Alfa Romeo 164 Cloverleaf

For me the engine is the crucial factor in giving a car character. My favourite sports car of all time, the entry-level Porsche Cayman, has been ruined by the new four-cylinder engine. Not many modern car engines do excite me. The obsession with a flat torque curve, for emissions reasons, has made all engines feel similar. Engineers, led by marketing people, make engines bang and pop because they think that’s what makes a great engine. It takes more than a loud exhaust, too.

I’ll give you an example of a great engine, one that was attached to a car that certainly had a few flaws. I remember going on the launch of this car 27 years ago. I remember the hotel in Yorkshire and I remember the blag (motoring journalist speak for a freebie gift). It was a paperweight with an Alfa Romeo logo on it. The car was the 164 Cloverleaf. We had a 164 long-term test car at the time, a 2.0-litre Twin Spark. It torque-steered like a drunk and its power seats often didn’t work, but it sounded good.

The 164 Cloverleaf had a tuned version of Alfa’s V6. Compression ratio raised to SZ spec, SZ cams and bigger diameter inlet and exhaust manifolds. Old-style tuning, in other words. The motor only had 200bhp but my God it sounded beautiful. It looked beautiful, too, with chrome intake pipes.

Alfa managed to calm down the torque steer in the 164 Cloverleaf by lowering the car by 20mm and dropping the engine on its mounts by half an inch. It still wriggled on acceleration – terribly by modern standards – but it sounded so lovely, had strong enough performance to be exciting, and was a good-looking car.

Finding a good one today wouldn’t be easy. Its electrics would be part-time, especially the volts controlling the windows and seats, but the reliable V6 would still be playing its music. L