Tough seasons in green and red
After leaving Renault at the end of 1983, American Eddie Cheever had two difficult seasons with Alfa Romeo as teammate to Italian Riccardo Patrese. The thirsty and underpowered V8 turbo engine used in the Alfas brought few good results, despite the efforts of these two very competent drivers.
Picture above: Cheever aboard the Alfa 184T, at Dallas, US Grand Prix 1984 where he spun off on lap 8 and retired.
For 1985, the team brought the Alfa Romeo 185T, which proved to be extremely uncompetitive, forcing the team to revert to the its 1984 car and upgrade the 184T to 1985 specifications, but the old car did not improve results, and Alfa announced they were pulling out of F1 at the end of the year, leaving Cheever without a F1 drive, while Patrese went back to Brabham in place of Nelson Piquet, who was moving to Williams.
Picture here-under: Eddie Cheever at the 1985 French Grand Prix held on the Paul-Ricard circuit, qualified 17th and finished 10th, one lap down on race winner Nelson Piquet (Brabham-BMW).
I bought a transaxle from a EuroBrun ER 188 only to find that some of the parts have a 184 prefix on their part number. Of course I shouldn’t be so surprised at that, because both cars were created by the same team GianPaolo Pavanello’s EuroRacing concern. It would seem that the transaxle internals were carried over from the Alfa Romeo 184T with a new transmission housing to suit the Cosworth powered ER188.