ALFA ROMEO

Montreal

The Alfa Romeo Montreal began life as a styling exercise shown at Expo 67 in Montreal, Canada, where two concept cars drew such admiration that the public spontaneously named them after the host city. Designed by the young Marcello Gandini at Bertone, the same hand behind the Lamborghini Miura and Countach, the Alfa Romeo Montreal featured a dramatic fastback coupe body marked out by its distinctive grille slats over the headlamps and the row of air vents behind the doors. When the production Alfa Romeo Montreal finally arrived at the 1970 Geneva Motor Show, it had been transformed under the skin: gone was the modest four-cylinder of the show car, replaced by a detuned version of the 2.6-litre quad-cam V8 derived directly from Alfa Romeo's Tipo 33 sports-racing programme. Fed by SPICA mechanical fuel injection and producing around 200 horsepower, the V8 gave the Alfa Romeo Montreal genuine 220 km/h performance and a glorious high-revving voice. It sat on the shortened floorpan and running gear of the Giulia GTV, with a five-speed gearbox and rear limited-slip differential. Expensive and launched into the turmoil of the 1970s oil crises, the Alfa Romeo Montreal never sold in big numbers, and just 3,917 were built before production ended in 1977. Long overlooked, the rare V8-engined Alfa Romeo Montreal is now a sought-after collector's Alfa.