Autodelta: the Alfa Romeo race shop that wrote half its story in America Autodelta was an Italian race shop, but a surprising share of its story was written in America. In 1964 a Giulia TZ won its class at the Sebring 12 Hours. In 1966 a Giulia GTA won the under-two-liter class of the first … Read more
Carlo Chiti, the Ferrari engineer who made Phil Hill a champion and then dragged him down with him The first American to win the Formula 1 World Championship did it in a car designed by a man most Americans have never heard of. Phil Hill took the 1961 title in the Ferrari 156, the “sharknose,” … Read more
Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 Competizione: three cars on recycled 8C 2900 frames, Fangio’s first Mille Miglia, a $4.84M record and the name Alfa reused in 2007.
Alfa Romeo Matta: Alfa studied a Land Rover, gave it a dry sump, won its class at the 1952 Mille Miglia, lost the Army deal, and sold for $67,100 in 2017.
Alfa Romeo Canguro: The Contest Nobody Won The most beautiful Alfa Romeo ever drawn exists because of a General Motors executive in Detroit. Not directly. But the method that produced it was Bill Mitchell’s, and Alfa Romeo copied it a year later, right down to the two coachbuilders and the two donor chassis. Both experiments … Read more
Alfa Romeo Diva: The Prototype Alfa Wouldn’t Sign In 2006, while Alfa Romeo was preparing to return to the American market with a quarter-million-dollar grand tourer, it took a 1,100 kg mid-engined two-seater to the Geneva Motor Show and parked it in a Swiss design school’s booth. Among student projects. With the doors shut for … Read more
Alfa Romeo 33/2 Coupé Speciale: The Ferrari Show Car That Became an Alfa The man who designed the Ferrari F40 also designed a bright yellow Alfa Romeo. Almost nobody knows that. What even fewer people know is that the Alfa was not really designed as an Alfa at all. It was a Ferrari show car … Read more
Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione: The Alfa That Alfa Romeo Didn’t Build America got 84 of them. Maybe 90. Nobody has nailed that number down either, and that turns out to be the whole story of this car. The Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione was the car that brought Alfa Romeo back to the United States after … Read more
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
Alfa Romeo 8C 2300: The Car That Buried Bentley at Le Mans Four Years Running Between 1923 and 1930, Le Mans belonged to Bentley. The British marque won five of the first eight editions of the 24 Hours (1924, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930), with those enormous British Racing Green machines, 4.5- and 6.5-litre engines the … Read more
Antonio Ascari: The European Champion the Sport Killed Before He Could Lift the Crown Let me start with the coincidence, because there isn’t another way to start. Two men dead at age 36. Both on the 26th day of the month. Both four days after surviving a serious accident. Both at the exit of a … Read more
