Body by Zagato Part 2: Five Decades of Alfa Romeos

Ugo Zagato founded his Milanese carrozzeria the year after the First World War ended, and produced this body on Alfa Romeo's 6C 1500 Sport less than a decade later. The 1928 example shown was one of Zagato's first efforts on this then-new model, the first road-going Alfa Romeo with the firm's trademark double overhead cams.  Note the vertical radiator, the bright metal trim strips on the rear fenders, and the asymmetrical doors, with a straight top on the passenger door...

…and a curved cutout on the driver's door, a jaunty touch.  Ugo Zagato, however, denied designing cars for mere attractiveness, focusing instead on light weight and fitness of purpose.  In the case of many of his Alfa Romeo designs, that purpose was road racing.

By the time Zagato bodied the  6C 1750 Gran Sport below in 1932, aerodynamic concerns prompted an angled radiator, and a lower stance.  Note the pointed prow at the base of the radiator, a feature not seen on most of this series.

Just 3 years later, concerns about weight, wind resistance and handling prompted Zagato to lower the stance still further, integrate the radiator and headlights into the streamlined overall form, eliminate running boards and trim, and connect teardrop fenders to the central torpedo shape for smoother air flow.  This is advanced stuff for 1934, the year this unique 8C 2300 spider was produced.

Another one-off Zagato body went onto this 8C 2900B Spider Aerodinamica from 1937. Note the similar treatment of fenders, the lack of decorative trim, and the narrow air intake for the twin-cam, 2.9 liter supercharged inline 8 derived from Vittorio Jano's GP racing engines.  This is a short-chassis model intended for competition.  Ten 8C 2900A models were produced, along with 32 of the 2900 B version, with one car assembled out of spare parts in 1941, after production was suspended by the arrival of war.

After the war, Zagato would experiment with new forms integrating the fenders into unified envelope bodies, and with new lightweight materials like Plexiglas, which suited those new forms. This 1949 Alfa Romeo  6C 2500SS Panoramica coupe features the Plexiglas side windows of curved section extending well into the roof also  shown on the contemporary Maserati and Ferrari Panoramicas pictured in our "Body by Zagato Part 1" post*. The proportions and details of the Alfa are different, however, with a longer hood, less front overhang, and arcs formed into the alloy panels calling attention to the wheels and reducing the visual height of the car.

At the rear, we see one of the first examples of a hatch applied to something other than a station wagon. This vented hatch was not a feature of Zagato's Maserati and Ferrari Panoramicas, which lacked external deck lids. While the Panoramica coupes were controversial designs at the time, they accurately predicted design themes of the Sixties and even Seventies, including the low belt lines, glassy greenhouses and curved side windows.

As the Italian economic boom progressed and road racing became more popular, Zagato produced bodies for dual purpose road / race versions of production cars like the Alfa 1900. The 1954 Alfa 1900SS coupe shown below features body and roof forms much like the Fiat 8V* raced by Ugo's son Elio in the same 2 liter class during the Fifties.  Only the grille shape and air intakes on the hood separate the Alfa visually from the Fiat. 

There were many variations in Zagato bodywork on these 1900s, which were based upon the first moderately-priced, series production Alfas ever.  Note that the green car above lacks the twin-hump roof shown on the 1956 example below, and has a single arc connecting front and rear fenders, while the silver car below has haunches over the rear wheels.  The grille angles forward on the silver car, and the hood scoops are closer to the prow... 

The rear view of a 1900SS similar to the silver car shows off the smooth fender contours, the complex contours of those roof bubbles, and the clean, undecorated form of the tail. Note also that the side glass is curved in section though not as much as on the Panoramicas, a feature that would not appear on most cars until the 1960s.  A standard Alfa Romeo 1900 is parked to the left of our red example, showing how much difference there was between the mass-produced sedan and the Zagato coupes.  

Alfa introduced a smaller, less expensive car in 1954, around the same time as the first Zagato coupes appeared on the 1900.  The Giulietta 1300, with its new aluminum engine block (the 1900 was cast iron) and trademark Alfa twin-cam design, became hugely popular as a sedan, a Bertone-bodied Sprint coupe, and then as a Pinin Farina spider.  Zagato soon got into the act, producing at least four of the "double bubble" lightweight coupes shown below starting in 1957. 

As the Sixties dawned, it dawned on Alfa Romeo management to offer lightweight Zagato bodies through Alfa dealers, rather than force customers to commission them independently.  The delightful silver SZ from 1961 displays designer Ercole Spada's* mastery of simple rounded form, with just enough detail to make that form distinctive. 

Among those details are oval tail lights flush with the bodywork, and an indented surface connecting the wheel arches, reducing the visual height of the car.  Designer Spada was apparently unconcerned about protecting the delicate alloy nose and tail from parking mishaps; the car looks better without bumpers.

For 1962 the designer sketched a sleeker version of the SZ with a lower penetration nose and a flat tail with raised center section and larger, wrap-around backlight.  This became known as the Coda Tronca for the truncated tail.

But nothing in the world of racing, and thus in the worlds of Alfa or Zagato, remained static, and so for the 1963 season the two firms collaborated to introduce the legendary Giulia TZ, the "T" standing for tubolare, denoting the lightweight tubular space frame chassis. Designer Ercole Spada managed to come up with an even more aerodynamic form.  Engines were now 1.6 liters, and in twin spark form the cars could show their tall, flat Kamm-inspired tails to competition like the Abarth Simca 2000 lurking behind our example car.

The Zagato-bodied TZ became the most popular factory racer yet fielded by the team of Alfa and Zagato, with over 100 produced.  The engine was installed at an angle to keep the hood low. This was also the last Zagato Alfa of the era with aluminum bodywork...

During the same era, Zagato produced a steel-bodied GT coupe on the relatively new 2600 model to Spada's design, with an aluminum block inline twin cam six. The glassy greenhouse, oblong headlights and flat tail were predictive features; 105 examples were produced.

When it came time to update the TZ with a lighter, lower and even more aerodymanic body, Zagato chose fiberglass for the shell covering the tubular chassis of the TZ2. These appeared at the Turin show in 1964, for the 1965 racing season, with a dry-sump version of the twin spark 1.6 liter engine making around 170 horsepower.  As with the original TZ, operable flaps in the nose could adjust air intake.

These views confirm Ugo Zagato's theory that fitness for purpose would yield harmony of form. Only a dozen examples of the  TZ2 would be produced, as Autodelta, Alfa's racing arm, needed capacity for the GTA production racers.  There were still Zagato versions of the Giulia in the planning stages, however...

These appeared in the form of the glassy, steel-bodied Junior Z in 1969, the first Zagato Alfas to adopt the wedge theme then being popularized by Giorgetto Giugiaro.                   

In 1970 Alfa released the production 1300 cc version of the Junior Z with short rear overhangs at first, and a 1600-engined version in 1972.  Both had the distinctive Plexiglas headlight covers with triangular cutout for the Alfa grille, and asymmetrical air intake slots (above), as well as an opening rear hatch with remote driver-controlled device to allow for flow-through ventilation (below).  The 1600 version shown below also had a bit more rear overhang.

When production ended in 1975, 1,108 of the 1300 model had been built, and 402 of the 1600.  Those are much higher numbers than any that apply to Zagato's alloy-bodied dual purpose Alfa sports cars.  Later on, from 1989-'94, Zagato produced Alfa's ES-30* two-seaters in noticeable numbers, but these were designed at Fiat by Robert Opron. During the boutique revivals that followed the extinction of Italian design studios as actual car producers in this century, Zagato released the Alfa TZ3. This was produced in only 10 examples in 2011, and 9 of these were the Stradale version with 8 liter V10 engines sourced from the Dodge Viper. That hardly fits Zagato's original philosophy, or Alfa Romeo's frequent approach, of getting big performance out of small engine displacements by weight reduction and clever aerodynamics, and has to be seen instead as a clever but mostly empty branding exercise...  

*Footnote:

The Fiat 8V Zagatos are pictured in our Archives in "The Etceterini Files Part 10" (11-13-16) while the design of Alfa's ES-30 is analyzed in "Worst Car Designs Ever, Part 4" (8-11-16) and Ercole Spada's designs for Alfa Romeo and Lancia are surveyed in the "Swiss Museum of Transportation" piece (7/4/19).  Finally, the Zagato Panoramicas and other designs for Ferrari and Maserati are profiled in "Body by Zagato Part 1" (3/31/20).

Photo Credits: 

Top & 2nd:  the author

3rd thru 5th:   wikimedia

6th & 9th:  pinterest.com

7th & 8th:  Carrozzeria Zagato on carstyling.ru

10th & 11th:  the author

12th:  pinterest.com

13th:  Lt. Jonathan Asbury, USN

14th:  youtube.com

15th:  en.wheelsage.org

16th & 17th: Ian Avery-DeWitt

18th thru 20th: wikimedia

21st, 22nd & bottom:  the author