Alfa Romeo Alfasud

The Complete Story

Chris Martin

• Publisher: The Crowood Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781785009099
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Automotive Transportation & Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Launched in 1971, the Alfasud was an all-new departure for Alfa Romeo, both in its design and its execution and became the best-selling model in the history of Alfa Romeo. Originally it was developed with the dual intentions of launching the company into large volume production and providing a more affordable model than their highly regarded sports cars. However, its story was far from straightforward. Although respected for its technically brilliant design and universally praised for its ride and handling, the model never quite reached its full sales potential and its reputation was marred by problems that could not have been foreseen. With over 240 colour photographs, the book includes a brief history of Alfa Romeo to the end of the 1960s. The development of the Alfasud's design and the political reasons for building a new factory are given along with the car's reception from both the press and owners. The evolution of the model from initial prototypes, to the improvements to build quality and performance, including the Giardinetta and Sprint variations are covered as well as Alfasuds in competition. The political and labour problems, as well as the early quality control issues are discussed. Finally, there are numerous specification tables, performance data, chassis numbers, engine codes and colour charts.

CHAPTER ONE

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ALFA ROMEO

CREATING THE BRAND

To understand the background to this story it is necessary to give a brief history of the Alfa Romeo brand leading up to the launch of the Alfasud in 1971. The Alfa Romeo brand today is synonymous with stylish cars with a sporting heritage, but it was not always that way. The company started with much more modest aims and has endured a complicated history of successes, takeovers and political interference.

In 1906, Frenchman Alexandre Darracq decided that there was a market in Italy for his small single-cylinder 8/10HP and 14HP twin-cylinder cars to be made with local labour and set up a local subsidiary named Società Automobili Italiana Darracq – S.A.I.D. – initially based in Naples, but soon moved to a new factory at Portello, a country area to the northwest of Milan. However, it became obvious within a couple of years that his cars were not suited to Italian roads and conditions, and sales were disappointing. As his cars were doing well enough in France, Darracq saw no reason to change his designs and was soon persuaded to sell out. The Italian managing director Ugo Stella and his partners bought and reorganized the company, recruiting Giuseppe Merosi to design a new range more suited to the local market. As the S.A.I.D. name still carried Darracq connotations the company was renamed on 24 June 1910 as Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili (which translates to English as Lombardy Car Making Company), but was better known by the acronym ALFA.

Giuseppe Merosi and a 24HP ALFA in 1910.

The first new model, the 4-cylinder 24HP, was introduced in 1910 and initially Merosi’s priority was to build a strong, reliable car. This was soon followed by a smaller, lighter version rated at 15HP and sales picked up. By the following year ALFA made its competition debut in the Targa Florio with Franchini and Ronzoni driving two shorter and lighter 24HP models specifically redesigned for the Sicilian challenge. That they did not finish the gruelling 444km (276-mile) race on muddy mountain roads did nothing to dissuade the company from continuing to pursue competition glory and results would soon follow with the stronger and more powerful 40/60HP model. This was to be the start of ALFA’s glorious competition history. Sales continued to improve until May 1915, when Italy joined the Allies in the fight against the Austro-Hungarian forces in World War I and the factory was turned over to more urgent military needs.

Although there were government contracts to pay for such work the company asked for more credit from the Banca Italiana di Sconto, which had held the last shares sold by the Darracq family. When the bank found itself holding the majority shareholding it asked Neapolitan industrialist Nicola Romeo to take control. Romeo had through other businesses already been benefiting from such military contracts and was actively looking to spread his investments as well as to acquire more manufacturing capacity, so as much by a coincidence of good timing as any forward planning Romeo took over as managing director. He owned several companies around Milan and the ALFA factory at Portello came under the control of Società Anonima Ing. Nicola Romeo and Co. in June 1918. Romeo also had a plant at Pomigliano d’Arco near Naples that produced aero engines.

Car production resumed in 1919, initially by assembling pre-war leftovers and in 1920 with a range of more up-todate models using the name Alfa Romeo, which now wore the badge of Alfa-Romeo Milano (the hyphen was not part of the company name and was only used on the badge and that in turn was dropped along with the reference to Milano in 1971). Merosi was forced to take legal action against the receivers over a salary dispute and after some unrest in the area, resulting in a factory lockout, production of his latest designs commenced in September 1920. By 1921, some fifty of the new G1 and 119 of the improved 20-30 ES chassis had been produced. The former featured a 6-cylinder 6330cc engine in a large chassis intended to wear large luxury coachwork, but it was not a great success; it seems most of these were sent to Australia. The more successful 20-30 ES scored some competition successes driven by Antonio Ascari, Giuseppe Campari, Enzo Ferrari and Ugo Sivocci.

By the end of the year the company was still in the red and to make matters worse the Banca Italiana di Sconto, which was the major shareholder, went into liquidation. The armaments company Ansaldo had in turn been the bank’s major shareholder and following the collapse of that company when peace returned to Europe the bank was left holding the debts. The liquidation of both Ansaldo and ALFA was managed by the government agency Consorzio per Sovvenzioni su Valori Industriali (Consortium for Subsidies on Industrial Values).

Merosi presented the new RL models in October 1921 in Milan and then at the London Motor Show, but due to further problems production did not get under way until 1923. This model featured a new 6-cylinder overhead valve engine of close to 3 litres and was offered as a luxury sedan or tourer, as well as several popular sporting variants until 1927. A smaller 4-cylinder RM model was also produced. At the same time, Merosi also developed the GPR (Grand Prix Romeo) as a pure racing machine and this would become retrospectively known as the P1.

Nicola Romeo, Enzo Ferrari and Giorgio Rimini at Monza in 1923.

Vittorio Jano and an Alfa Romeo P2.

The value of racing success was recognized by Nicola Romeo and in September 1923 he was recommended by one of the team’s drivers, Enzo Ferrari, to hire Vittorio Jano from Fiat to head a new competitions department. The first product resulting from this was the P2 of 1924, which was immediately successful and won the inaugural World Manufacturers’ Championship for Alfa Romeo in 1925, by which time Nicola Romeo had become president of the company. This was the first of a long run of Jano designs, which was followed by the 6C1500, a lighter 6-cylinder powered car that would form the basis of a series of sporting cars. The management decided that the future of Alfa Romeo production would be better served by concentrating on such designs rather than the bigger and thirstier RL series. This led to Merosi resigning in 1926. Although Alfa Romeo still had other products such as aero engines in its portfolio a depression was on the way and Nicola Romeo retired at the end of the decade.

With Enzo Ferrari heading up Scuderia Ferrari, Alfa’s official race team, racing success continued into the 1930s with the 8C-2300, known as the Monza, and the Type B Grand Prix car, also known as the P3, as well as several variations on Jano’s supercharged 6- and 8-cylinder powered sports cars. However, the depression had severely affected the Italian economy and the Banco Italiana di Sconto, still a major shareholder, was in trouble.

In 1933, Mussolini’s government instructed the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI) to take control, a decision probably driven by the fact that Alfa Romeo aero engines and other contributions were vital to Mussolini’s drive to increase the nation’s armaments and to avoid further unemployment as much as any wish to keep the brand in racing for national pride. Indeed, although such success on track did bring a certain prestige to a struggling Italy, by this time car production and sales were declining rapidly. Ugo Gobbato was appointed managing director. By now, the P3 was beginning to lose out to the new threat from the mighty German Mercedes and Auto-Union silver machines, although the Scuderia Ferrari managed still to pick up a few good results and the final iteration with the motor bored out to 3.8 litres was still capable of winning in 1935.

With a view to increasing sales of road-going cars Jano was tasked with designing a new 6-cylinder 2300, itself derived from the earlier 6s, which would power a new chassis that, combined with the increase in torque, could carry heavier coachwork and be built in larger numbers at a much lower price than the expensive 8s. Sales did indeed improve, with the various 6C models selling in their thousands, while shorter wheelbase GT chassis clothed in lighter bodies kept the spirit of sporting Alfas alive.

Within a few years, the inevitability of war in Europe meant the government’s priorities dictated that Alfa once again try to regain some glory on the race circuits, while gearing up for increased production of aero engines ensured enough income from Mussolini’s war chest. To this end, several designs for larger capacity engines of straight-8,V12 and even V16 were tried on the track with limited success, Ferrari even running the famous twin-engined Bimotore, which, while potentially fast, lost any advantage thus gained by needing more frequent tyre changes during a race. The failure of the V12-engined 12C model in 1936 led to Jano’s resignation and he subsequently joined rival Lancia. There were better results in prestigious sports car races such as a one, two, three in the Mille Miglia of 1936, with the 8C-2900A using a new 3-litre version of the old P3 motor and more results followed with the 6-cylinder road cars scoring first and second at the following year’s Mille Miglia.

The big 8s also continued to be made, but this was probably more to do with keeping up appearances and garnering prestige than adding any significant earnings to the coffers; in fact, only twenty of the sporting 8C-2900B Corto chassis and ten of the longer wheelbase 8C-2900B Lungo were built between 1937 and 1939. Indeed, during the second half of the 1930s Alfa was producing more industrial and commercial vehicles than private cars.

At the same time, while the big racers failed to deliver results on track, a smaller, lighter model was developed for the new Voiturette class of races intended as a sideshow warm-up race before the main event Grands Prix. The rules for these cars required supercharged 1.5-litre engines and Alfa Romeo achieved this by using one half of the big V16 to power the independently suspended chassis that became the 158. This car showed promise and became known as the Alfetta (little Alfa), but as war approached it would have to wait a few more years to achieve its potential.

The war years at least ensured that the aero-engine production brought much needed income into the company accounts, but the same conflict also meant that Alfa’s manufacturing bases at both Portello and Pomigliano d’Arco were frequent targets for Allied forces bombing raids. Milan, as a major industrial centre, was an obvious target and 60 per cent of the factory and much of the machinery and tooling were destroyed by heavy bombing in 1943 and again in a final raid in October the following year. The southern factory near Naples suffered a similar fate in May 1943. After the war this factory was used initially to build some buses, trams and trucks, but from the late 1940s was returned to aircraft production, including some projects in collaboration with Fiat. We will return to the Pomigliano d’Arco site later.

POST-WAR REBIRTH

The Portello plant was so badly damaged that it had very limited manufacturing capability and was used initially to make small electrical cooking appliances and other domestic products needed to rebuild the war-ravaged country. Some of the 8,000 employees were put to work rebuilding the plant so that car production could resume in 1946. The 6C 2500 model using pre-war mechanical underpinnings with a new streamlined body was the first to wear what would become the traditional front grille combining the central shield with horizontal air intakes at either side, a styling motif that would continue to this day. Alfa could sell these as fast as the company could turn them out in car-hungry post-war Italy, but to truly increase production it was realized that an all-new concept was needed. The factory had been expanded with a corresponding growth of the workforce for the wartime needs and now everything was in place to increase car production.

Jano’s replacement, Dr Orazio Satta Puliga, known as simply Satta, who was only thirty-seven years old in 1949, came up with the new 1900, which was first shown to the public in Turin in May 1950. The 1900 was designed for the new production-line methods now being installed at Portello. It featured a monocoque body and chassis unit, which, while lightweight, would have enough interior space to be a genuine four-seater. The engine was a 4-cylinder retaining the traditional Alfa theme of hemispherical combustion chambers and twin overhead camshafts with an alloy head on a cast-iron block. Initially producing 90bhp, enough to give the new car a sporting urge, this engine was soon upgraded with more power and as production increased, so did sales.

The new car, while having a plainer look than the earlier models, with 90bhp and agile handling was still sporting enough to uphold the company’s reputation, selling as fast as the factory could turn it out. It was also the first Alfa made to left-hand-drive specification, an important consideration when aiming for lucrative American sales.

An increase in power to 100bhp for the TI followed and to meet the demand for an even more sporty Alfa the wheelbase was reduced for an open-top version bodied by Pininfarina and a coupé clothed by Touring. Although only a small share of the total production, the success of these more expensive and glamorous models encouraged Alfa to consider that the successor of the 1900 should also include this market sector again. The ‘Italian Economic Miracle’ of the 1950s meant that the demand was there, but the company also had to consider export markets, as well as the taxation based on engine size for Italian car buyers.

Motor racing resumed and in 1950 the six European Grands Prix counted towards the new World Championship for Drivers, which was won by Giuseppe Farina, who shared an Alfa Romeo clean sweep with Juan Manuel Fangio in the revived 158. Cur...