Alfa Romeo's Genius Bar: Jano, Anderloni, Figoni and Zagato

This 1933 Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 Gran Sport coupe has a unique body from Joseph Figoni's shop in Paris. The car's form and proportions anticipate the teardrop coupe bodies Figoni and Falaschi would produce in the mid-to-late Thirties. Alfa Romeo liked it so much that it was displayed on their stand at the 1933 Paris Show.  The handling of the roof form, with circular lid covering the spare tire, predicts those Delahayes and Talbots.  The incised lines that start on the roof above the doors, frame the tiny backlight and converge below the license plate are a deft touch. 

The light-colored scallop running from the radiator down the flanks relates to the curve of the roof and also emphasizes the separate forms of the front fender shells.  Figoni was content to keep the traditional Alfa radiator shell; it fronts a 1,750 cc inline six with twin overhead cams designed by master engineer Vittorio Jano... 

The Alfa Gran Sport also relates to the form of a unique Bugatti T55* roadster that Figoni designed and built this same year.  It shares the contrasting color swage on the flanks, but here Figoni substitutes semicircular hood vents for the louvers on the Alfa.

While engineer Jano worked in-house at Alfa Romeo, the other members of the team of geniuses that defined Alfa Romeo were either independent body designers like Touring's Anderloni, or race drivers like Tazio Nuvolari. This was the era of upper crust car makers supplying their chassis to coachbuilders like Figoni, Touring and Zagato for bespoke bodywork. One stellar example of the latter is the Flying Star, designed and built by Carrozzeria Touring in 1931 on a 6C 1750 Gran Sport chassis. A comparison with Figoni's work on the same chassis type shows how designers used these chassis as mere takeoff points for wild flights of fancy.  On the blinding white Flying Star below, those flights include the overlapping wave-form fender-cum-running boards, the bright metal "check mark" trim that emphasizes the cut-down doors and conceals their hinges, and the elongated hood vents following that trim... 

Anderloni's Touring firm also produced bodies with more conventional fender lines.  The red car below is an 8C 2300, and features Jano's innovative inline eight formed of twin block units (each with its own integral head) with the central cam-drive gear tower between the blocks.  This avoided the crankshaft and camshaft flex common in inline eights.  Note that the car's flanks feature the bright metal trim with the pointed drop at the cutdown doors that also showed up on the more adventuresome Flying Star design. 

The 8C 2300 below was bodied in 1934 by Ugo Zagato's firm, which focused on lightweight racing car bodies.  Zagato-bodied 6C1750s won the Mille Miglia in 1929 and again in 1930, when they took the first four places, with Nuvolari in first and Achille Varzi in 2nd. Alfa followed it with the 8C 2300 in 1931, in long and short chassis versions. Prices matched the Bugatti T55 at around $10,000, but over 5 times as many were sold, making the 2300 a popular car compared with the T55, which was made in around 3 dozen copies. The Alfa, like the Bugatti, featured mechanical brakes and solid axles front and rear.  Despite the conservative chassis design, the 2300 was known as a stable, sweet-handling car.

With the  8C 2900 series, Jano's engineering team introduced a modern, GP-derived chassis to match the output of the twin-supercharged inline 8.  In the 8C 2900A, introduced in 1935 and built in 10 units, this 2.9 liter engine developed 220 hp. For the 2900B, shown below and offered in short and long chassis, the engine was detuned to 180 hp in order to improve reliability, and to suit smooth, comfortable touring and road use. The cars used trailing arm independent front suspension which Alfa had licensed from Andre Dubonnet, and swing axle independent rear suspension along with 4-speed transaxle. Driver-adjustable suspension dampers were also offered. The smooth contours of the long-chassis coupe below, bodied by Carrozzeria Touring, typifies the work of Anderloni's firm, which made most of the 8C 2900 bodies.  The tiny, center-mounted tail lights, which would appear barely adequate on a modern motorcycle, were also typical of Touring bodies.

The Jano-designed engine shows the trademark center gear tower enclosure which drove the twin overhead cams.  Roots-type superchargers were employed along with Weber carburetors to generate 180 hp at 5200 rpm.  Weight of the long-chassis car was just over 2,200 pounds.  For a modern comparison, that's a bit less than the original Mazda Miata.  

Even in long-chassis form, about a foot longer than the original 2900A, the 8C 2900B was a true dual purpose sports car, as happy competing in road races as it was comfortable as a weekend tourer.  The gray coupe below, a near-twin to the blue car above, was built in 1938 and competed in the 1947 Mille Miglia without its superchargers, which were ruled out that year. Despite competition from new designs by Maserati and the first Ferraris, and Nuvolari's epic drive to 2nd place in the super-light 1100cc Cisitalia, this nine-year-old car managed a victory in the hands of Clemente Biondetti and Emilio Romano...  

The inclined, shield-shaped grille with surrounding slots was typical of most Touring-bodied 2900Bs, as were the separate headlight housings.  

The Touring-bodied roadster version of this chassis revived the side trim pattern from their earlier roadsters.  The slotted pattern of the rear fender skirts, which appeared in less open form on the coupes, may have been intended for increased brake cooling, or just curb appeal.  The car still has plenty of that...

*Footnote:  The Bugatti Type 55 was featured in these posts on August 31, 2019. 

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