Arna level red!
03/22/2026
Verbal backbiting has always been one of the favorite pastimes of supposed automotive culture gourmets. It was clear that this thing would be a flop. What were they thinking? How could they not realize that? But Lancia Trevi, Morris Marina, Opel Ascona C and the like were once completely serious cars - and not as bad as we would like them to be for the sake of ridicule today.
But there were also cases where even the manufacturer knew from the outset that they had created a cucumber. Like Alfa Romeo with the Nissan stepchild called Arna. Because there is no other way to explain the almost convulsive overemphasis on completely absent characteristics in the brochure : "Fun to drive" - "Different from the others" - "No confusion" - "Typically Alfa Romeo".
The passionate Alfista who is asked to name a Milanese model to which these four short descriptions apply will probably name everything from the first Giulietta to the 8C Competizione - but hardly the most boring, most ordinary, most arbitrary and most atypical Alfa Romeo ever built. And the Arna certainly had a good side somewhere. But apparently even Alfa Romeo didn't know what that was...
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