Retro Cars Magazine No.76 GROUP-B BRAWLER Back Issue

I’ve entered Alfa Romeo ownership for the fi rst time this month and have loved every minute of it so far.
The Alfa in question is a GTV 2.0-litre Twin Spark and was bought for the tiny sum of just £450. Now normally I’d be worried by such a cheap purchase, especially as it’s my fi rst foray into a frankly infamous
marque. Horror stories are frequently off ered by ‘pub experts’ about Alfa reliability and build quality and there’s no denying that there have been some hiccups along the way, however, the GTV is a rare exception to the rule. The reason why I wasn’t overly worried by my purchase was that I’d given it a good inspection and test drive before buying it and was convinced that nothing substantial was broken. For extra piece of mind
though I booked the GTV straight into Alfa specialists Autolusso near Luton for a once over. They soon confi rmed that I’d bought an ‘above average’ example and actually admitted that they’d bought cars for
more than I paid simply to break them.
So feeling a bit smug I proudly drove the car onto their ramp and confi dentally awaited the result of the inspection… sadly there was quite a lot that I missed. See page 68 for the full story.
Anyway that’s enough about my shoddy motors, what else is in this issue?
We’re going all Group B again with a monster Metro 6R4. This car was the object of obsession for its owner who’d wanted one of Austin-Rover’s rally weapons ever since he saw one sliding around a Welsh forest as a child. See page 36.
Vauxhall Nova, not a model that instantly screams retro quality. The poor little GM hatch has had more than its fair share of poor rep due to the Max Power brigade. This one sets the record straight with a
quality resto. and motorsport vibe (page 6).
We’ve given out a lot of front-engine Porsche love recently but it’s well worth giving these awesome cars one more feature this year.