Club Alfa Sport

Alfa Romeo 8C 2300

Looking through the pages of history that was not written yet, and was taking place in real-time, it is rather amusing to see Enzo Ferrari, who also played his role in Alfa’s legend. First of all, it was remarkable, that Ferrari, back at that time, a young driver racing for Alfa Romeo was able to lure Vittorio Jano from FIAT, namely in 1923. This served as a major catalyst, as he replaced Merosi and became the chief designer of Alfa, which had led to creation of some of the highly praised Alfas.

Alfa Romeo 8C 2300

It was him, who designed  the Alfa Romeo P2 Grand Prix car, which allowed the independent Italian manufacturer to win Grand Prix world championship in 1925. And it was him again, who developed a series of inline 4 to 8 cylinder engines that established the classic architecture for which Alfas had become renowned for. Jano was firmly convinced that the main way to reduce engine weight consisted in utilization of light alloys; he also pioneered in the use of centrally-located spark plugs, as well as, in the use of 2 rows of overhead valves per cylinder bank. Alfa’s engines built under Jano were getting the reputation for being fast and reliable.

The second thing that Ferrari did, once the factory team had fallen prey to privatization, he established himself to be the team manager, of the team, which received the name of  Scuderia Ferrari. After the imminent split from Alfa, Ferrari would take a different road and would get his fame for building fast sport cars under his own name. The year 1928 was a depressing period for Alfa Romeo. This year Nicola Romeo left, leaving Alfa on the verge of bankruptcy, as by this time the defense contracts came to an end, and it would be another couple of years, when towards the end of year 1932 Italian car manufacturer would be rescued by the government, which would later exercise fairly strict control.

For the most part, the governmental intervention would not only help Alfa to

1938 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900A Mille Miglia

survive the crisis, but also would make Alfa Romeo a national symbol, the  continuation of the Mussolini’s army, which in this era would start building truly amazing vehicles for the rich and the powerful. In this period Alfa typically specialized on supplying a fully equipped chassis, while the body would in turn be created by the designer shops, either of Pinin Farina or Touring of Milan. This era was marked with such gems as  Alfa Romeo 2300 and 2900.

Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Corto Touring Spider

Vittorio Jano should be solely credited for the design of the amazing engineering marvel, the 8C 2300. As it was standard for Alfa – 8C stood for the eight cylinder engine, while the second number gave idea of its cubic-capacity. The engine was essentially  comprised of two four-cylinder engines aligned in a row. Central gearing was utilized to drive the overhead twin camshafts, while a  Roots-design compressor brought the output to 140 hp. Further modifications to the same power-train would increase the produced horsepower to almost 180 hp.

The first 8C 2300 car made its appearance as a prototype at the 1931 Mille Miglia. Two models were to later enter the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, where they finished the race in first and second places. In 1932 the 8C 2300 became a prevailing force, winning first at Targa Florio, later to be followed by three consecutive victories at Le Mans. It was 8C2300 solely responsible for the defeat of the powerful Mercedes SSK and SSKL opponents, thus bringing an end to their dominance. The 8C 2300 was in production from 1931 through 1933, and proved to be a real champion. Only 188 examples were produced, many of which today sell for  for over a million dollars.

Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Lungo

Another true gem of the era was the 8C 2900, where an 8C once again stood for the 8 cylinder inline, while the engine cubic

Alf Romeo 8C 2900B

displacement was increased to 2905 cc. Just as the previous model it had a Roots-type compressor, which would bring the output to 180 hp for the 8C 2900B and to 220 hp for the 8C 2900A. The suspension was all-independent,  a very modern choice for the era, coming with wishbones in the front and swing-axles for the rear.

The 8C 2900A was essentially a two-seater with Grand Prix style body. They were purpose-built to race and to win. They gloriously proved everyone’s expectations.  This success led to the decision to create a road version that Alfa could sell to its clientele. The 8C 2900B series would be built on the short (corto) and long (lungo) wheelbases and would have highly aerodynamic bodies that were a gorgeous beauty to behold. These super cars were mechanically capable to compete with the waste majority of the cars on the racing circuit,  and were not only fast, but very and very expensive too.

To be continued…

Guiseppe Merosi

The story of the legendary brand picks up after the end of war, when Nicola Romeo having come to trust in the abilities of Guiseppe Merosi – solely responsible for creation of all Alphas, starting from Alfa Romeo 24HP, decided not to close unstable car manufacturing plant and added its family name thus giving birth to the brand of Alfa Romeo.

Up ahead Alfa would face several very successful years – the engineering geniuses of Merosi

Alfa Romeo RM

and that of Vittorio Jano, who would replace him to become the new leading engineer of the company, were bringing in unbelievable results. The newest model RL was bringing in  victory after victory. Worthy is the mentioning of the race of Targa Florio in 1923 the new Alfa Romeo RL cars occupied the first, second and the fourth places.

Those were the years of victories.

Quadrifoglio

Racers such as Masetti, Sivocci, and Ascari were crushing their opponents to the amazement of other teams. And that year Alfa introduced the symbol of Alfa’s racing team – the four-leaf clover emblem, or Quadrifoglio. Meanwhile, the plant was able to reach the record amount of production for that time, due to the fame the victories brought and to the introduction of the more accessibly priced RM, based on the design of RL. Thus, in 1925 the company produced 1110 cars, the number not to be topped all the way until 1951, the year of the introduction of the assembly line.

And yet the other years turned to be disappointing. The situation bordered on being critical, as in some years, it was quite an achievement, if a hundred cars was made. The budget was still very tight, while the shares of the company would travel from one bankrupt bank to another. The company was restructured several times and in 1928 Nicola Romeo had left it himself. His family name though stayed on the emblem of the car, together with the coat of arms of Milan and the long-established Italian dynasty of Visconti.

However the engineers didn’t seem to take any note of the financial agony. Light and fast compressor-powered Alfa’s of Vittorio Jano design were

defeating the opponents, who were placing stake on big atmospheric engines. Jano worked for several years on the Alfa Romeo P2, which turned to be the highly successful first Alfa featuring an 8 cylinder supercharged engine. The team used this car to a great extent winning the international Grand Prixs of 1924 and 1925 and first World Cup championship. More so, P2 was and is presently considered one of the best racing cars of the 20s, the one responsible for the creation of the Alfa legend. In the 1927 the first road Mille Miglia race took place and out of twelve pre-war races, Alfas won ten! This made the world look with astonishment at the stamina of the independent Italian car manufacturer.

To be continued…

The new brand was only 3 year old, when the chief engineer Merosi was able to build a purely racing car, which came to be known, as model 40—60НР.

And in deed this was a true sports car! The 40-60 HP offered a unique for its time  performance and was very low on fuel consumption, especially taking into consideration that it had over 6 liter of cylinder capacity, managed by overhead valves driven by rods and rockers, and had another trait that would long be that of Alfa, two camshafts in the crankcase. This powertrain produced an impressive 82 hp. There was a total of 27 cars produced which participated in races and had brought victories all the way until year 1922.

Being fascinated with the racing fame, the newly established company seemed to be little concerned about profitability. The hot-tempered Italian manufacturers seemed to have little money to be invested in the factory, the dealership network was not developing – the cars were being sold in Italy alone. All the efforts to bust the number of produced cars were able to achieve only a number of 272 in the year 1914. At that time Europe was at the brink of war, the industry was fueled only by governmental orders, for which A.L.F.A., not having proper connections, could not even contend. This was the first time when the company came really close to going bankrupt.

Alfa was rescued by Romeo. Neapolitan entrepreneur Nicola Romeo, being an experienced engineer in the field of excavation machinery and the owner of several nearby factories, joined his existing factories with A.L.F.A. production and in 1915, now having in his possession considerable production facilities, got from the government orders for the production of avia generators and avia compressors, light trucks and sanitary vehicles. More so, that Alfa already had the experience in production of airplane engines – be it their own or those it made under license of Isotta Fraschini.

What followed was that the entrepreneur’s last name was added to A.L.F.A. and a new “Alfa-Romeo Milano” brand name came into existence.  For the time being, the racing adventures were put on hold, while munitions, aircraft engines and other components, based on the company’s existing car engines were produced in a greatly enlarged factory. Upon the demise of war, Nicola Romeo invested the war profits in buying locomotive and railways carriage plants in Saronno, Rome  and Naples, which were adjusted to his Alfa ownership.

Initially, car production had not been considered at all, but it was resumed in 1919, since there were parts for the assembly of 105 cars still stored at the A.L.F.A. factory left from the times preceding the break of War. In the year 1920, the name of the company was changed once again, this time to Alfa Romeo, while Torpedo 20-30 HP became the first car carrying this name. This was followed with another success when in 1920 Giuseppe Campari won the Mugello race and was continued by the second place in Targa Florio won by Enzo Ferrari. Giuseppe Merosi continued on his post of the head designer, and the factory continued to bring out impressive road cars as well as successful racing cars, the first signified by the luxury RL and the second by the impressive sports car 40-60 HP. Car were once again in the spot light and took the centre stage.

Similar to the legendary 40-60HP, the RL, designed by Merosi in 1921, came equipped once again with a six-cylinder engine with rockers and overhead valves mounted on special brakes to eliminate the vibrations. Though it was designed to be a luxury road car, it was used in racing as well, namely for the sake of advertising. As the result the RL was a major success, with over 2640 cars built and with orders coming in from all corners of Europe.

To be continued…