“What goes around comes around.” That, I believe, is a largely English way of referring to “life repeating itself,” or coincidences, or both. This is a bit of a story of automotive déjå vu.
In 1968, I made my first and most memorable visit to the Le Mans 24 Hour race. It was a peculiar year in many parts of the world, and student protests and changed election dates meant the race moved from its traditional spot in June to September. It was a race in which the much-loved Pedro Rodriguez and his co-driver Lucien Bianchi piloted a Ford GT40 with great smoothness and verve to an impressive win. I was on Mike Salmon’s signalling crew down at Mulsanne Corner and had a unique view of the cars. The Matra of Pescarolo and Servoz-Gavin spent many hours screaming around in 2nd place.
Perhaps most surprisingly, the 2-liter Alfa Romeos not only ran well up the field, mixing it with the bigger Porsches, but three of the six cars made it to the finish. Ignazio Giunti and Nanni Galli finished 4th to win the 2-liter class; Mario Casoni and Giampiero Biscaldi were 6th; and the car you see here, chassis 75033.018, was brought home 5th overall and 2nd in class. It was driven by Autodelta works drivers Spartaco Dini and Carlo Facetti. Some years later, when I developed a fair obsession for Alfa Romeo models, it was this car, with race #38, which was the very first scale Alfa model I built. Last year I managed not only to drive but also compete in the very same car, and spend some time reflecting on those days with Mario Casoni, who drove it in other races in the period. What goes around comes around.
Alfa Romeo in the 1960s
Alfa Romeo left Grand Prix racing at the end of 1951 after winning the first two World Championships for Drivers with the 158/159. The decision was made to design and build a racing sports car for the then-current sports car regulations. This resulted in the appearance of the now well-known Disco Volante, which in its original exciting-looking form with a 2-liter engine was a complete failure as a racecar, while the highly modified 6C 3000CM was constructed for long-distance races in 1953. Despite some promising performances, it managed only one victory, at the 1953 Supercortmaggiore race in open form in the hands of Juan Fangio. For 1953 Alfa Romeo departed from major participation in competition, with the exception of involvement in touring car races, where the focus was mainly on supporting amateurs. As was the practice at the time, work continued on a variety of prototypes, few of which ever raced, though they often incorporated features first tried many years before. An outstanding tradition at Alfa Romeo was to return to earlier well-designed projects and update them for current regulations or trends.
The financial conditions at Alfa Romeo, as in the past, forced the company to abandon competition and concentrate primarily on production cars to bolster the company’s lagging fortunes. The Giulietta saloons, spiders, and coupes of the mid-1950s brought considerable prosperity, and reestablished Alfa Romeo as a major manufacturer. This prosperity also funded continued development in the competition department, and in 1960 the Giulietta Sprint Zagato appeared in a short production run. The Giulia range then followed and the Giulietta SZ spawned the next generation racer, the Giulia TZ or Tubolare Zagato. On the surface it would appear that the subsequent development of this TZ or TZ1 as it has become known, the TZ2, was the immediate ancestor of the Tipo 33, especially since a car bearing the code 105.33 tested with a version of the TZ engine. However, that would be only partly accurate, and the Tipo 33 engine was not a doubled-up 4-cylinder TZ, but was inspired by a completely different engine with its roots back in the 1950s.
In 1938, Orazio Satta went to work for Alfa Romeo, as did Giuseppe Busso in 1939, and they worked side by side on a huge range of innovative projects. By 1959, Satta was managing the design departments, and from 1948 to 1977, Busso had been responsible for the design of all the mechanical parts produced at Portello and then at Arese. Satta had two deputies, one of whom was Giampaolo Garcea and the other Busso. Satta, as manager, laid down the general rules and plans for the design department, and his deputies carried these out. Satta and Busso had been involved in competition work in the early and mid-1950s, experimenting with a proposed 12-cylinder Grand Prix car, the 160, which was never built. A number of prototype engines were built, including a 2-liter V-8 block to go into a sporting GT car, but it never reached production. Nevertheless, the engine blocks were made, the idea of a small V-8 being very attractive to the design engineers. I had the great good fortune to be able to examine the prototypes of these original V-8 blocks as they sat on the shelves of Marcello Gambi’s workshop in Milan. Under Satta’s leadership, Alfa Romeo produced a wonderful range of cars in the postwar period and noted Alfa historian Luigi Fusi credits Satta for providing the leadership for everything from the conversion of the Grand Prix 158 engine from single-stage to two-stage superchargers in 1946 through the Tipo 33/3 tubular frame 3-liter car of 1972.
For the whole story, see the March issue of Vintage Racecar.
