I always thought Alfa Romeos were sports cars for people with really long arms and very short legs. With double overhead cam engines they were far more sophisticated than my beloved MG's. And more costly, too, which made them just out of my reach. Even the NY Times has noticed that Alfa Romeo turns 100 this year. Here's a feature article from The Gray Lady about Alfa:
Alfa at 100: Prewar to Post-Graduate
By KEITH MARTIN
WHO cares, one might reasonably ask, about the centennial of an automaker that stopped selling cars in the United States 15 years ago and didn’t sell many in the decades before that?
Yet if it is Alfa Romeo for whom the birthday cake has been baked, it seems a lot of Americans do care — particularly the enthusiasts, collectors and racing fans who hold that Italian marque especially close to their hearts.
Young people, whose Alfa exposure has mainly been to rusty 1980s convertibles on American streets, may not understand. But for baby boomers who remember the Duetto that Dustin Hoffman drove in the hit 1967 film “The Graduate,” or hard-core enthusiasts who know all about Alfa’s win at Le Mans in 1938, the mystique lives on.
Who cares? It seems that the organizers of the year’s top automotive concours events do. Alfa Romeo will be a featured marque at the prestigious Concours d’Élégance at Pebble Beach in California in August. Alfa will be celebrated at many other classic-car events this summer, including the Concorso Italiano near Monterey, Calif.; the Fairfield County Concours in Westport, Conn., and the Concours of the Americas at Meadow Brook, near Detroit.
Topping the birthday events is a gathering of Alfas in the company’s hometown, Milan, on June 26-27. More than 1,500 historic Alfas are expected, and parades are planned for both days.
Much of the passion that remains for Alfa stems from its firebreathing, race-dominating cars of the 1930s — cars that were the Ferraris of the era. (Indeed, Enzo Ferrari managed Alfa’s racing team before setting out on his own).
This performance heritage continued in the postwar years. Alfas of the ’50s and ’60s were nimble 4-cylinder screamers that, with their supple suspensions and superior brakes — engineered to conquer the Italian Alps — literally whipped around their English competitors on the track.
But from the mid-1970s until 1995, when the company withdrew from the United States, the cars’ sporting nature was often compromised by American smog and safety regulations. With tacked-on bumpers and cobbled-together emission controls, both styling and reliability suffered.
Why then does Alfa still inspire such a following?
“Alfa Romeos are distinctive both for their often striking and notably Italian design, and for their engineering, which makes them a joy to drive," said Brewster Thackeray, president of the Alfa Romeo Owners Club-U.S.A. "Alfa owners have always been somewhat eccentric; we put up with the cars being demanding and sometimes temperamental in exchange for the joy they deliver."
Many current owners would like a new Alfa, said Alex Csank, chairman of the Alfa Century 2010 convention, set for this week in Frederick, Md. "However, Alfa must target the larger market and compete against other brands to attract a new generation of Alfa owners," he said. "And to do that, they must arrive with a strong lineup of great cars and marketing and dealer support."
The company, known as A.L.F.A. in its early years, fell under the control of Nicola Romeo, a manufacturer of mining gear, before 1920. The name of the company and its cars was changed to Alfa Romeo.
Sporting performance was always Alfa’s forte. From 1924 to 1951, Alfa Romeo was a formidable participant in Grand Prix racing, with models like the P2, P3, Type 158 and Type 159 roaring to multiple victories and World Championships. In 1925, an Alfa P2 won the first Grand Prix World Championship.
At the same time, Alfa continuously improved its sporting cars, which could be driven on the street as well as raced. In 1927-32, the 6-cylinder 6C 1500 and 6C 1750 won many races, including the grueling 1,000-mile Mille Miglia. In the 1930s, the supercharged 8-cylinder 8C 2300s and 8C 2900s were dominant; some enthusiasts consider these the ultimate prewar sports cars.
An 8C 2900 Berlinetta with a body by Touring was selected as Best of Show at the 2008 Pebble Beach Concours. The car’s owner, Jon Shirley, said his 1938 Alfa — the winner of the inaugural Watkins Glen Grand Prix in 1948 in upstate New York — was “almost as comfortable to drive as a modern car.”
Mr. Shirley, the former president of Microsoft, added, “It’s fast, the brakes work well and it could run at 100 m.p.h. all day without issues.” The 8C 2900 was, he said, “a supercar of the 1930s.”
In 1938, Alfa 8C 2900B models took first and second places in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France.
During World War II, Allied bombing heavily damaged the Alfa factory in Portello, Italy, and production was slow to resume after 1945. The 6-cylinder passenger and sporting cars of the late 1940s and early 1950s were large and not particularly fast. But in 1951 Alfa introduced a smaller, less expensive 4-cylinder car called the 1900.
Offered in coupe, convertible and four-door versions, the 1900 represented the transition of Alfa from a low-production specialty automaker to a more mainstream producer. Building on the company’s successes in competition, the 1900 was marketed as “the family car that wins races.”
In 1954, a smaller car appeared that would establish Alfas’ postwar reputation as credible alternatives to British sports cars like MG and Triumph — but with superior technology and comfort. Called the Giulietta, it came as coupe, sedan or convertible (called spider) and had an advanced 1.3-liter aluminum engine with dual overhead cams. Lightweight versions of the coupes won their classes in the Mille Miglia.
Giuliettas were the first Alfas to have a significant impact on the American racing scene. The high-performance version, the Giulietta Veloce, won many Sports Car Club of America races in the 1950s and ’60s.
The Giuliettas evolved into Giulias, with larger 1.6-liter engines. A family favorite was the Giulia Super, a plain-looking sedan that had high-performance components unusual in any car of its time, including dual Weber carburetors, a 5-speed manual transmission and four-wheel disc brakes.
The Alfa Romeo that is perhaps best known to Americans is the svelte Duetto convertible of 1967. It was one of these that Benjamin Braddock, Mr. Hoffman’s “Graduate” character, drove across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. A later version of the Duetto was rechristened with the name of the movie.
The 1967 chassis was never substantially changed and provided the underpinnings for all convertibles sold in the United States through the final cars, the Spider Commemorative Edition of 1994.
Alfa Romeo was not a hugely profitable company. In 1980, its factories were acquired by the state-owned Finmeccanica, and Fiat took over the entire company in 1986. That was also Alfa’s best year in the United States, with sales of 8,201 cars.
The final new model to reach North America was the handsome 164 sport sedan of the early 1990s, designed by Pininfarina. A front-drive car, the 164 shared its platform with three other European cars, including the Saab 9000. Despite its strong performance and comfort, the 164 was not a great sales success in the United States, a factor in Alfa’s decision to abandon the market.
American fans of Alfa Romeo — known as the Alfisti — had a brief moment of automotive joy when the highly exclusive 8C Competizione was introduced as a 2008 model. Only 500 coupes were built with a base price of $265,000, followed by an even more expensive Spider version.
After years of rumors and vague promises that Alfa would return to the United States, the chief executive of Fiat and Chrysler, Sergio Marchionne, in late April confirmed that Alfa would return in a little more than two years with a full range of models.
Ron Tonkin, a former Alfa dealer and past president of the National Automobile Dealers Association, says Alfas should be sold alongside Fiat’s more exotic brands, Ferrari and Maserati. “Alfas are the perfect entry-level exotic to introduce people to the world of Italian cars,” he said.
Many current Alfa owners would like a new one, suggested Alex Csank, chairman of the Alfa Century 2010 convention, set for this week in Frederick, Md. “However, Alfa must target the larger market and compete against other brands to attract a new generation of Alfa owners,” he said. “And to do that, they must arrive with a strong lineup of great cars and marketing and dealer support.”
Used Alfas are readily available. An aspiring Alfista can find one to fit even a modest budget. A nationwide search of Craigslist recently turned up more than three dozen 164 models for sale, some for less than $2,000. At the other end of the scale, the market value of the 8C 2900 that won at Pebble Beach could easily exceed $10 million. There were none on Craigslist.
Here's a link to the
slide show that accompanies the article for those of you who are visual learners!
