is stunning. Oh,
it's it. I love the shape of the tail lights and how that continues into the fenders and the doors
and the front fenders and it starts in the middle. Yes, it handles and it starts in the at the
front fender right behind the turn signal. It goes all the way around the car, all the way
on the back, across the back and around the other side. I think that is super super cool. So beautifully
Italian restrained. Italians are best when they're restrained. And that's in terms of design, I think.
Otherwise, they do things like this, a 12. That looks like a Mansory nightmare. But I love
the way that interior looks. I love the, you know, keyboard worth of gauges. And the fact that the
exterior design motif is repeated inside the car. That interior and that exterior speak to
each other. I think a lot of cars, they, you can tell the interior and exterior were done by
different teams. We never talked to each other other than to discuss where the sort of hard points
were that they couldn't exceed. But that car, the interior and exterior look like they were designed
by people who were smells the same. Right. Same, same, smoking at the same bonk. This one,
all of the period protests were like, you open this up and it smells like a handbag.
This car is now, the car that we had here is 30 years old. And it's one of the newest.
Right. And it's one of the last days. Dunk in the most incredible way. You open the window and
the whole studio smells like this incredible leather. Yeah. Gorgeous. Yeah. I want another one. Plus,
all of the other cars have cable shifters. So they all feel like shit. Alpha used the same
transmission as the launch. The same gear ratios and everything else on the five speed. But
like beautiful. That's one of the things I remember. So I have mentioned a number of times I
owned one of these cars. And it has a wonderful shifter. I was shocked the first time I drove it
because like that's transverse front wheel drive. It's going to be just miserable. And it was
really just full on sports car. It's really, as soon as I started moving in this car,
I like rejoiced out loud because the shifter is amazing. And then the steering you'd never
believe it was related to the other cars. I said that in the video because it snaps right to
center. It's got a really deep effort curve. Tremendous amount of feel. Not as much torque steer as
I would have ever imagined in the car this powerful. We'll get to that in a second. But just very
different driving experience from the two cars. My impression also the chassis is pretty athletic.
Like it feels like a car that has interested in going faster as opposed to my impression of the
sob that I've driven. I never driven the Tema, but the sob's I've driven. They're fast and
straight line, but it's not a car that inspires you to hustle it. And the alpha is interested.
I mean, all it takes is you floor in the sob, right? For example, so neither of the sob
nor the Tema could put it all down in first gear, which of course instant wheel spin sign me up.
I'm a happy guy. So the Tema would just fucking, I didn't mean to when I did the back roads, but I
sort of pull out into traffic and squeeze into the throttle and just ignite in the front wheels.
And it's got, I don't remember what tires are on this particular car, but they're not very grippy at
all. And they're very talkative. So it just lit up the front in this beautiful rolling burnout.
And then it shifted seven grand or whatever. And the next gear is sort of right on top of it. And
it's ready to go again and happy to go again. And you turn the wheel. There's no waiting. There's
not great body control. It's just, it's kind of a slow rack. The sob, you get in, you get nothing,
nothing boost. And the vacuum cleaner goes crazy because it sounds like a vacuum. And in the video,
of course, we have the end of the cars, the engine mic, the exhaust is miced. And so you'll hear
some blow-off valves that sound really cool. You don't really hear them in the car. But that car
just kind of lights them up and very long first gear. And then you shift it like 5,500 from
first. And I swear you wind up at 1100 RPM in second gear. It's hugely widely spaced gears
that just tell you, I am not interested in hustling at all. I will go really, really fast. But
begrudgingly, the alpha, and this is, this was a Q4. It's a 6-speed. We'll get to that in a second.
You shift and you're like, did I just shift? Because I'm already, oh god, I'm rev limiter. Oh my
god, again, the gears are so closely stacked on top of each other that, and the engine is so vocal
that you just think you immediately between that and the steering. When you're into you in the car
that's vocal. Not much exhaust. No, nothing particular one. But you know, you were told you were
I'm in a sports sedan and let's go party to totally personality, total personality difference
between the other cars. Okay, so the 164 debuts. It's a fucking disaster. I mean reliability wise.
Oh yes. I thought you meant the debut party was went badly. Did it? I was thinking I was supposed to
okay. It's just all of the car magazine cars broke down. And remember that alpha was coming off
of the Milano in the US. So not only was the 164 three years after the Chroma. No, it was three years
after the Tema. So it was the last to this party. But alpha may have delayed it by three more
years to get it right. And they did millions of development miles. And they knew they knew they
had to undo the damage that the Milano did. In the Milano psyche of American consumers. Yes.
And the Milano, you know, I love a Milano. I think there were four long term tests, none of which
made it to completion. One of the cars burned to the ground or had some sort of engine fire,
one through a rod to the side of the block. One was constant problems. And I think car drivers
was the one where they're like, we're just going to get this back to you and we're not going to
talk about this ever again. Like it was it was that bad. And you know, those are the press cars.
That's as good as it gets. The American buying public was stung really hard by alpha maos.
Reliability.
Whoa. Whoa was generous. Disaster is the only word for it. And so they don't need to think for three
more years to get it right. And car and driver is like, well, we put 3,000 miles on our car.
And we experienced a couple of breakdowns. And I mean, we did a segment on it for the video
because I just had to laugh about the shit that broke on this car. You're like 180. I said,
hold on, they did 2.7 million shake like development miles. Did the car that they gave
gave car driver have 2.7 million miles on it? Because if you gave me a 2.7 million mile car
and I put 3,000 miles on it and that much shit broke, I would have been upset. And this was
ostensibly a brand new car. Needless to say, this is the car that was going to save alpha
mao in America. And it was the final bullet. Right around the same time as another car,
which people always think is related, but isn't, which also was designed by pinion freena.
That also put another mark out of its misery in the United States.
That car looks like it's a, it's a, it looks like a TPO Quattro product, but it's not.
I don't think I really ever paid attention. You're totally right.
Yeah, it looks like the fifth twin. Well, then you can add the sixth to it, which was the
infinity G20. That car looks smaller to me. It is, it's 405 size, but yeah, to me, it always
looked like a knockoff 405. Anyway, I guess pinion freena made a pretty car. Who could have
imagined that? For Ari's design house, effectively. Yeah, so that car came out. It had a, in the US,
only a three-liter Buso engine available. 12 trim levels initially, the base, the L and the S.
Oh, I didn't know there was a base on top. Yeah, there was a trim level on the bottom.
Fusing because in the US, yeah, because there was a base in L and an S and then a couple years in,
they did a facelift on the car. Yes, so this was for 94. So 91, 92, 93, you had, I don't know if
the base went all three years. I think they might have dropped it and then it was just the L and the S.
And there was substantive differences. The L and the S had different cams in them. Yes.
They had different power outputs, different pistons. 183 horsepower versus 200 horsepower.
Which is pretty wild that they would do different pistons and compression ratio, different cams.
There's like different actual engines and different wheels and the body kit and the seat is kind
of normal, right? Yes, but different power outputs. It's not like a, you know, like,
Camry SE gets five more horsepower, you know, Accord EX is at the time.
Not typical, especially for a brand that's trying to just, like, not die.
Minimum viable product their way to the marketplace. So 94 of the car gets an upgrade.
And I love my favorite, my favorite part of that upgrade. It was a whole new wiring harness
and they had, they used aerospace electrical connectors that actually clicked together.
What a concept, right? And something that vibrates, whatever, high tech.
And the update was mostly to address reliability, but gave it a 24 valve, 4-cam BUSO.
Also three liters. Power went to 200 for the base car. 210, I think.
10 for the base car. 10 for the base car. And then 230 for the replacement for the S,
which was the quadrofolio. They called it the Q because they did. They rightfully thought
Americans wouldn't be able to pronounce it quadro, quadro for Magio.
Quadrofolio, right? People would always say that. But it would just say the Q.
And interestingly, the S in Europe, the entire duration of the S, what we got here as the S was
sold in Europe for its entire duration as the Q. There. So yeah, quadrofolio. Quadrofolio,
Verde. Verde. Green. So which is fucked up because at the time, the Milano, a couple of years
earlier, all of them were quadrofolio. They were all so there was the, oh yes, there was silver
in the platinum, the gold and the, the Verde, the green sat at the top. Yeah, just like,
hello, like people can't even, you know, keep track of. Yeah, no, the green is better than the
platinum. Right. Come on. Not anyway. Fort Leifklover should always be green, I think, in nature,
unless they're yellow in which case they're dying and like I'll format it. Yeah, exactly.
But yeah, so the, the Q in America, one of being the two and a 30 horsepower four-campus. So
that is the most powerful variant of all of the T-Po-quattro cars. Did the Q4 also have 230 horsepower?
Yes. Not 240. We never got the Q4 in the US. So never got the Q4 in the United States. You can't
get the US. They sold 90 something up. Yeah, I've heard it was 95. Sometimes maybe it's as much as
150. In any case, they sold less than 200 of the right crazy, crazy rare cars. I found one
locally. A Q. A Q. A US market Q lost my mind. I'm like, this is amazing. You also drove the
black Q that I almost bought. Yeah. That was. I didn't drive it. I only rode the I rode it. And
that was the best six, sounding six-hounder I've ever heard bouncing off of the city walls. Yeah,
I took, I was driving that car to a PPI. I've told the story before. It came with a $7,000
recommended list of things that it needed, including a oil leak onto the clutch. Well, I bought
another one later, and it was also a very poor experience. No, it was an S. You don't need that.
You want the Q. You want the 24? I've been scared off of the 24 valve cars a little bit,
because there's less contact area between the timing belt and the sprockets. And I've heard that
they jumped timing more easily. And the one that I had that I was looking at that had 55,000 miles
had gotten a replacement engine at the dealer 29,000 miles because it jumped timing. Yeah,
you can't spin the motor backwards. Yeah, so you have to park it in neutral or reverse if you're
facing uphill. But that guy, that noise, I think. I know.
Unbelievable. So it's a shame that the one that you ended up with for your video didn't have
an exhaust on it. Well, let me tell you the one that I wound up with the video is a museum quality
stunt car spectacular condition. All of the owners for all three cars couldn't have been
more amazing. This guy is on the car for 400 years. He put it through a cosmetic restoration.
So this is a Q4, which means it's four wheel drive, which was not offered in the United States,
but was in outside of the United States. And they only sold 1,200 of these. It wasn't a lot of these
cars. The all-wheel drive system wasn't some prehistoric shit pile. It was actually developed very
by Shdiodimna Puh, the company that makes the one part of the car that works faultlessly except that
it was a computer controlled center diff that took into consideration engine speed, road speed,
load steering angle and wheel slip to determine how much lock up to give that center clutch back.
Plus a torsion limited slip at the back. So it was like no joke. So this was like a rally car,
like a very competent snow car. Right. I mean pretty amazing stuff. Plus a six-speed.
It was just that this is the Holy Grail 164. How was it dynamically? Did it feel
put the power down? Yes. So there was that. And put the power down no matter where I asked it to do it.
Do you think that you would have preferred the front-wheel drive version dynamically or do you think
that the four-wheel drive version was an improvement? I don't know. I've seen some videos of
performance driving in 164s where they laid so much tire that you couldn't even see the car through
the smoke and just sort of like on a racetrack. If I suspect I would prefer a 164 front-wheel drive
car if it had a limited slip. And I don't believe one was available. Don't quote me on that.
This thing put the power down in an undramatic fashion, which I'm typically not a fan of.
But this car also had a weird... I talked to the owner about this. I yelled at him first for two
things. Number one, please check the rear suspension bushings, because there was a sort of secondary turn.
I didn't yell at him. I said, you know... Here's my impression. I yelled at him about the other thing.
But this was like, hey listen, I just... I wasn't 100% comfortable pushing this car to the limit.
Because I'm on a road with ditches, trees, drop off, the whole thing. And this car was like,
you could literally... You could cry looking at such beautiful condition. Not a single warning light,
everything worked. I mean, this is just like, doesn't happen. And the guy built a 3.2 for it.
He put a stroke or crank and it's all like, it's just holy fucking girl, 164. Nothing was happening to it.
But when I turn in the back would walk a little bit. And even on a straightaway, it did a little bit
of a crab. And he had said that he did everything, but he hadn't done the rear suspension bushings yet.
And I don't know if something was loose, or that's just how they tracked with the all-wheel drive system.
I don't... I don't remember... Well, mine was a front wheel drive car, but I remember it being
dynamically open to being hustled and it not being scary. It was a car that I felt like was like a
spiritually close to a hot hatch, just bigger and heavier. But it felt sort of mine at least was
a car that I enjoyed kind of driving quickly and wanted to do the faster. I could see
that this one, I just... It would have taken me... I would have had to put it on a lift and make sure
nothing was broken. And then it would have taken me a little bit of time to trust it. Once I trusted
that nothing was going to break or fall off, I could have really pushed that car. The thing that I yelled
at him about, which I had to laugh while doing it, is I know this car is beautifully stock
and it's perfectly presented and perfectly representative of what this car should look like.
Where's your exhaust? And he's like, I put a factory exhaust on them. And I don't blame you at all
because this car is a time capsule and it's perfect and it's amazing. But get that fucking exhaust
on and put something obnoxious on it. And of course, I'm contradicting myself. And so I had to laugh
at that. But once you hear what it's capable, the noises that that engine is capable of making,
I mean the one that I bought, the S was sounded wonderful, very similar to the black one that
you and I drove. But once you realize that that potential exists, it's like, oh, you have to
do an exhaust. I don't blame him. He's now considering putting an exhaust on it. And I don't
blame him if he keeps it stock. What I will say is, Anthony Esposito is very hard to please when it
comes to my director, but he's autistic when it comes to car sounds. And when it comes to noise,
engine noise, he's very difficult to please. He's got a really, really high standard and a well-tuned
ear. And I have sent him videos of Boussos, and he's never loved them. You know, and I'm like,
no, no, no, no, no, so I sent him a video of a 916 or no, one of the other front will drive
32 Boussos, it's uncorked. And he's like, okay, well, it's kind of got a VR6 warble with a little
bit of a sizzle on top. And he's sort of using his words to describe it. He didn't seem to love it.
He wasn't impressed by this. He's never been impressed by any Boussos we've ever had from the
a Z that we drove to my buddy's mark, Mark's Milano Verde. He didn't think anything of that at all.
The only, I have never met a Boussos V6 in a longitudinal installation that I thought sounded
as good as the transverse ones. I have no idea what the difference is, but different header link.
Yeah, I guess. Two and a half liters. So the only one that I've loved is because I love the Boussos
in theory. And then I hear them in person. And I'm like, okay, it's fine. What I love about the Boussos
is it doesn't, doesn't have that mid-range 3 to 5,000 RPM harshness that V6s do. That other V6s do,
but like you're two and a half liter and you're GGV6, I did not care for. That one was really
raunchy. Yeah, but a stock, I've driven a stock two and a half liter GGV6 and it was beautiful.
And that's the only one that I've liked. Even this one, I didn't particularly love. I mean,
it sounds nice and it's pleasant, but I don't think it sounded as good as a Tora show.
Well, for example, all the 160 fours that I have driven that have had exhausts on them are just like
unreal. Yeah. The one that we were in honestly sounded better than just about every V12,
I remember driven. Yeah. It was spectacular. So it's very different driving experience
than the other two. I had the most fun in the launch of because it had the least grippy tires
and just instant torque and wheel spin and I just pushed 10% harder than I probably should have
in somebody else's car, but it loved every minute of it. The sob was the least fun
because the brakes on the second corner going up the hill. The brake pedal got hard and I was like,
no, we're not going to experiment with this. I'm not going to cook the brakes on this beautiful
sob. And then the awful was somewhere in between I think would have been, I mean, certainly the
shifter, the motor, the gearing, so much of that car that steering was exquisite. I think had I
trusted it more, I would have I hadn't made the right the noises that you know that it just
capable of making. And then the annoying part is that Espositos here and we get it when we're done
and I give the keys to be at risk to take it to. So my shipbox E30 with an obnoxiously loud exhaust
on it and take it to go to launch and he's like, well, I have any of those cars when you could just
have this. It sounds better than all of them combined. It's quicker than them all. It's not quick
in the sob. But that was the car that he was interested in. I'm like, dammit, so much I thought I
was going to convert him because as soon as he laid on that laid eyes on the 164, I saw him scrolling
the Facebook marketplace. He's like, I can fit my kids in this. I can fit my wife in this. I can fit
my life in this. It'll be look great next to all my other cars. And then once he drove it, he was
like, it's from a dark car. So yeah, there is a limit to what you can do with front-wheel drive,
especially when it's big. If it's spiritually a hot hatch, maybe, but I would like to own another
one. I would like to own a good one. The one that I own was not good. So would you own a 9,000?
What was that? What was that? I would, if the 164 didn't exist, yes. I think that's the answer.
I would have a tamer. I think that car is, I mean, a really well-sorted, beautiful condition,
tamer, where everything worked, and I wasn't scared to. So the embarrassing, while we're talking about
big Italian sedans, maybe not embarrassing. This is just esoteric, but I've been sort of recently on
a quiet kick. Thank God, I've never seen one of the United States. So hopefully there aren't any
here, which means there's a barrier to getting one. So hopefully that stands me in some good
stead to prevent me from irresponsibly buying one. But the car that I want is the big fiat sedan
from the late 60s, early 70s, that has a single overhead cam V6 and a dog leg, which is called the
fiat 130 sedan. And this thing is just like, it's an esoteric car even more so than the tamer,
but it's conceptually, it's like a mob car. You look at it and you're like, oh, that is very much
like an Italian mafia car, but it's the, it was meant to be sort of a competitor to a Mercedes sedan,
and you could get it initially with the 2.8 and then with the 3.2 V6 with a dog leg, although a
lot of them have automatics. And that's the like other dumb sedan thing. I just have this dumb sedan
habit that I don't know just exists. So here we are. I don't know, the idea that noise from that
tamer. Yeah. And that interior, I mean, yeah, just to be in something that luxurious of that
era would be, would be kind of very cool. But I wish it drove like the 164. And then have the space
of that sub. The sub is fucking massive. Yeah, massive. It's amazing that it's the same car as the
tamer. Because the tamer is like, oh, guys, this is a nice big car. You know, it's a nice big
big on the inside, not too big on the outside. And you open the sob and you're like, hello, hello,
yeah, holy shit, you could fit the whole idea in there. They're all very cool. Yeah,
the chroma is probably the least cool because there wasn't a spicy variant of it, but an interesting
experiment. So what does the takeaway from all this? I mean, what did you conclude? Or what is this
significance? Is this something about badge engineering? Is this about, so there are two? I mean,
the sort of rational conclusion is, if you're going to platform share, you can actually give cars
such a distinct personality that you never believe they're related. And you would never believe
that you never sharing done right? Except for the all of the, well, Lan Chen saw both admitted that
they actually saved no money by platform sharing. And so you know, on the one hand, none of those
companies would have survived. And none of those cars, none of them did effectively, right? This was
the last to raw. But, you know, the Fiat still around. I mean, okay, but Lan Chen's kind of not,
this was the last real Lan Chen's really dead, right? And then, you know, they got a rebadged
Opal Vectra as the next 9.5. It was kind of over for both. Like they just extended the inevitable by
one generation, one generation of cars. But they, they didn't save any money in retrospect,
but it wouldn't have been possible had they started out. So it wasn't really a viable economic policy
to save money by platform sharing, but then doing your own shit. Like it's stupid.
So you're really just staving off the inevitable and just so just kill the company in advance. But
they did sell one point is the one four one seven, 1.7 million cars over 14 years on this platform.
And so that's a hell of a large amount of cars that would, the world would have never seen
and to have three of them be the quickest, most powerful or fastest front-wheel drive car
of their time. And it's pretty cool. They have a lot of character, right? This is a genre of
car that doesn't have that much character for the most part, especially now. And this is like
probably the end, this is the start of the end, I guess, of that sort of really strong,
differentiating identity that was possessed certainly by sob and by alpha male and by
launcher. And this is sort of them trying to get with it, while still maintaining that. It's
an interesting tension to observe in those cars. The conclusion I'm in the video, which is the
other conclusion is, you know, if you ever see things in the automotive industry were,
were players who shouldn't be playing together are in bed together. And, you know, the example
there is the now looking like it's falling apart. Honda, Nissan, Mitsubishi merger.
It's because shit's going down, right? And what we recorded was, you know, the moral of the story is
if the plane's going down, just start an orgy because it results in triplets. But we have to cut
that because some planes have gone down right after we recorded it. We have two major plane
racks and I'm like, okay, I'm sorry, I'm not referencing that. But really, you see this sort of
consolidation, planes going down, we got to land it softly, just have everyone be in as many people
in that plane as possible to help soften the landing. And we see that with Stellantis, which is
73 different brands. And all, you know, the auto industry is in a very clear period of consolidation
right now, which is exactly where we were at the end of the malaiseira, which was the last time
the industry was this much in this much trouble. And, you know, these days you have a Honda prologue
and a Chevy Blazer are the same car. Like, I don't what? Oops. Really? Yeah. Honda prologue is a Chevy.
You know, you have you walk in. Yeah. Yeah. What? God, this is why I don't pay attention to cars.
What on earth? I mean, you walk into a Toyota dealership and you can buy a Subaru or BMW or Mazda
last year, right? So, you know, the IQ, the Mazda 2 was sold as a sine IQ. No, not IQ. IA,
which was, which was a Mazda, which was 100% a Mazda. And then you have the BRZ sold as a
Toyota GR86 and you have the super sold. I mean, this is ridiculous. You know, you should not be
able to walk into the dealership of one car company and buy three different other car companies
products. It's always bad, though, like Dodge Colton, like Mitsubishi Mirage, and I'm
talking about like, maybe in bed charger or those companies were in bed together and had partial
ownership. So you have this, you know, even you have the diamond star cars that you had the Mitsubishi
Chrysler Chrysler Conquest and Mitsubishi Starian, for example. But you know, Mitsubishi does
the Starian Chrysler buys and invests heavily, makes their own version of that car, but then makes
a bunch of changes that benefit everyone. That's kind of a different story than a badge job.
And so, you know, Mazda Navajo versus Ford Explorer, that was a badge job. I just don't think
that benefits anyone. It's Susu Trooper and Acura SVX. Come on, SLX. SLX, I'm sorry. You know,
there's just certain things here. This is a head scratcher and it's not benefiting your brand
and you're all you're doing is exposing yourself to the weaknesses of other companies.
Volkswagen Routon. Yeah. Do you think that sold any other Volkswagen? Do you think that helped
Volkswagen a lot or just gave, you know, PW dealers of Chrysler Minivan to sell with a Volkswagen
badge on it and warranty issues that they didn't know how to fix. So I don't, you know, I just see
this consolidation thing is not really a good idea, but sometimes necessary to sort of slow the
descent of an industry that's in decline or in just in really big turbulence. It's Honda in
that much trouble. I don't think Honda's in, well, Honda's not certainly not in as much trouble
as Nissan is. Yeah. So why would you tie yourself? So historically, I'm going to say without being
a numbers person for the over the last 20 years, a cord has been in the running for the top three
spot of car sold. It's sort of like, Camry, a cord, Civic, Corolla as the sort of passenger car,
number one, best sellers. And that's now been replaced. RAV4 has replaced
Corolla and really Camry. Camry's still like the number for three or four spot.
I feel like at this point, Camry, it's a RAV4 selling 415 or 420,000 units, something like that.
Camry used to be in their high threes. Camry is now in the high twos and a cord is in the low ones.
130,000 units. I don't remember where Civic is, but it's not anywhere where it used to be.
Is that a result of their products? I think it's their product. And CRV is okay, but it's nowhere near RAV4.
And I just think Honda has, I mean, Civic sales are down, I think 30% year over year from 24
back to 23. It's just a cord sales, I find it's not working. Something's wrong. And Accura is certainly
that spiral at this point. I don't even know why that division still exists. Whereas Lexus,
I get it. I see, it's viable. You know, revolves a lot around the dealership experience,
but a Lexus customer is a Lexus customer. They're not looking at anything else. And they make a
lot of compelling products where Accura doesn't. So I do see Honda in trouble, not in, not quite
Nissan Mitsubishi trouble, which is just tying two rocks together to see if they'll float.
And that's what they all do. But sometimes, to the point of the Deepo Quattro cars,
you tie a bunch of rocks together and up to the surface floats a couple of cool cars that we can
now own. And you know, they sold 400 and something, they have 503,500 and something
thousand, nine thousands, none of which are of interest to us as enthusiasts, except the fast ones.
And they sold 400 and something thousand cromas. No one cares. They sold 289 or whatever was
thousand theme of tamas of which three or four or five thousand are interest because they have
a variety in them. So as the regular shit sort of goes away, we're left with a couple of cool
enthusiasts cars. And you could, I parked all three right there was a site. Yeah, it was just so
cool. And I like that. I like being able to say, well, these cars killed their respective car
companies, but look at the fucking cool. Yeah. A lot of childhood desire for me in those wrapped up in
those cars. Yeah. Cool stuff. A genuinely cool stuff. I mean, yeah. So all right. That is the
Deepo Quattro joining us for this episode of the Carmage and Show. We may see you next week.
We may not. Who can say?
And Doug, here we have the Lemo Emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their
car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural
ally, Doug. Uh, Lemu, is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Cut the camera. They see us.
Only pay for what you need at Liberty Mutual.com.
Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty
Savings very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates excludes Massachusetts.
About this episode
Exploring the fascinating connections between the Alfa Romeo 164, Saab 9000, and Lancia Thema, this episode dives deep into the shared platform that birthed these iconic vehicles. Hosts Jason Cammisa and Derek Tam-Scott discuss the unique characteristics and histories of each car, revealing how they were developed in a time of financial turmoil for their respective brands. With insights on design, engineering, and performance, the episode highlights how these cars, despite their similarities, each offer distinct driving experiences. The conversation is filled with humor and automotive passion, making it a rich listen for enthusiasts.
Many enthusiasts don't realize that the Alfa Romeo 164 and Saab 9000 share their underpinnings — with the Lancia Thema and Fiat Croma. They all ride on the Fiat Tipo Quattro (Type 4) platform, and in this episode, we discuss the their history and drive the three most powerful, quickest, and fastest FWD sport sedans of their era.
===
WATCH THE FULL REVELATIONS EPISODE HERE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G71uIVvnzvw
==
This is a history less about their initial development, to the plethora of engine options, posh and/or aerospace-inspired interiors, styling, power, handling dynamics, and the pros and cons of platform sharing.
We kick things off with the platform’s predecessors: the Tipo Zero, Tipo Uno, Tipo Dua, and Tipo Tre – go figure – all of which underpinned a variety of Fiats. Meanwhile, Saab had effectively been building cars on the same platform since the 40s before finally making something new for the Saab 99 during the late 60s, and then the 900 in late 70s (which was really just a revised 99). But when it was time for a shift upmarket in the late 80s, Saab needed financial help to create the 9000 after a merger deal with Volvo fell through. At the time, Lancia was in need of a full-size family sedan and jumped into the mix as well via an existing relationship with Saab (see the Saab Lancia 600).
There’s a brief sidebar about weird cars of the time. Select picks include the Citroen DX and GS, as well as the AMC Eagle and Concord. Plus oddball platform sharing in the form of the Dodge Monaco, Renault 25, and Chrysler 300M. Merkur enters the chat, as does Cizeta and the equally prodigious V6 Chevy Cavalier Z24, 4-cylinder Cadillac Cimarron, and, of course, the forever elegant Lumina Euro.
What’s that? You’d like to know how many V6s were on sale in Europe in the late 80s? One. Or two. Somewhere between 1 and 3-ish. We think. Pretty sure.
In any case, the hottest of the hot Tipo Quattro cars are QUICK. The Saab 9000 Aero being the quickest FWD car of the time, but the Thema 8.32 and Alfa 164Q4 were close behind. As were the Dodge Omni GLHS and the Ford Taurus SHO – the original fast blob.
In This Episode:
The Alfa Romeo 164 Quadrifoglio Verde (230 hp)
The Saab 9000 Aero (225 hp)
The Lancia Thema 8.32 (215 hp)
There’s much talk of Busso V6s, Ferrari V8s (cross- and extra jiggly flat-plane) and their sound profiles. We’ll also cover the delightful smell of rich Italian leather, and our most favorite Pininfarina pen strokes.
Then we’ll blitz through a bunch of badge-engineered bungles like the VW Routan, Acura SLX, Mazda2 and Honda’s new Prologue. When done poorly, platform sharing can kill entire brands, but sometimes we’re left with a small crop of lust-worthy enthusiast cars, and for that we are thankful!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
