Junkyard Find: 1991 Alfa Romeo 164 S
I see plenty of Fiat 124 Spiders and Fiat X1/9s in junkyards (and even a couple of Maseratis), but Alfa Romeos are worth a bit more and thus are harder to find. We’ve seen this ’79 Alfa Romeo Sport Sedan and this ’74 Spider in this series, and that’s about it prior to today’s find.
The 164 was the last car that Alfa Romeo sold in the US before its retreat in 1995, and the big front-wheel-drive Alfa sedan had a tough time competing with increasingly ruthless German and Italian manufacturers at that time.
Not only is the interior in this one pretty nice, the car is the rare 5-speed model.
172,886 miles— not bad!
I couldn’t get the hood open to shoot the engine, but I assume the original 3.0 liter V6 was still there.
Ooh, 1990s Italian electronics!
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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It's a great car, it really is. If only it had a more useful 5-door hatchback shape instead of a trunk. Maybe some nifty 3-spoke dish alloys with sticky rubber. Drop that heavy V6 for a nice little twin-cam 2.3L turbocharged four-cylinder with great passing power and impressive longevity. Get some heated leather Recaros, and a dashboard that's intellible *and* tilted at the driver. Oh, then it'd be a 9000 Aero. I love the 164. But I still believe the 9k Aero was the best car ever built. No helping the hopeless, right?
Some friends of my father's proudly drove one of these home from the showroom back in the early nineties. Within the second week it was in the shop, where it would spend much of it's time during the period when they were still determined to drive the thing. Within the second month the first rains of the year made their way through the flimsy weatherstripping and filled the car with mildew that would have put my mom's old '67 VW fastback to shame. From then on it became an MGB type garage ornament until they found someone to tow the thing away after owning it less than a year.