The Donor car

So we've decided that the donor car for the project will be an Alfa Romeo 75, the question still remains, which variant of the car to use? 4 cylinder / 6 cylinder, Diesel?

From the very start I have had to rule out the 75 V6, this is mainly down to the weight of the V6 engine. The final car is hopefully going to be about handling and finesse rather than out and out power. Yes a V6 can be put together to produce in excess of 220bhp, but you cannot do anything about the weight of the unit. This is always going to be a shortfall when it comes to making the car handle.

As interesting as it would be to try and make a 75 TD into a trackday car, I think this one is going to have to be dismissed. The diesel engine is an old design and would not respond well to being fiddled with, especially not in the area or reliability. And i do not think that other track users would be very happy following a car through corners when it was spewing out black diesel smoke.

So that leads us onto the 4 cylinder cars, the 2.0L is almost perfectly balanced 50 / 50 front / rear, rwd like all 75's with the added bonus of a limited slip diff. Its all looking good so far, the 2.0L engine produces 148bhp as standard and there are plenty of tuning parts out there. However pushing this engine past @180bhp means spending big money, and building such an engine will undoubtedly mean engine speeds around the 8000rpm, terrible fuel economy and drivability issues around town.
Which brings us along to the 75 Turbo, with a 1.8L turbocharged engine the weight balance is going to be very close to the 2.0L's . Its going to be RWD, have a LSD and most importantly the turbo charged engine is going to be tunable without having to resort to extremely high rpm's . Another bonus of the turbo engine is the midrange torque, lots of it, so not only will a tuned turbo engine produce big bhp, it will also remain drivable. This is going to be a big bonus for a car that will be kept road legal.

So there it is, the first decision has been made with regards to Project 75. The car to be used is an Alfa Romeo 75 Turbo.