Recreate Alfa Romeo’s Incredible 164 Pro-Car With This 3.5L Alfa V10 F1 Engine

Bugatti and Bentley both have homeware collections enabling rich car enthusiasts to populate their home with fancy designer furniture that probably cost more than most of us spend on a car.

As far as we know, Alfa Romeo doesn’t have anything similar, though this Alfa-designed F1 engine would look infinitely cooler in your living room than some pretentious Bugatti chaise longue. But it would look even better behind the front seats of an Alfa Romero 164 in a home-built Pro-Car tribute.

This 3.5-liter V10 Alfa Romeo V1035 engine currently up for auction on Collecting Cars is believed to be one of only 15 units created for the 1990 F1 season, where it would have produced around 620 hp in a Ligier single seater.

We say ‘would have’ because according to the seller a last minute dispute between Ligier and Alfa Romeo apparently prevented Alfa’s engines making it to the F1 grid, Ligier ultimately opting for Cosworth power instead.

So Alfa decided to use the V1035 in its insane 164 Pro-Car. Hoping to recapture the crowd’s love for BMW’s two-season M1 Procar series from the dawn of the 1980s, motorsport’s governing body decided to introduce an F1 silhouette-racer series that would support F1 races as they moved across the globe.

The series was open to all manufacturers, and the cars would effectively be modern F1 cars re-skinned to look like production cars. Alfa created an incredible mid-engined 164 using the V1035 engine, which proved outrageously fast in testing. But, sadly, no other manufacturers were prepared to take the bait and commit to build their own racers, and the series never happened.

So despite its importance as the first modern F1 V10 engine, predating both Honda and Renault’s efforts, Alfa’s V10 never got to prove its worth, and this particular unit has apparently been kept in storage by Alfa Romeo for many years until it was bought recently by the seller. Bidding was up to £4,850 ($6,700) at the time of writing with two days left to run in the auction, so it’s relatively affordable given its historical importance.

The seller claims a recent inspection reveals it has had little use, so in theory, if you were brave, mad and handy with a socket set, you could use it as the basis for an incredible transplant project and recreate the 164 Pro-Car. Or failing that, it would make an appealing alternative to that boring Bugatti coffee table.