Faults:

I bought my example in a rare Cassis Red with a very unusual interior combo of white leather seats and carpets, with a red dash and binnacle. The guy selling it wanted a quick sale, and it was one of the best examples I had seen for that price. I was impressed that a 25 year old car still had every electrical item in fully functioning order, from the air-con to the multi way seats. The paintwork is almost unblemished and leather as new.

Roadholding is brilliant apart from the characteristic of these cars to follow contours in worn out roads. Don't worry if yours does this, they all do!

Performance is brilliant and can easily keep up with many modern sports cars. Mine is not a garage queen and I use it to go to work everyday, cars should be used its lack of use that causes problems to occur. All I would say to anybody is try and drive a few to see what a bad one feels like, and then you will realise when you find a good one.

Faults:

This car was 21 years old when I bought it. Previous owners had selectively repaired important items, leaving less imperative systems for the next guy to repair; namely me.

Few things have broken since I took ownership. The following list things that were due for refresh/replacement when I took possession. Bear in mind that after a pre-purchase inspection and taking ownership, I drove the car home from San Francisco to Maryland without incident, before doing any of the following. I provided all labor for the following:

1) Motor mounts were due for replacement.

2) Oil pan gasket was due for replacement.

3) Transmission was due for service.

4) The vapor recovery canister and system were due for maintenance.

5) Interior lights (5) would not illuminate due to a short, requiring detective work to resolve.

6) Instrument panel warnings did not work, due to a failure in the central warning computer.

7) Vacuum hoses were leaky; overdue for replacement.

8) Air breather hoses were due for replacement.

9) Steering rack seeped fluid, and was due for replacement.

Believe it or not, none of the parts for the aforementioned were very expensive. The central warning computer (for example) was found used for $30.00 and worked perfectly. Good solid motor mounts were found for $45.00 each. And so on…

General Comments:

Reference my earlier review of a 1981 Alfa Romeo Spider (Titled Lorelei... reef siren... harpy... vampiress). Probably shows up under MY 1980 reviews. What a difference in experience between these two cars.

I knew that there were a list of things to refresh. The car only cost less than $7k US to buy, but drove like something else entirely. These are not very good cars to folks married to the local shop-wrench. They are excellent cars for the shade tree mechanic, and provide an unbelievable return on investment in the way of exciting miles. I doubt that there is more shared information available for any other car. Any operation that someone could think of to do will have pictorials posted on rennlist.com. Things fixed stayed fixed. A mechanic's dream.

The car is 80's fast (0-60 in 6.2 seconds), which is fast enough, but not competitive in straights with modern cars. But the car's forte' is handling and cornering, which few cars of any generation can match. And comfort. Geez....my wife loves this car. The seating position is laid back, knees up, steering wheel between the legs. You provide the inputs and the car does the rest. More like driving an F16.

The amount of shared information and the availability of new/used/rebuilt/improvised parts makes this the hobbyist's heaven.