Six concepts based on the most beautiful Alfa Romeo ever | GRR
It’s hard to believe now but the Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale didn’t sell that well. Never mind its very thinly disguised competition V8, six-speed gearbox innovative chassis, dihedral doors and the fact that it was quicker than a contemporary Lamborghini Miura; just look at it!
Franco Scaglione is perhaps not as well-recognised as his peers Pininfarina, Guigiaro or Bertone but it’s hard not to argue that he outdid every single one of them when he clothed the H-shaped chassis of the Alfa 33 Stradale. The car was introduced at the Paris Salon de L’Auto in October 1967 and used the 2.0-litre V8 from the Tipo 33 sports racing prototype. This may have been slightly detuned but with a flat-plane crank was still capable of revving to 10,000rpm and produced around 250PS.
Just 18 chassis – stretched 100mm between the wheels compared to the race car – were made and of these eight wore variations of Scaglione’s design; hand built by Carrozzeria Marazzi each one featured small improvements based on learnings from the previous car. Five chassis are largely unaccounted for but five were farmed out to famed Italian designers and used to build six different concept cars.
1968 Alfa Romeo Carabo
First out of the gate was Bertone’s Carabo, named after a beetle with which it shares its iridescent green hue. It was the work of Marcello Gandini, whose pen was also responsible for the Lamborghini Miura which was wowing motor show crowds at around the same time. But where the Miura was unashamedly voluptuous, the Carabo was an extreme expression of the wedge styling which was to be so in vogue in the following decade.
Gandini would later design the even more uncompromising Lanca Stratos Zero concept which begat the legendary rally car. As well as having headlights hidden behind powered louvres, the Carabo also featured forward-hinged ‘scissor’ doors which became a design cue for Lamborghini after featuring on the Countach, designed by, you guessed it, Gandini.
1968 Alfa Romeo P33 Roadster
The P33 Roadster likewise demonstrated the great Pininfarina design house’s early flirtation with wedge design language. This was the first of two concepts designer Paolo Martin created for the same 33 chassis, both displaying very similar straight-edged forms.
Whereas the 33 Stradale championed the curve as a means of improving aerodynamics, Pininfarina’s roadster seems to owe more to sports prototypes of the era with much flatter surfaces, abruptly truncated tail, winglets and a large aerofoil-style spoiler just behind the passenger compartment. Martin would later go on to design the Ferrari Modulo concept, Fiat 130 Coupé, Lancia Beta Montecarlo and Rolls-Royce Camargue, all of which displayed wedge tendencies.
1969 Alfa Romeo Iguana
The work of Giorgetto Giugiaro at ItalDesign, the Iguana might have been the first of the 33 concepts to feature conventional doors but there was a lot of innovative thinking in its design despite it looking the most production-ready. The car featured integrated spoilers at the base of the windscreen and in the high tail while extensive use of glass made the cabin unusually light and airy for a supercar of any era, let alone the ‘60s.
Giugiaro would later reuse elements of the Iguana’s design in a number of vehicles including the front end styling for the Maerati Merak and Bora, the rear profile and lights in the Alfa Romeo Alfetta GT and the brushed metal finish for the DeLorean DMC-12.
1969 Alfa Romeo 33/2 Coupe Speciale
A very different design from Pininfarina, this time under the aegis of stylist Leonardo Fioravanti who would later become famous for some of the greatest Ferraris of all time including the Daytona, 512BB, 288 GTO, Testarossa and F40.
The 33/2 certainly contains elements which would be seen in Fioravanti’s later work such as the prominent surfacing on the front wings, circular air intakes leading back from the doors and almost flat tail. The car was reportedly first created as a study in aerodynamics for Ferrari and has definite echoes of the Ferrari P3/4 but allegedly Enzo Ferrari compared the design to a suppository so it was given over to Alfa Romeo instead.
1971 Alfa Romeo P33 Cuneo
The second of Paolo Martin’s designs on the 33 Stradale chassis, the Cuneo takes wedge styling and pares it back to its simplest elements. It may appear less than striking compared to its progenitor and fellow concepts but there is an unmistakeable elegance to its overall form.
It is so pared back and stripped of the essentials that were you to remove the wheels it could as easily pass for a competition speed boat. Shown at the 1971 Brussels Motor Show it was a clear indication that the voluptuous forms of the ‘60s were, for now at least, out of favour.
1971 Alfa Romeo Navajo
The second 33-based concept to come from Bertone but instead of being entrusted to Gandini, this was designed by Guiseppe ‘Nuccio’ Bertone, the son of Carrozzeria Bertone’s founder, Giovanni. Clearly no stickler for tradition, the Navajo would not look out of place in science fiction concept art. Fittingly it did preview some cutting edge technology; both the front splitter and a section of the rear aerofoil wing would adjust at speed while the inner of the two trapezoid shapes at the rear helped draw hot air away from the engine using pressure differentials.
Pop-up headlights were very much of the moment, a necessity in the wedge era really, but Bertone did things differently by having the Navajo’s headlights pop sideways out of the front wings. The out-of-this world styling continued inside with fixed fibreglass seats – the same material as the bodywork – a single-spoke steering wheel and very minimalist controls.