ALFA ROMEO ARNA parts catalogue

ALFA ROMEO ARNA parts: find out more! Which ones to choose, when to change them, and how much they cost

Alfa Romeo Arna is a car, co-produced by Alfa Romeo and Nissan companies between 1983 and 1987. The model was presented by three- and five-door hatchback.

In the late 70s of XX century the Alfa Romeo company decided to launch a new model, which would be competitive in the new market segment, largely created by Volkswagen Golf, to the launch of which Fiat Group responded with such models as Fiat Ritmo and Lancia Delta. It was impossible to produce a brand new car in a short period of time, so the management of the Italian company decided to create a joint venture with the Japanese company Nissan. The new model, for design of which a body of the Nissan Pulsar and Alfa Romeo Alfasud engines were used, was called Alfa Romeo Arna (acronym for Alfa Romeo Nissan Auto) and was presented to the public in 1983 at the Frankfurt Motor Show.

In record time a new car plant near Naples was built, but it took even less time to realize that this campaign would go down in history as the largest industrial and commercial failure of the Alfa Romeo company. First, the Pulsar body had to be modified in order to establish working mechanisms of Alfa Romeo Alfasud, which resulted in an increase in production costs and a significant delay in the sales start of the new model. Second, outdated, tasteless design inherent in the Japanese cars of those years quite disappointed Alfa Romeo brand fans.

Alfa Romeo Arna cars were released with the indices L (three-door hatchback) and SL (five-door hatchback). Soon there was also a three-door sports Alfa Romeo Arna TI. Zincrometal was used for the treatment of Alfa Romeo Arna bodies (coating, consisting of oxide sublayer containing zinc particles) that largely solved the problem of corrosion, to which Alfa Romeo Alfasud cars had been exposed to a large extent. However, Alfa Romeo Arna found no support among consumers. By this time, the Alfa Romeo company passed into the Fiat group ownership, and the first decision of the new bosses was a complete cessation of the model release and the production of its competitive successor Alfa Romeo 33.