One of the best city cars you could get in the ’70s was the Alfa Romeo. It could easily rival the Golf GTI in terms of driveability and the Volkswagen is considered by many the first hot-hatch… but when it came to be – Alfa was already 6 years on the market. Its name came from Alfa Sud, which stands for Alfa South – and it originates from the new Alfa factory in the south Italy. It brought a lot of hope that the brand would climb to the top and stay competitive for years to come…

The smallest Alfa in the catalogue, it was intended as a cheap and reliable vehicle. It contained a front suspension based on MacPherson struts and a rigid rear axle – and a front wheel drive. That way the production was very easy and it had a lot of space in the interior… but that wasn’t even the best thing. It had an amazing boxer under the hood – single cam, yes – but very swift and smooth at that! For a good decade we couldn’t find anything like that – in a car like that. Not until the new Alfa was sent to the dealerships. And maybe that engine did generate mere 60 bhp from 1.2-litre capacity, but it had the center of gravity going very low, and that was the trick.

Later came several Ti versions of a larger caliber and those crushed any opposition – only the Golf GTI could go head-to-head against it, as Alfasud was already closing to 10s acceleration. Unfortunately, Alfa had one major problem: the use of Soviet steel that would rot their cars even new in the factory. That’s why, though the car was truly amazing, it could never win the hearts of people. The whole brand took a gigantic hit because of that – one they would not recover from for almost two decades… Meanwhile, new versions were introduced, for example: ‚Sprint’ coupe.

Giugiaro’s design looked similar to the larger GTV in the family, and compared to a basic Alfasud, indeed the new Sprint coupe had much more interior space for the rear passengers. It was also better crafted – while still inheriting the thrilling handling and exceptional powertrain. Its end came after good 13 years of production and the final versions were capable of 120 horsepower… but they tried more than that. Year 1980 and the Group B is officially approved. That means you could start from 1982 – with the leash off – and Alfa wanted to with the Alfasud Sprint 6C that was to enter the season ’83, but it never came to be.

They took a normal Alfa and replaced front and rear. They gave it bigger spoilers and fenders. People say two cars were made – a rally prototype and a road concept. They had a GTV6 powertrain and where backseats would normally be – was the 220 horsepower engine known for its successful career in ETCC – an obvious choice for the rally project. The layout looked much like the Renault R5 Turbo – an ordinary FF transformed into a Mid-engined RWD. The early jobs were finished in 1982, when you could see the prototype at the Paris Motor Show and at Monza, but the car – get this – like most Alfas… IT WASN’T RUNNING. The odometers were stuck on ‚0’ during the presentation, which speaks for itself.

The cars were not identical. The one with black grille had small round side mirrors, black louvres in the back and a spoiler with Sprint 6C decals on it. It was ‚the road car’ and it also had the muffler tip in the middle. The other example was left with a single rectangular side mirror, it had a chrome grille and additional lights in the bumper. Its louvres were painted and spoiler was saying just ‚Alfa Romeo’. The back was also redesigned. It had additional stoplights and dual exhaust. The number plates were also moved to a different position. Nonetheless, both cars got their louvres in place of a rear screen – to help the engine breathe better – and the driver was separated from it with a thermo-acoustic glass. The rally car was more simple in the interior. It was equipped with sport racing seats with all the harnesses required for proper rallying. It was an early attempt on a rally car though, and much more work was still in front of them. The engine and crankshaft – both exposed and uncovered. Just like the double wishbone suspension elements of the car.

Alfa used 2.480-litre engines, but they wanted to lift that capacity to at least 2.503-litre, so they could start in the higher class (2.5-3 litre). One could say it’s not the best plan to put yourself right at the bottom of the displacement ladder, but their reasoning was that Alfa weighed only 2200 lbs (990 kg) and the faster class offered wider tires while allowing for rally evolutions with more powerful engines up to 3 litres. And a road homologation 2.5-litre motors were capable of 160 bhp, but 3.0 Evo was already in plans and those could easily spit 240 and up to 300 bhp on public roads in their naturally aspirated versions. Both Sprint 6C protorypes were most likely 2.492-litre cars though – not the capacity they really wanted to get homologation for.

The board cancelled the project and revived Group 4 rally Alfetta GTV Turbodelta that already raced in 1980. They had some financial problems and manufacturing 200 homologation specials for the roads was not an easy task. Alfasud could sell well and it could achieve successes in motorsport, but all dreams of rallying shoulder-to-shoulder with 037 perished. We cannot be sure how many prototype examples were made. Ones say there were two, but there are voices claiming it was all one car – just reworked. You could also hear stories about more than two. The whole work was binned before it could ever get to a rally stage. There was one guy in Australia – fun fact – he purchased a few Sprint 6C cars and tried to revive the mid-engined sport prototypes on his own. Shipping the GTV6 engines was too much, so he used Holden V8 – a 5-litre powertrain, cheap and local – domestic to him. The cars were called ‚Group B’ and 15 vehicles were created until his company, Giocattolo Motori, kicked the bucket.

Krzysztof Wilk
All sources: favcars.com | wheelsage.org | rallygroupbshrine.org | autozine.org