Alfa Romeo SZ was the weirdest 'supercar' that inspired the coolest video game

Is this peak rare Alfa Romeo madness? In this CarPervert episode I get to drive a classic sports car for the first time that I'd only ever driven in retro video games. I've never ever seen one out in the wild until now.

The Italians aren't known for their practicalities when it comes to flamboyant sports cars, and when the SZ launched in 1989 it looked like a 16-bit alien had landed. I was 11 in 1990 and spent waaaay too many hours playing a game called Supercars II on the Commodore Amiga 500. The cover car was one of these Sprint Zagatos, which was ironic in two ways: It isn't even a supercar, and it looked the same in 16-bit blocky graphics as it did in reality! Turns out the SZ was one of the first cars to be purely designed with CAD (Computer Aided Design), which might explain the shape.

Beneath the bizarrely styled composite bodyshell was a skeleton chassis of a Group A Alfa 75 touring car. V6 3.0-litre 'Busso' engine at the front, gearbox transxale at the rear. Just over 1000 SZs were sold worldwide, but only 100 came to the UK. They were almost as expensive as a 911 when new, and probably slower than the far cheaper BMW E30 M3.

Huge thanks to:
The Market (www.themarket.co.uk) for lending me the car to film. It sold for £39,000:
http://themarket.co.uk/listings/alfa-...

Video game composer Barry Leitch (https://www.barryleitch.com/) who made the original Supercars game music. Cheers Barry.

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Filmed and edited by Mark Taylor-Hankins @inksharkman

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Jonny Smith
Creative content maker, car presenter & car pervert since '98
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