It’s not water he is filling it up with, it is petrol, he’s come to his senses and is going to torch it!!!
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You can be so cruel sometimes.
Harsh, but fair and accurate.
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Absolutely horrid! Pointless too.
Well, you did ask 
Or perhaps he’s a clever chap, saw what was coming and has made a fortune selling that petrol today. He may still have the Allegro too which probably is also worth more than he paid for it now too.
And I like the red “MX-5” in the first post.
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I love this. If it were real, I’d have one in a heartbeat
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Now that Alfa makes so much sense. 
If Fiat sold a bunch of 124 Spyders I’m pretty sure Alfa Romeo could have done similar. It would be my choice 
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Well, various stories abound why the Alfa Romeo version was abandoned. The ND basic spec was probably pinned down before FCA became involved, and I wonder if it was a realisation that this car was never going to work with an Alfa 4 or V6, that it might cannibalise sales from the 4C, or that there was no way they were going to let out a halo car into an Alfa Romeo showroom with a Fiat Panda engine.
Mazda and FCA came to an agreement for a AR version in 2012. The ND was unveiled in 2014. The Alfa Romeo version was kiboshed in late 2014.
I don’t see any element of the 124 that suggests its a rebadged Alfa Romeo. The assumption is that the Alfa Romeo version would have been heavily based on the 2010 2uettottanta concept, and probably a lot more money than the Mazda version.
ND development kicked off in 2011, and by June 2011, they had 6 or so quarter scale clays, which by February 2012 were whittled down to 3 full size clays. But the actual hard points, where the windscreen would be, wheelbase, and (importantly) weight. And don’t forget gram strategy, which affected design of the structural elements, choice of motor and even things like the bolts.
In May 2012, probably almost 18 months into the project, FCA signs the deal with Mazda for an Alfa Romeo version. Probably by then, much of the ND design was fixed. The actual ND shape was done by May 2012, when Asano-San worked through the Golden Week holiday to hone that shape.
Nothing is in the accounts to indicate when Alfa Romeo engineers turned up to start taking measurements, and to essentially start making a Mazda design into an Alfa Romeo. While FCA was pumping money into it, I don’t see any evidence that there was any kind of collaborative spirit between the two teams; is there any evidence of Italian input or so-called flair in the MX5?
By March 2014, the Alfa Romeo version was killed off and there was a bit of a rethink. FCA obliquely confirmed a Fiat badge for the MX5 platform in a May 2014 Investors call, formally confirmed by December 2014.
I wonder how much actual work was done on the Alfa Romeo version between May 2012 and May 2014. It must have been quite a bit. It only took Mazda 12 months or so to work out the shape of their version. I can’t help think that there are full scale clays someplace.
The official reason for the Alfa Romeo to be abandoned was a directive from the head of the company that no Alfa Romeo would be built in Japan (ignoring that Alfasuds were once built in Malaysia). I can only think there were insurmountable or imcompatible technical challenges. Mazda was obsessive about gram strategy; recapturing lightness was essential to reclaiming the orignal MX5 ethos, and to differentiate the car from the bloaty cabriolets infesting the European market (and which were being cross shopped for). That might conflict with Alfa Romeo wanting a Z4 competitor, with a 3.0 V6, requiring a fairly substantial car unless you resorted to exotic and uneconomic construction techniques (ie the 4C, which was outsourced to Maserati). At the time Fiat was trying to offload Alfa Romeo to VW, among others.
I suspect the driver was really mounting costs to modify the Mazda shell to take the V6, and instead switch to the Panda engine, a Fiat badge, and a dustoff of some Dodge proposals, which, with a squint, looked like an old Fiat (so it ended up mazda was forward thinking, Fiat was regressive, reactionary). I don’t think Fiat made any money off the 124, and it never really helped US sales. Perhaps they were committed because of expensive exit clauses.
The first FCA mules were spotted in September 2013, tooling around Michigan. They were clad in the same plastic NC panels as the MX5 mules. The key difference was that the Mazdas had twin exhausts to one side, but the Fiat/Alfa Romeo had an exhaust pipe either side of the rear.
A Fiat mule conveniently parked up alongside a NA Miata (and looking like an enthusiast owned car).
A mule was spotted with the bonnet up. The engine install looked a bit of a hasty bodge. Look at the hose connectors joing random hoses. At the time of the photo, this car was (officially at least) still destined to be an Alfa Romeo, an Alfa Romeo running the same engine now seen in a litany of Indian and Chinese econoboxes. Did the penny drop then? A 1.4 Alfa would have to be priced the same as a 1.5 MX5, and could never compete with the Z4. Bang goes the business case.
Production install
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