Blunder Buses: Alfa Romeo Alfa 6

Imagine a beautiful house. A striking house, perhaps on a distant hill, the valley it overlooks as lush as spring. Could this be, you idly wonder, your dream home? Curious, you take a closer look. And discover that at the foot of the hill snakes a six-lane motorway. Your dream is over, as briefly as it had begun.

This is the kind of high-frisson, sinking disappointment served by Alfa Romeo’s 1979 Alfa 6. Only in reverse. The sinking disappointment arrived the moment you saw it, this bluff bumpered, overhang-blighted, under-wheeled saloon as cumbersomely graceless as a warehouse distribution centre.

The source of the frisson lay beneath the 6’s flatly featureless bonnet where, unsurprisingly given the car’s name, a brand-new 2.5-litre V6 motor was to be found. No, there was nothing unusual about a six-cylinder engine in 1979, though Alfa’s contrasted from most rivals in having its half-dozen cylinders arranged in a vee rather than a queue.