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Davide Cironi Alfa 75 Mega Comparison.

5K views 15 replies 9 participants last post by  Raimondo 
#1 · (Edited)
#2 ·
Very interesting!
It'd be nice to know more about the changes to the chassis and whether Alfa did something a lot more suitable with the suspension on those cars than standard.
A shame it still used the heavy impact type bumpers.
 
#3 ·
All of the tweaks to the suspension in terms of springs, torsion bars, dampers and roll bars are really not important these days, moderm suspension setups we have like coilovers and rose joints and other stuff are light years ahead in the performance to anything they could do those days.

The only real question is what was done to the metal, bodywork... strenghtening in some areas and where.

From that brief engine bay shot i can see they did shock tower to front crossmember infront of the engine bracing that is probably tied to the windscreen pillars area as we know those are the weakspots of this design...

Its safe to assume they did similal stuff like the factory race chassis with regard to the street engine size and accesory in the engine bay and stock interior...

So its a compromise of sorts. No hydraulic jacking points, probably, no roll cage skipping when going into the car... ok :)
 
#7 ·
It looks like the 75 3.0 V6 was built by Balduzzi.

Davide Cironi looks to be the italian Chris Harris based on driving style. The videos on Gandini and the 155 DTM are really great. He is certainly more entertaining than watching Doug Demuro play with air vents on you tube.
 
#8 · (Edited)
Cironi does great videos on Italian cars. he's young, enthusiastic, knows how to drive, is honest and passionate. His video on the GTV6 is lovely, as he throws the car around corners... haven't seen many other testers show their tests with his level of skill and fun. He's also spent the time to interview a number of designers and engineers, which (as far as I know) is rarely done, or published. He's talked to Materazzi, Gandini, and others, and is doing a service for us all in recording these guys. Of course, every time I hear one of those, there is a yearning for more details... can't you ask this question?, but at least he's doing something about keeping the history alive.
 
#9 ·
Davide makes very good videos and he has some really great ones on the real story behind certain ferraris and lamborghinis in interviews with the leading engineers.
The SZ in this group test is very different from the others with much better chassis strengthening, longer front uprights and rose joints as standard as well as coil over suspension both ends but with so little time for development (from design to production 1 year) it was not perfect and leaving the front torsion bars out was not a good move for any kind of track work.
 
#10 ·
The SZ in this group test is very different from the others with much better chassis strengthening, longer front uprights and rose joints as standard as well as coil over suspension both ends but with so little time for development (from design to production 1 year) it was not perfect and leaving the front torsion bars out was not a good move for any kind of track work.
It's not hard to add spring rate. The motorsport style springs that were used in the ES30 chassis are available in dozens of different spring rates, typically going up in 25lb/in increments, from very soft (150lb/in) all the way to 'Snap your chassis in half!'......... :laugh:
What the chassis could actually cope with, in terms of spring rate/natural frequency over many years of use, is anyones guess.
Fundamentally they're not a rigid chassis. The chassis should have been developed much more than it was. But, you know, 'accountants'............ :glare:
 
#12 ·
Its always the money...

There is a great part in the interview with Nicola Larini where he discribes his time in 75 and why it wasnt competitive in WTCC...

"...BMW was a race car that was adjusted for the road and 75 was a road car that was modified to be a race car..."
Sad because the 75 had a much more race car like chassis ... the BMW was considerably simpler, AND also had 50/50 weight distribution ... Alfa should have taken note and binned the 116 Alfetta drivetrain and returned to a gearbox hanging off the back of the engine (moved further back) with a good independent rear suspension. Would have saved lots of $'s they could have put into quality ...
Pete
 
#13 ·
A quick look shows that the e30 M3 had a track width of 1418mm and the 75 Evo had 1373mm at the front and 1352mm at the rear.
45mm is not to be sneezed at. 66mm at the rear!

Obviously most talk like this is hypothetical, but the 75 clearly would have benefitted from a much wider track width.
But by using longer suspension arms. Sorting out the front suspension geometry and reducing the scrub radius while they were at it, would have helped a lot too.
Move the engine rearward and the front axle line further forward.
A much more rigid chassis.
Keep the transaxle where it was, but build a genuinely robust unit and have a gear linkage arrangement that was properly designed and executed.
The DeDion suspension was very capable. But mounting the Watt's linkage the otherway around, so the bellcrank was attached to the chassis and the arms went to the rear suspension, should have improved things a lot (consistent roll couple length).

The 75 just seamed to hang on to that old Italian way of building cars longer than they should have.
Narrow track width, weird suspension geometry and a fairly flimsy chassis. Fiat did the same with the 124, 125, 132, Argenta and 131 (all right, the 131 had McPherson struts). But Alfa got much more life from the old transaxle chassis than Fiat got from their older platforms.

Having said that, the Lancias of the era always looked significantly wider.
I couldn't find the track width for the Lancia Beta (I didn't try real hard), but I could find it for the Monte Carlo: 1412mm at the front and 1456 at the rear.
Significantly wider than what Alfa used, and given that they were a for Lancia what the X1/9 was for Fiat, I'd guess that those numbers, swapped front for rear, would have been where the Beta sedan were for their measurements.
 
#14 ·
In hindsight its easy to pinpoint the flaws of the transaxle chassis, but BMW was a company that made good money, Alfa was on the verge of bankruptcy and had to scrape by. The fact that the 75 and the SZ are as fast and capable as they are, is a testament to creative engineering that Italians know so well
 
#15 ·
Alfa did not have the budget to race the 75 effectively against BMW but was based on a good platform design that was not fundamentally changed since the launch of the alfetta in 1972. A recent interview by an Alfa engineer from the period said that there was no money to develop a new platform for the transaxle cars and that they were all essentially minimally modified from the alfetta platform of 1972. He said a new platform should have been designed in the 1980s. The Giulietta 116 platform, lifted directly from the alfetta before was the platform of the 75 which explains the narrow track as the engineer pointed out it had not substantially changed since 1972.
All the transaxle cars up to the 75 had soft chassis in production and roll was a design characteristic built in to the handling with more emphasis on feel and balance with narrower tyres rather than the stiff chassis and hard grip and wide tyres of todays cars. The SZ had a much more reinforced chassis but not hardly as stiff as the IMSA cars which had many tubes strengthening the chassis.
 
#16 ·
Almost five years ago, my son, David, said "Dad, you have to watch this video that I found!" Instantly, I was hooked.

Even though the original video has been edited, it is still takes me captive and I await the day my black '64 Giulia Spider comes to life.

Autunno in Spider, may be the only video that Davide Cironi has produced without any commentary; it remains my favorite.

I trust you will enjoy it, as well:

 
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