The mid-engined revolution had already taken over automobile racing by October 1966, when Alfa Romeo showed this Scarabeo show car at the Paris Auto Salon. Engineered by Giuseppe Busso and Orazio Satta as a prototype for a lightweight, affordable racer for the road, the car showed off sharp-edged curves penned by Sergio Sartorelli at OSI* (Officine Stampaggi Industriali), a firm which produced Ghia designs in larger numbers than Ghia could manage, and also produced some wild show cars. Design of the Scarabeo had begun with Alfa's team early in '66, after management had assigned design of a mid-engined V8 race car to Carlo Chiti's rival team at Autodelta.
It was an era for wild show cars, and the Scarabeo (Italian for scarab) combined features seen on some others. Lamborghini had shown-off its transverse V12-engined Miura in chassis form in 1965, and Bertone had shown the Corvair Testudo with jet fighter-style canopy access in '63. Like Testudo and GM's '62 Monza GT concept car, the Scarabeo's access canopy provided unimpeded forward vision through a windshield wrapping into side windows with no "A" pillars, and its engine, borrowed from Alfa's GTA, was mounted transversely behind the passenger, with the driver seated as far back as possible behind the righthand steering wheel. The idea was that this location would provide optimal driver responses to vehicle dynamics. The chassis was composed of large-section steel tubes, with the fuel tanks mounted in the tubes flanking the seats (perhaps better for weight distribution than for impact safety). A 5 speed manual transmission was in unit with the engine.
This layout allowed a compact and lightweight vehicle; about 10 inches shorter and 1,000 lb. lighter than the 1990 Mazda Miata, on a wheelbase of just 84.65 inches. But safety regulations presented problems for the canopy access, and Alfa's main markets were not well-suited to the righthand drive limitation. So for the second Scarabeo prototype, the design team went with more conventional doors, and rearranged the mechanical bits to allow for lefthand steering.
This second prototype featured fewer sharp edges than the original, and even the Kamm-inspired tail was a bit less sudden in its appearance. What it gained in practicality, though, it seemed to lose in dramatic impact. The Scarabeo team also produced a prototype for a racing barchetta; though this car was tested, the bodywork was not completed.
One year after the first appearance of the Scarabeo, again at the Paris Auto Show, Alfa Romeo proposed another road racer for the street. In fact, Autodelta's Type 33 Stradale was named for the street. It employed a chassis of large-section tubes similar to the Scarabeo. Developed as a road-going version of the 2 liter, 4 cam V8-powered Type 33 racers, it shared their mid-mounted engine location, but unlike the Scarabeo, the engine was mounted longitudinally. While the Stradale shared the Scarabeo's focus on low weight, it was in no way focused on a low budget. In 1968, it was the most expensive car offered to the public, and only 18 chassis were produced; 8 of these had the Franco Scaglione-penned body shown here. Engineer Busso would try again for a low-cost mid-engine production car in 1972 with the Scarabeo II, mounting a 2-liter version of the twin-cam Alfa four under a highly modified Zagato Junior Z body. That car, like this Stradale and Scarabeo prototypes 2 and 3, is now in the Museo Storica Alfa Romeo*. Alfisti would need to wait for a mid-engine production Alfa until the release of the 4C model in late 2013.
*Footnote:
Other Alfa Romeo prototypes in the Museo Storico Alfa Romeo were profiled here in a 3-part series with Part 1 posted May 8, 2022, Part 2 on May 19, 2022 and Part 3 on May 30, 2022. OSI's equally radical design for the Silver Fox Le Mans racer was featured in "The Etceterini Files Part 23---OSI Silver Fox: And Now, For Something Completely Different", posted February 8, 2021.
Photo Credits:
Top and 2nd from top + 7th from top: carrozzeria-italiani.com
3rd: OSI, featured on drives.today
4th: Perspective drawing from OSI, featured on roarington.com
5th & 6th: Museo Storico Alfa Romeo
Bottom: George Havelka
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