The Alfa Romeo Arna - Alfa + Nissan =

Alfa Romeo has announced its return to the US in 2015, after a 20 year absence. The carmaker is well known for its attractive Italian styling, and the quality is good.

Back in the late 1970s and 1980s, one of the things that hampered Alfa Romeo was dodgy reliability, and they were losing market share. On October 9, 1980, Alfa Romeo and Nissan signed a deal to form a joint venture called ARNA - Alfa Romeo Nissan Autoveicoli - and develop a small family car to turn around Alfa Romeo's sagging fortunes. Nissan had just what Alfa needed: reliable vehicles. And Alfa had the sexy design. A reliable, sexy vehicle? Why hasn't this partnership lasted? Hmm... I wonder why.

This was the Alfa Romeo Arna. Right from the start, you can tell it's a royal screwup. From the outside, it's just a Nissan - a decidedly ho-hum looking vehicle at the time - with Alfa badges haphazardly slapped on it. It also suffered from the rather poor engineering quality of a typical 1980s Alfa Romeo. Imagine a 1980s Nissan, without the Nissan reliability. It was the worst of both worlds, and a worthless car. Somehow, 53,000 were sold, though very few remain - by 2000, just 340 remained in the UK, a major market. That indicates a 5-10% survival rate just 13-17 years after the cars were produced. It was an unreliable car, and one no one cared to keep in good shape.

Luckily, this piece of trash never made it out of Europe, and in 1987, it was canned and replaced by the Alfa Romeo 33, a much better car. The 33 was made between 1983 and 1995 (having run concurrently with the Arna during its first few years) and sold over a million units. And it looked like this: