Tazio Nuvolari: The Italian Who Humiliated the Silver Arrows On Their Own Soil On 28 July 1935, in the rain-soaked German hell that was the Nürburgring of the Eifel mountains, a 42-year-old Italian called Tazio Nuvolari climbed into a Grand Prix car carrying 110 horsepower less than the competition and proceeded to win a race … Read more
Achille Varzi: The Anti-Nuvolari, the Morphine, and the Helmet He Wasn’t Wearing Drop Tazio Nuvolari and Achille Varzi into the same room and the only thing they share is the language they speak. Everything else divides them. Nuvolari came from a Lombard farm, the son of a cyclist. Varzi came from a Piedmontese textile factory, … Read more
Ugo Sivocci: The Missing Corner of the Quadrifoglio Next time you see an Alfa Romeo Quadrifoglio, lean in and look at the badge on the front wing. Forget for a second that the four-leaf clover is one of the most recognisable performance markers in motoring, alongside the M of BMW M Sport, the AMG of … Read more
Alfa Romeo Alfasud: The Most Advanced Compact in Europe That Rusted Away Because of Politics More than a million units built between 1972 and 1989. 893,719 saloons produced between 1972 and 1983, plus 121,434 Sprint coupés between 1976 and 1989. A massive industrial figure by Alfa Romeo standards — a marque that had historically built … Read more
Alfa Romeo Montreal: The Prototype-Engined GT That Arrived Late to Its Own Party Picture this scenario. You have access to one of the most exotic V8s ever produced in 1960s European motor engineering: a 90-degree, 2.6-litre, twin-cam-per-bank, dry-sump, cross-plane-crankshaft, SPICA mechanical fuel-injected unit, derived directly from the Tipo 33 sports racing prototype that Autodelta had … Read more
The French Disaster That Built Alfa: Portello, 1906 Picture this. A French industrialist with a handlebar moustache walks into a Naples hotel in April 1906, signs a stack of papers, and announces he’s going to teach Italians how to build cars. Eighteen months later his factory is bleeding money in the wrong city, his Italian … Read more
The Man Who Saved Alfa Without Loving Cars: Nicola Romeo Most car brands that survive a century get a fairy tale stitched onto their origin story. There’s always a founder with petrol in his veins, a workshop epiphany, a sketch on a napkin. Henry Ford watching the Model T roll out the door. Frederick Henry … Read more
