The Carchive:- The Alfa Romeo Arna

20140909_190839 It’s time once again to sift through motoring’s infinite muesli box in the hope of finding a juicy automotive raisin lurking at the bottom. Welcome to The Carchive. What do we want from our Italian car? Well, a modicum of style, some driving pizazz, maybe a luxurious, hand stitched leather interior. How about from a Japanese car? Reliability, of course, and maybe some forward-thinking technology? Well, let’s have a look at the Latin-Japanese Alfa Romeo Arna to see if they got the balance right. 20140909_190906 “lively, dynamic, sporting, the Arna is a car with all the qualities of an Alfa Romeo. The Arna is a fascinating relic of 1980’s marketing audacity. The result of a brief liaison between Alfa Romeo of Italy and Nissan of Japan, it came and went and has now been quietly forgotten and is practically orphaned by both of its parents. And on the surface it’s not hard to see why, because this is an object example of a car which married the worst possible attributes of two very disparate ways of doing things. The Arna was, of course, a sibling of the Nissan Cherry, with which it shares its “simple and elegant” body and its “comfortable” interior. Who could possibly want for more? Alfa Romeo provided the powerplant; a flat four, 1.2 or 1.3 litre unit of 63 or 71 hp, and the kind of lump found to be most splendid when experienced in its natural habitat, namely slotted into the front end of an Alfa Romeo Alfasud. If you wanted it to, the 1.3 would deliver a very precise top speed of 96.3mph. Unfortunately, the way that these cars have passed into history without causing misty eyes and without being notably revered would suggest that the recipe was a little ill thought through. 20140909_190925 “Arna. And you become an Alfa driver.” The problem was that you just DIDN’T become an Alfa Driver at all. You may have paid your money to a nice man in an Alfa dealership but you were actually driving around in a weird Nissan, which had been freed from all the brio, exuberance and joy of regular Alfa products. It’s sister, the enthusiastically named Nissan Cherry EUROPE fared little better, because the unlovely, workaday Cherry no longer had the redeeming virtue of dependability and reliability; this bastard creation had no more mechanical integrity than any other Alfa Romeo of the period; and possibly less due to the splicing of Italian and Japanese electrics. But there WERE positives. 20140909_190940 “the Arna has a comfortable interior, with soft, shaped eats for the driver and passengers” This was true. Here was an small Alfa which would happily accommodate a family, without the same concessions of space-versus-shape that previous small Alfas were forced to make. Obviously, even fewer people would have bought the Nissan-badged version if it proved to be impractical. So that worked out well for both parties. Furthermore: “The well thought out arrangement of the controls and the instruments makes the Arna easier to drive” Not everybody gets on with a classic Alfa dashboard and driving position, so the Arna did at least score in that area. Of course, the Nissan Cherry wasn’t exactly the standard by which all other cars should be judged, but it did boast a typically efficient (though uninspiring to behold) interior layout. It was no more difficult to use than any other Nissan of the period. Plus it had a jaunty three-spoke sports steering wheel which which was notably less horrible than the standard Nissan item. But, no, realistically, by all sensible criteria, the Alfa Arna and Nissan Cherry Europe were bloody awful. The name was an acronym for Alfa Romeo Nissan Autoveicoli, acknowledging the joint venture behind it. The idea was noble, a successful link-up could see both companies fielding models in the contested European B-Segment, with minimal development costs. But surely it could have been envisaged as being disastrous from the outset. It was like an aeroplane manufacturer and a fast-food chain joining forces, with McDonalds looking after production and Boeing looking after the catering. It should never have happened. But I’m glad I own the brochure. (Disclaimer: All images are of original manufacturer publicity items, photographed by me in failing light. Actually, the low quality of photography rather suits the subject matter. Copyright remains property of whoever wants it)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The maximum upload file size: 64 MB. You can upload: image, audio, video. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop files here