LANCIA BETA
JUST WANTED TO KNOW IF ANYONE ELSE HERE EVER HAD THE EXTREME MISFORTUNE TO OWN A LATE 70'S LANCIA BETA COUPE OR OTHER BODY STYLE. I HAD ONE IN 1983 FOR 2 MONTHS UNTIL IT BLEW ITS ENGINE.WHAT A GREAT CAR.
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His shop took on the misfits that most shops either hated or had no idea how to fix.
Citroens, Fiats, Peugots, Rovers, you name it, he worked on them and did a great job at fair prices.
But he HATED Lancias and had many unkind and profane ways to describe them.
He called them "Lawnchairs" because they spent (in his opinion)most of the time sitting around not running.
Shifty...it sounds like your opinion differs?
14 months...it took me 6 months to unload it before I finally gave up and traded it in on a
new 82 celica. Did you notice the gap in years...
I bought the lancia as a left over left over, no
one dumb enough to buy it new except for me. I
could never keep it running reliably for any length of time. In the winter, I had to go to
bars at night just to keep the battery charged.
Back then, I thought anything Italian was primo.
My dealer went out of business 6 months after I
bought the car but that made little difference as they did not want to or know how to fix these
little bastards. 3 months after I got rid of my
beta [non-permissible content removed], Lancia stopped subjecting Americans to dealing with these horrible imports. I believe the list price of my car was 11,250 and
I paid about 8650 as a left over. The value of
this car 17 months later after Lancia stopped
imports sunk it to about 3500, if any one was
interested.
One quirky thing I remember about those engines was to do a valve adjustment, you turned each cylinder to TDC and measured the clearance. To adjust you had to replace shims with ones of different thickness measurements. For example if the clearence on the intake valve of #1 cylinder was .005 too much and the current shim was .035 thickness, you changed it for one that was .04 thickness. So basically to do a valve adjustment you need to have a whole selection of different thickness shims. Wierd.
I did my first major engine surgery there on a Fiat 128 that spun a rod bearing. It was the first time I'd ever completely disassembled and reassembled an engine. It was quite a good feeling when it started up and ran good :-)
Bill
Nonetheless, this is an old company with a fantastic racing heritage and a reputation for many technological breakthroughs.
Look at it this way. In about 1956, Alfa brought over a lovely two seat, 4 cylinder, overhead cam, five speed roadster to the USA. This is the very configuration that everyone is buying today. But Alfa figured all that out 45 years ago, when most other cars had flatheads and three speed column shifters mated to big heavy ladder frames supported massive steel bodies.
In 1980, they put variable valve timing on their cars, which was quite a few years before Honda did it.
In terms of styling, they are among the most attractive cars around I think (well, they have had a few turkeys, but not many).
Probably the best thing about Alfas is that every Alfa made is absolutely fun to drive. They may not have always made the best car or the prettiest, but they never made a dull car.
By the way: Vincenzo Lancia was the first to design a workable V-6 engine that was fitted to a Lancia sports car, the Aurelia in 1959. Up to that time, nobody could make a successful V-6 engine for a commercial car that it not vibrate terribly. Today we take the V-6 engine for granted in our Hondas, Toyotas, and waht have you. But remember that it was Lancia who came out first with a V-6 in a production car. There were other first too. If anyone want to know more about Lancias contact me.
Eddy
Eddy
Soyder. I test drove it, what a disappointment. I thought it would make my old '71 Fiat 124 spider look slow but it sucked, the engine had zero pepiness to and didn't rev past 4800 or so. Did I get a bad car or a poor year. It really set my opinion of
Alfa back, after all those years of thinking of my Fiat as "the poor man's Alfa".
2001 BMW 330ci/E46, 2008 BMW 335i conv/E93