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Alfa Romeo’s 164 sedan served as a base for unconventional builds.

The Museo Alfa Romeo vault holds a pickup and a mid-engined racer.

Both the Proteo and Scighera concept cars borrowed the sedan’s DNA.

The Alfa Romeo 164 sits at a hinge point in the company’s modern history, the final car the Biscione engineered under its own direction before Fiat took the keys. What gets lost in that footnote is how far the Pininfarina-styled flagship strayed from its executive-sedan brief. I found two of them at the Museo Alfa Romeo, and between them they make the case better than any spec sheet. One is a chopped two-door pickup. The other is a V10 racing car with almost nothing underneath it a 164 owner would recognize.

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Starting with the pickup, the story of Alfa Romeo’s firefighting fleet traces its roots to the Balocco proving ground, which opened its doors in 1962. To provide support for high-speed testing incidents , the track employed firefighters equipped with custom vehicles developed by the internal skunkworks division known as the Alfa Romeo Reparto Esperienze.

More: Take A Ride With Me To Alfa’s Homeland In Its Smallest SUV, Sins And All

After building Vigili del Fuoco conversions of the 1750 Berlina, the Alfetta, the Alfa 6, and the Giulietta sedans, the team applied the same treatment to the 164. The donor vehicle was the high-performance all-wheel-drive Quadrifoglio 4 variant, fitted with a 3.0-liter V6 engine that was good for 229 hp (171 kW / 232 PS).

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Alfa Romeo 164 Vigili del Fuoco | Photos Thanos Pappas / Carscoops

Emergency duty meant taking a saw to the rear section of the roof, which turned the 164 sedan into a pickup with a bed behind the cab. That space went to heavy-duty hoses and water pumps, kept out of sight beneath a soft aerodynamic cover that stopped the load from wrecking the aerodynamics on the way to an incident. Furthermore, the Vigili del Fuoco got emergency lights on the roof, and a special livery with white decals on the red bodywork.

More: Alfa Romeo 164 Restomod Looks Gorgeous With Telephone-Dial Wheels And Carbon Bodykit

When it was retired, the one-off pickup model went to the museum, preserving a forgotten corner of Alfa Romeo history.

The Mid-Engine V10 Racecar

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Alfa Romeo 164 ProCar | Photos Thanos Pappas / Carscoops

The second special 164 I encountered at the Museo Alfa Romeo shares even less with the production sedan. This one was built in 1988 for ProCar, the Formula S championship the FIA floated as a support series for Formula 1 weekends. It died before a single race, largely because Alfa Romeo was the only manufacturer that bothered to commit.

More: Reborn Alfa Romeo 155 Race Car Is Really A Giulia QV In Disguise

The rules required each car to keep the silhouette of a road-going model, which is why the Alfa Romeo 164 ProCar passes for a hot version of the sedan from a distance. Underneath, it has nothing to do with one.

The model is based on a bespoke carbon fiber tub chassis developed by Brabham, allowing a total weight of 750 kg (1,653 lbs). Power comes from a mid-mounted naturally-aspirated 3.5-liter V10 engine originally engineered for the Ligier F1 team, producing an impressive 620 hp (462 kW / 629 PS). While it never raced, the mid-engine sedan made a public appearance at the 1988 Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

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The Concepts

1991 Alfa Romeo Proteo Concept | Photos Thanos Pappas / Carscoops, Stellantis

The pickup and the racecar are strange enough to carry a story on their own, but the 164 platform also spawned a pair of concepts worth accounting for.

More: I Gave Alfa’s Last Busso V6 Coupe A Digital Restomod, Then Let The Purists Judge It

The 1991 Alfa Romeo 164 Proteo concept was designed by Walter de Silva, adopting a two-door silhouette that could transform from a coupe into a convertible thanks to a folding glass top. The concept used a shortened version of the sedan’s platform and was powered by a 3.0-liter V6 engine, featuring all-wheel-drive and four-wheel-steering. Although it never reached production, its design influenced the GTV and Spider sports cars.

1997 Alfa Romeo Scighera Concept | Photos Italdesign

The 1997 Scighera is the outlier here, since it lives at Italdesign headquarters rather than the museum. It was envisioned as a roadgoing supercar accompanied by a racing version. The low-slung body with the removable gull-wing windows was made of aluminum for the road car, while the track-focused GT variant utilized carbon fiber panels. Under the skin it used components from the 164 architecture with a mid-mounted twin-turbo 3.0-liter V6 producing 400 hp (298 kW / 406 PS) and an AWD system derived from the 155.

The sedan that started all of this arrived in 1987 wearing Pininfarina bodywork, its FWD and AWD platform co-developed with the Saab 9000, Lancia Thema, and Fiat Croma. It sold well by Alfa standards and stayed in production until 1997, when it got replaced by the 166.

Alfa Romeo 164 | Photos Stellantis

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High prices left both 500e models dead on arrival in Australia’s market.

Fiat sales fell 30 percent during the first half of 2026 across Australia.

Only Fiat’s van business remains as speculation over a local exit grows.

Fiat has stopped importing the only two new models it sells in Australia, the Fiat 500e and Abarth 500e, as it struggles to fend off a sea of more affordable Chinese arrivals. The move leaves the company in a precarious spot and has fueled speculation that it’s inching toward exiting the market entirely as sales crumble.

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Demand for the two 500e models has never been strong, largely because they have been so expensive. When first launched, the regular 500e started at AU$52,500 ($36,800), while t he Abarth model was initially priced from AU$58,990 ($41,300), price tags generally only reserved for mid-size SUVs, including electric SUVs.

Read: Dealers Can’t Move The 500e At $15,000 Off. Fiat’s Response Is A $5,200 Price Hike

Fiat eventually made steep price cuts to both cars, more than AU$20,000 (US$14,000) in some cases, but that did little to stir demand. Sources familiar with the matter told Drive that Fiat’s five remaining passenger car dealers have gone without new factory 500e allocations for some time. The company also runs 14 Fiat Professional van showrooms.

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Earlier this week, Stellantis confirmed it will stop importing the 500e models, the only two passenger cars it still brought into the country. The petrol-powered Fiat 500 and Abarth 695 are already gone, with only leftover stock remaining, though the Scudo and Ducato vans are staying, at least for now.

Sales Collapse

Brad Anderson/Carscoops

Car Sales reports that Fiat volume has dropped 30 percent year-to-date, with just 144 vehicles moved locally this year. Only 13 of those came in June. Ferrari managed 16 and Lamborghini 18, which means two brands that trade in six-figure exotics each outsold Fiat, by 23 and 38 percent respectively over the same month. Stellantis says it remains committed to Australia, but with so little volume, it may become hard to justify the investment needed to keep the brand around.

“As part of Stellantis Australia’s ongoing portfolio and product planning process, the availability of specific models can vary over time as we assess market demand and future product opportunities,” Stellantis said. “We remain focused on ensuring the vehicles we bring to Australia meet customers’ expectations. “

“Fiat 500e and Abarth 500e stock in Australia has now largely been sold through and, at this stage, we are not planning additional orders while we evaluate future product opportunities for the local market. We continue to support our Fiat and Abarth customers and dealer network and look forward to sharing more information about Fiat’s and Abarth’s future plans in Australia at the appropriate time,” the company added.

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A Sign Of Things To Come?

Earlier this month, fellow Stellantis brand Peugeot revealed it was parting ways with Australian distributor Inchcape , meaning Stellantis itself will control the firm’s local operations. Last week, local media was informed that Peugeot was completely retiring its fleet of press vehicles, noting it would no longer be offering loans to the media. Its sales have also fallen drastically as the French brand has failed to compete with new arrivals, mostly from China. Its sales are down more than 32 percent year-to-date.

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Brad Anderson/Carscoops

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QUICK FACTS

Where is it? Lake Skadar, Montenegro and Albania [ 42.201087364, 19.303135741 ]

What's in the photo? A giant, milky-green swirl on the lake's surface

Who took the photo? An unnamed astronaut on board the International Space Station

When was it taken? Feb. 21, 2020

This eye-catching astronaut photo shows a cloud of sediment swirling into a giant, milky-green vortex in one of Europe's largest lakes.

Lake Skadar (also known as Shkodër, Shkodra or Scutari) is the largest lake in Southern Europe, with a surface area between 140 and 200 square miles (360 to 520 square kilometers), depending on the time of year. It is situated on the border between Montenegro, which surrounds the western half of the lake (left in the photo), and Albania, which encircles the lake's eastern shore. The body of water is split 65% to 35% in Montenegro's favor.

The lake's main water source is the Morača River, to the northwest, and its biggest outlets are the Bojana and Drin rivers, which start at the lake's easternmost point and eventually drain into the Adriatic Sea, which is partially visible in the bottom left of the photo. Skadar's southern shore is also hugged by a lofty mountain range, known as the Dinaric Alps.

During late winter and early spring, the lake's water level rises, and it usually fills with a milky-green substance that often gets whipped into a vortex by a combination of wind-driven surface currents and the natural flow of water between the lake's major inlets and outlets.

The swirling material looks very similar to blooming algae , but it is actually made of sediments — predominantly limestone and dolomite — that wash into the lake from the Dinaric Alps and other nearby mountains as the snow melts.

Lake Skadar formed millions of years ago and was once connected to the Adriatic Sea (visible in the background of this image). (Image credit: Wikimedia) Skadar is a karst lake, meaning it was once a cave system that flooded and eventually collapsed, likely because the caves were made from the same easily erodible rocks that now swirl on the lake's surface, according to NASA's Earth Observatory . The lake is a "cryptodepression" because most of the lake's floor is below sea level.

The lake originally formed during the Cenozoic Era (66 million years ago to the present), according to the International Lake Environment Committee Foundation's World Lake Database . It is home to several small islands, some of which can be seen in the photo along the lake's southern shore. These include Beška, which is home to a pair of 600-year-old churches, and Grmožur, where the remains of a 19th-century fortification loom above the lake's surface.

The shipwreck of a paddle steamboat, named Skanderbeg , lies along the lake's western shore. Local partisans sank the vessel in 1942 after Italian soldiers commandeered it during the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia in World War II. When the lake's water levels are at their lowest, part of the shipwreck rises above the surface.

Skadar Lake is a biodiversity hotspot and has protected wildlife status on both sides of the Montenegro-Albania border. It is a particularly important site for birds; more than 280 avian species call it home, including the Dalmatian pelican ( Pelecanus crispus ) and several endemic species, according to BirdLife International .

The lake also hosts around 50 freshwater snail species ‪—‬ more than any other lake on Earth, according to a 2013 study .

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