Aye, we are gathered here today to pay respects to this fallen paisano who, although not being a countryman of ours, is far from home and won’t see the old country (or even the parking lot of a Pizza Hut) again. Yes, we just last month gazed upon a slightly older surviving member of this car’s family out in Berkeley, CA, but when an Alfa crosses one’s path, one takes note and doesn’t leave it locked in the camera for the future, especially if it’s red. Or sort of red. Anyway, here we are. Be seated.
While tagged by the yard as a 1974, I believe it would normally be a 1975 model having been built in October of 1974. Add the likelihood of a dockworker strike in Italy, a boat voyage across, immigration on the east coast and then a train ride to Colorado and it’s unlikely it arrived before the new year. So 1975 it probably should be except that it appears there were no 1975s as the new Alfetta sedan and coupe replaced the Berlina and GTV for that year, albeit well into the model year. This could be one of the last Berlinas built if that’s actually the case.
As opposed to Jerome’s Berkeley example, this one sports the newer (and, it must be said, uglier) bumpers and someone has taken the grille as a souvenir for themselves before I got here. While significantly sunbleached, there’s no rust on top. But don’t look down below the hemline, them there are some mighty crusty rocker panels.
While not as dainty as the Giulia, the Berlina has a charm all its own. This later generation one is a little blockier, perhaps a little more Volvo-like in that regard, and wonderfully upright and spacious for what’s still not an objectively large car.
A roomy trunk is perfect for that trans-continental journey, either back home or over here. Take a look at the gloss of the paint on the inside of the trunk lid, now imagine that all over the outside and how could you NOT choose this over an Olds Cutlass or whatever else people were buying in early 1975?
Moving on, the side marker is a bit of an unsightly mole but we’ll blame that on the immigration officer. For shame. In the old country there’s a mere freckle of a light there instead but perhaps the Amis don’t eat enough carrots so they need bigger lights to see them.
You’d be a proud member of the Alfa Club Of Colorado as you blasted up the road to the Mother Cabrini Shrine just outside of Denver while pretending you were running up the Brenner Pass (although Brenner’s peak altitude is lower than Denver), with the wind in your flowing 1975 hairstyle from the ajar vent window.
You’d be sawing back and forth at that wheel, furiously shifting the 5-speed manual for all it’s worth, although at 130hp the twin-cam 2-liter did alright even if you were more relaxed with the stick. Keep in mind that there’s no need to come to an almost complete stop when rounding a curve unlike with that Cutlass…
Fuel? Temp? Ah, those are relegated to the center stack, the only thing that really matters up front and center is the oil pressure gauge. Some heathens will be less than charitable here and assume that the odometer at 16,720 is the actual total, but us Alfisti will debate if there should be a 1 or a 2 ahead of that.
The ravages of time spare no one and no thing, so the interior has seen better days. Does the black sheep-skin cover on the driver’s seat denote something we aren’t aware of relative to the tan sheep-skin on the other? That offside door panel looks nicely trimmed out though, with the wood on the dash still varnished and unsplit this was likely very attractive in its day.
The U.S. market did get their 2000 Berlina in a mechanical-inezione form as opposed to the twin carbs back on the old continent. Four wheel disc brakes too, since at least the previous decade.
Yeah, our paisano isn’t looking so cocky now, but it’s been 45 years, so a pretty good run here in the strongly sunny as well as snowy climate. The Rosso up top is turning Bianco Argentio, but that’s how it goes with human red-heads as well, capisce? But let’s lift that hood and see what’s underneath…
Ah, what a lovely sight, even covered in a bit of dust. This one’s been sitting for some time as the hoses and wires crumbled to my tender caress, uh, I mean mechanically motivated ministrations to gauge the possibility of rehabilitation. Sadly far too big a job for me at this time, and I don’t do cosmetic surgery either, but let’s look even deeper, under that twin cam cover.
Hallelujah! Look at the glory under there. Two cams, a double-row chain and everything so easy to get to. Just six large bolts and four smaller ones and the cover popped right off…Time to close that hood though so no dirt gets in.
And while I couldn’t take the whole thing home, at least I now have an extra piece of wall art hanging in the garage…Molto Bella!
This must have been a pleasant surprise, among the loads of Cavaliers and Nissans. Though I am not a dedicated Alfista, I can certainly see the charm this one would have exuded back when it was fresh.
With a little bit of effort and a polishing wheel, your garage souvenir could be made quite nice enough to move into the house. Though perhaps only on days when Mrs. Klein is not at home.
The driver’s door has that oval of redder paint, so I hope someone recently scavenged the mirror for another Alfa. That would be a fitting honor.
You reminded me of seeing this Alfa powered Hot Rod. (Dare to be Different.)
Nice find Jim, great car, especially for me.
My father had a Giulia 1.300 which I barely remember as a beauty, but I was just 4 when he replaced with an Opel Manta S 1.6 liter (in 1971). It turned out that the at that time so much appreciated Opels’ reliability was just a myth, at least for my father, since that nice (to me) Manta spent plenty of its life in the hands of the local dealer for repair.
That gave my father the opportunity to test all the cars owned by his friends when he borrowed those when in need. Once he came home in the afternoon with a fantastic metallic green Alfa Romeo 2.000 (that was the name in Italy). ‘I have to go for a business trip, wanna come with me?’ he said. Of course I did go! It was a 60/70 miles trip to a near town on secondary roads (no highways at that time). It didn’t really take long, the Alfa was flying, overtaking whatever was in the way was an instant with the surge of power coupled with a symphony coming from engine and carburetors. Downshifting from 5th to 3rd approaching in preparation of the overtake was just exciting and was followed by a kick in the back that took us to 130 km/h (80 mph) in a blink of an eye. And those gauges, the tachometer needle dancing around 6.000 rpm… I was in love. Of course I was just an eight years old child, but from that moment on Alfa’s were the best and only fast cars in the world. And actually quite fast the Alfa 2.000 was for the time, especially in Europe: Quattroruote, the most renowned Italian car magazine, measured 0-62 in 8.75 sec and a top speed of 120 mph.
Afterwards I begged my father for a new Alfa as a replacement for the Opel Manta. Budget and oil crisis were in contrast to my fantasies and my father bought an Opel Rekord diesel 2.0 liter instead in 1977. Quite a difference…
I’m still in love with Alfas but I reckon they don’t exist anymore since the 80’s when FIAT took Alfa Romeo over.
The cam cover is nice, but I think I would have taken the vent window with the quadrifoglia Alfa club sticker. Not so many chances to pick up an Italian vent window. I owned a 1975 Alfetta sedan and I thought these Giulia 2000’s were not sold in the US as model year 1975. I seem to recall that there was a complete – but possibly late – transition to the Alfetta platform for both sedans and GTV’s. But I could be wrong.
I believe you may well be correct. The Alfetta was intro’d in Italy in 1974 but apparently didn’t come over here until well into the 1975 model year and it doesn’t look like there was an official 1975 Berlina here based on an old Hagerty article I found.
Still, being built in October and then shipped, this is perhaps one of the later/last 1974-spec Berlinas with a minimal chance of it actually arriving here in 1974, thus producing already one-model-year-old cars direct from the factory!
I’ve amended the title and text to reflect and expound on this info, thank you.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, Alfa Romeo had lot of saloons that seemed to overlap each other, confusing the buyers, since they were too similar in dimensions and powertrains. Alfa Romeo’s problem during that time was offering the equivalency of three or four different versions of BMW 5-Series.
Sometimes, the manufacturers would continue the parallel production of older generations and their replacements for various reasons. Porsche continued with 991 for a year after its replacement, 992, went on sale. Ford and Dodge did the same with their F-Series and Ram pick-up trucks. General Motors didn’t abandon the B-body in 1985 and rear-wheel-drive G-body in 1981 when they were “replaced” by front-wheel-drive H-body and A-body models respectively.
This car looks like it has been sitting since three mile island blew up, sleeping. Some cars come to their final resting place having rolled many hundreds of thousands of miles, thoroughly used up. This one looks like something complicated broke in 1978 and it sat ever since.
https://www.cog-classics.com/en/alfa-romeo-2000-1/a-vintage-car-for-the-whole-family
Here’s a look at how nice this car once was, although 5 mph bumpers didn’t really fit on its 1962 body design. It’s hard to imagine the journey from new luxury car to what made it to the scrapyard.
What an outstanding junkyard find — tinged with sadness of course, but all emotions aside, this is a car without much hope, so we might as well enjoy it in its current state. The speedometer and odometer seem like works of art; I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed their design before.
There were still occasional Alfa sedan of this vintage roaming the streets in the 1980s and early 90s, and I always wondered just who these Alfa drivers were. To me, they often seemed like high-paid professionals such as doctors, but often more disheveled-looking than most of their colleagues. And probably more fun, too. There was definitely a look to vintage Alfa sedan owners, that differed from that of Alfa spider owners, and even drivers of newer Alfa sedans. Come to think of it, maybe it was the “wind in their flowing 1975 hairstyle” like you mentioned…
It was back in 2016 but I took my wife’s Vibe for a detailing at a full service car wash in Albuquerque. While I was waiting in line with the other cars (2 rows side by side) I was next to an elderly lady in one of the last Alfa sedans (164) imported before the brand left North America (prior to the FCA resurgence).
It was racing green and had a tan leather interior. She paid no mind to me but I wondered if perhaps it had been the last car that a now departed husband had purchased. She just looked like your typical “blue hair” a real Sophia Petrillo.
I actually wondered who had been doing the service for her all those years.
Hard to tell about junkyards and whether this car got beat to crap by parts hunters or the last owner. Is it there because of the rust and then beat up or because of rust the owner slowly lost interest and the car degraded?
It’s pretty much as it came in to the yard, it had only been out there for a couple of days at most when I stumbled across it. The rust on the rockers was severe, the rest of the bottom was likely quite bad as well, the little Bertone badge fell off in my hand… Alfas usually get picked over extremely fast out here, even the poor condition ones, the parts that don’t look great may still be better than what’s on someone else’s runner. This yard will send an email out if you register as interested in specific cars when they come in, but the yard tag denoted it as received on 5/18/2020 and as “1974 Test – Test Model” instead of “1974 Alfa Romeo 2000” (first time I’ve seen that, usually they’re pretty good about identifying even the randomest stuff) so anyone interested in it specifically would have to just stumble across it. After arriving initially it then usually takes at least a few days, sometimes weeks, occasionally months for it to join the General Population in the yard for whatever reasons, this one made it out there quickly and I saw it literally yesterday 5/23. Molto fresco – very fresh!
“….the little Bertone badge fell off in my hand… ”
Yep!
Only car I have ever stumbled across at a junkyard that was literally and not jokingly rusted in half was a series 2 Alfa Spider. I opened the stiff drivers door and it folded into itself right in front of me.
It was a new arrival with another later spider in similar but not quite as brittle condition, I wish I had picked souvenirs off them now
What a crusty Alfa and thanks for sharing these photographs. My guess is that this car has been sitting since the mid-1990s.
The newspaper in the trunk with “jobs” on it was from 2011, but your thoughts mirrored mine.
Newspapers still had job ads in 2011?
Only the ones that did a good job with ad sales.
Fantastic find, and I like your souvenir lots.
That shifter angle would take some getting used to, as does the idea of a four-door Alfa (there were few, if any, of these running around mid-Michigan when I was growing up).
Isn’t that weird, how the mental image in the US is of the Spider alone? Likely due to The Graduate, I guess. If anything, I’d say Alfa has as many if not more four-doors, wagons, vans, and even bus and truck history than little convertible and coupe models. Kind of like how people here used to be astounded that the most generic taxis and trucks and plumber vans in Germany were Mercedes, far from the exclusively “luxury” model/trims that were marketed over here.
I saw a Berlina for sale in Italy, online. Grey, I think, with a leather interior. His camera was set up inside, and he took it down the road at high speed at times, and it looked and sounded as solid as a rock, with that distinct Italian snarl. I loved it, despite its sort of ungainly looks. I just don’t understand neglecting fine cars until they get to this sad state. There’s proof enough around that folks without a lot of money manage to take good care of their cars.
My first and in many ways favorite Alfa was a ’74 Berlina, which as I discovered later (and not MUCH later, either!) had sat in an open seaside lockup in Biloxi (I believe) for at least a year before being used as a factory rep’s car … which is why it had only 14K on the odometer and a brand-new paint job. But aside from the steadily advancing number of rust-bubbles here and there, it ran very strongly and drove like a dream. The mechanical FI didn’t look as fabulous as the twin Webers people were always replacing it with, but I could trickle through a parking lot at 10 mph in 3rd and then motor off quite smoothly just by stepping on the gas. It carried me, my wife and 2 YO son from Nashville to the NC Outer Banks and back, on the trip home averaging 70 MPH between Asheville and Knoxville (with my wife driving) and 27 MPG.
Only its fatal rust made me give it up, sending it to the crusher after removing and selling the engine. The ’87 Milano I replaced it with was in some ways the better car, but more than once on my drive from Nashville out here to SoCal I was wishing my lighter, quicker, newer car were as calm on a cross-country run as that old Berlina.
Cool car or it was once, and yes no need to furiosly row the gears on a twisty road just turn in and punch the gas 4th would be the one.
Cool find. I really liked these and their Giulia sedan predecessors. Among other reasons, their tall, upright and narrow bodies is how I like my cars.
This one looks to have had a full life, so no regrets about seeing it here.
I very much doubt the numbers would match for this car, as it is well known that the factory installed far more than this in the Rust Pack.
In proof, there is only one ’74 Berlina in the Alfa Club of North America register, and even that consists of just four badges, a gearbox, and eleven body flakes believed strongly to be red. (It is being restored currently).
Quite the find Mr Klein, even if it’s probably a tribute.
Nice tribute to a favourite older saloon…….sadly, it will be a tribute in this case I suspect.
Interesting to see you pick out the side marker for special mention……one of the details I really like on my Giulietta (and there are several) are these side repeaters. Only one element lights up, the rest is because it is Italian.
You’re quite right to keep this Alfa remembered, if only in the garage. Personally, I’d love to have that instrument cluster too…..if you could pop back…usual shipping address
In late 1973, about six months after I finished university, I bought a 1969 1750 Berlina. It was quite a revelation after my “broke student” cars.
As it was a Canadian car it had dual weber carbs. Other differences were no side markers and the outer headlights were 7″ and the inner were the small 5 3/4″ size. The lighting rules allowed 4 small lamps for high beams, but not a combination of large and small, so on high beam only the 2 inner lamps were on. It looked a little odd.
It is still one of my favourite cars. It was relatively inconspicuous, very comfortable, handled very well, and was quite quick. It was also a great highway cruiser and got excellent mileage. The only problem was rust. I had to retire it in 1977, when it was only 8 years old.