Slowly but surely, making plans...!

It's amazing how much research is involved when you're attempting to build a car for rallying that hasn't been used too much in the UK. Especially when you have to build it to the original homologation papers, and there are so many.  One of the problems with getting hold of any homologation paper is that you can't look until you have bought them, and then when there are about 20 different papers, as is the case with the Alfetta, then you have to make sure that you buy the right one.

This has been an incredibly laborious process as both of the required papers, either for the car in 2.5 V6 Group 4 spec, or in 2.0l Group 4 spec, are missing from the F.I.A archives.  These are 5855 for the 2.5 and 641 for the 2.0.  Fortunately a long, long trawl through the internet has found me some similar papers for the V6, which is number 674, which was a 1981 Group 4 homologation, and 5622 for the 2.0 which is a 1976 Group 2 homologation with the Alfetta actually being homologated as an Alfetta GT America, but I guess that I won't be calling it that (unless I have too!). This was a monster of a car in full spec, running with a 16 valve 240 hp engine, but that of course would take it into the D5 (multi-valve) class, even if we could find, (and afford) a head, so we will just be running it as an 8 valve engined car with about 180hp, so not a patch on the Pintos which I have recently been reading can get to about 220hp, but then again we won't be spending much more than a couple of thousand pounds on ours!

New Alfetta Rally Car Project

When I say 'new' I actually mean, 'old'. In fact so old that it's 'historic'. Of course the whole point of this project is to build an Alfetta 'classic' rally car, to whatever spec we finally decide on.

The car that we are to build is, at the moment, a £501 vision of red loveliness that came from the UK's biggest motor retailer, EBAY, and I just wonder how many other rally cars that there are at the moment that have been bought off that site. Now it is at John Goff's www.rallyschool.co.uk while the final plans are made as to what to actually do with it.

The car itself is a 1981 Alfetta 2.0L and with the cut-off date for Historic Rallying being Dec 31st 1981, it was great to see from the original registration document that this car was originally licensed on 26th October 1981! It is a rare car in that it has stood around for about 25 years and only has about 30000 miles on the clock, but as can be seen by the photo, it has been 'lovingly' cared for, and a attempt was even made at respraying it, but obviously by a blind man with epilepsy.

I'd been looking for a suitable car to do some historic rallying in for a few years now, usually using Reinhard Klein's excellent book 'Rally Cars' (which incidentally sell on-line now for about £250!). Obviously I can neither afford, or really want, and Escort because it simply costs so much money to even build one, and then unless you've got absolutely tens of thousands of pounds to spare, (and a considerable amount of talent, you would struggle to get anywhere, even in your class. So I've been looking at something different, and I was always excited by the prospect of a Fiat 131 Mirafiori, but the few that were ever available were just always too expensive, and then having looked at the obvious cars like the various Toyotas, Opels, Datsuns etc, I suddenly noticed one day (while sitting on the toilet) that the 2.5 V6 Alfetta GTV had been virtually unbeatable in tarmac form in both racing and rallying in the early 80's. Further research then led me to find that Alfa had been regularly homologating the Alfetta throughout the late 70's and that I had the option of either a straightforward 4cyl 2.0, or the previously mentioned V6 2.5.

So imagine my surprise when an Alfetta appeared on Ebay the following day. It was fate!! And although it was only a 2.0, I also found a V6 engine at a very sensible price on an Alfa forum.

My original idea was to turn the car into a 2.5 V6 car to run in the D4 class up against the Porsche 911's and the Opel Ascona's, but one or two wise head are suggesting that we just get it going with the 2.0l engine, and run it in D3 to start with. The trouble is, with the 2.0l we will only get about 170-180hp which I don't think is enough to beat a Pinto engined Escort, but at least, as others have said, it will get it running.

I picked the car and the engine up on Tuesday and took it straight to rallyschool.co.uk. The next task is to strip it down there and then send it away for a roll-cage to be fitted. Custom Cages will do this for me and it will be an F.I.A spec cage because that should increase it's value in the long-term. Since my first Nissan Rally Car in 1994, Roger Nevitt of Custom Cages has been involved in all my projects and it was obvious that the first choice for the cage would be to go there again.

The question is, can we change the way that it looks at the top of the photo, to the way that we want it to look at the bottom of the photo.

I'll post more as I remember!