Any Chrysler Alpines about

bbam

Just popped into my head... we had one years ago.. I really loved it, felt very forward engineerd at the time ~1977/78

does anyone one keep one as a classic or were many sold in the republic at all.. Havent seen one in decades.

carchaeologist

They were sold here. Must be only a couple left literally now.

Odyssey 2005

carchaeologist wrote: »

They were sold here. Must be only a couple left literally now.

Saw one outside the VD clinic in Temple Bar last week.:eek:
Seriously though I doubt there are many left,they were a dog

bbam

Odyssey 2005 wrote: »

,they were a dog

don't be saying that..
your messing with my childhood memories :eek:

Stained Class

Yeah, they were fairly popular here when they came out, but most didn't last long.

By the mid-eighties they were mostly gone.

They had those rattly-tappet sounding Simca derived engines that were a feature of many Chrysler/Talbot cars.

They were very popular in France though, where they were badged the Simca 1307,1308 or 1309, depending on engine size.

oceanman

yeah a pure junk box...

mattroche

B B am. Vaughans Garage, Miltown Malby, Co. Clare, ( 087687 1040 ) has several Hillmans & has a least 1 Alpine, maybe more. I have not been there for a while. He is big into them.

Stained Class

One family near me worshipped Hillmans.

When I was a kid I saw Minx, Hunter, Avengers in their yard.

Later they had a Salora. This was an Alpine with a boot.

All said, they weren't bad cars, but the parent company was in trouble & customers lost faith in their products as a result.

Odyssey 2005

bbam wrote: »

don't be saying that..
your messing with my childhood memories :eek:

Messing with my own. Guy lived near me ,he worked in Traynors in finglas had a good few of them and then solaras.....but they were crap.

corktina

Stained Class wrote: »

One family near me worshipped Hillmans.

When I was a kid I saw Minx, Hunter, Avengers in their yard.

Later they had a Salora. This was an Alpine with a boot.

All said, they weren't bad cars, but the parent company was in trouble & customers lost faith in their products as a result.

well, I can only speak of Avengers, but I had a new one in about 1979 and you couldn't hear the radio at 70 mph it had so much windnoise.

Capri

Russian 'Alpine' - Moskvitch :rolleyes:

http://www.simoncars.co.uk/moskvitch/slides/Moskvitch%202141%20Aleko%20qtr.jpg

jimmyw

If your familiar with "practical classics" magazine, apparently a feature coming up is the European cars of the year models down the years.The Alpine was car of the year of 1976.(Twas easy to be cars of the years back then.....:p)

Capri

79 Alpine/1308 seen at airport roundabout yesterday ( along with Pagoda going the other way, Austin 1300 parked in credit union car park, P1800 on old Swords rd...... busy spotting day )

Arthur Daley

They did struggle on as Talbots until 1986, but sales would have been a trickle by then.

Chrysler had this as European COTY in 1976, and then the Horizon as European COTY in 1979, but the entire company was defunct by mid 1986. There's rapid change in the industry for you.

There was some thoughts that Peugoet/Talbot would badge the UK built 309 as a Talbot from 1986 onwards, but it was obviously felt the Peugoet badge was the stronger at that stage, probably due to the excellent and hip 205.

Capri

Chrysler had this as European COTY in 1976, and then the Horizon as European COTY in 1979, but the entire company was defunct by mid 1986. There's rapid change in the industry for you.

It also shows that the COTY award is not much to base your car purchase on. Fiat/Chrysler COTY's = scrap value now Solid/reliable cars don't seem to get COTY's

Wheelnut

I remember that there was a big build-up to the launch of the Alpine. When the day came they took out full-page advertisements in the papers. Unfortunately the very same day was when Vauxhall launched their new Cavalier which was a rebadged Opel Ascona. They also took out full-page advertisements and completely stole the thunder from Chrysler.

As for COTY: that prize also went to Rover for that big hatch-back... whatever it was called. Not many of them around either, they were heaps of junk too.

bbam

jimmyw wrote: »

If your familiar with "practical classics" magazine, apparently a feature coming up is the European cars of the year models down the years.The Alpine was car of the year of 1976.(Twas easy to be cars of the years back then.....:p)

Ours had very similar trim colour to that one in the video, but it was blue paintwork..

Fairness the cockpit was decent enough looking and I remember it being comfortable to be in... Body roll seemed awful. I think we had ours for maybe 3 years. one thing that really sticks out in my mind were the clunky square buttons on the centre consol.