Junkyard Find: 1979 Alfa Romeo Sport Sedan
In 1979, American car buyers could spend $10,220 on a new Corvette weighing 3,372 pounds and packing a 195-horsepower pushrod V8 under the hood… or $9,695 on a 2,700-pound sedan with an 111-horsepower DOHC four-cylinder engine, rear-mounted transaxle, and Italian style. More than 50,000 of those car shoppers chose the Corvette. I estimate that 18 adventurous souls chose the Alfa Romeo Sport Sedan. One of the 18 now languishes in a Denver junkyard, offering its parts up to lucky Alfetta owners.
This is a traditional, low-turnover yard that doesn’t hustle its inventory off to The Crusher every couple of months, so there’s a chance that someone might rescue the entire car. It’s pretty rusty and the interior has been home to High Plains critters for decades, but it’s mostly complete.
The space between the cam covers made a nice rodent-nest location. We can assume that the same rodents gnawed on the wiring and the SPICA fuel-injection lines.
This interior would be a tough restoration project. Can you smell the decaying leather and hantavirus-laden mouse urine?
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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.......that near-deal was almost unnoticed when GM went under.......GM lost it's 2 billion dollar downstroke when both sides cooled to the (dumb) idea......something along those lines.
I test drove one of these in 1979 at the local Porsche/Audi/Alfa dealer. Two things turned me off. One was the short legs / long arms driving position. The other was the raw fabric edges showing on the door panels. The car's road manners were acceptable but not remarkable.