Milan’s Mighty Racers

Firmly anchoring Alfa Romeo’s 100-year history are the great racing cars of the 1920s and 1930s that brought the expertise of Portello to the world’s attention. Such men as Merosi, Jano, Campari, Ascari, Ferrari, Varzi, Nuvolari, Chinetti and Farina were architects of Alfa’s success.

By Karl Ludvigsen

Surprisingly, for a company that came to be respected as the very essence of the racing spirit, Alfa Romeo’s first such efforts attracted only amiable toleration. What more could be expected from a company in effete Milan, far from the expert resources in Turin, that struggled in its early years as an outpost of French car maker Darracq? Indeed, as a humble maker of taxis?

Having enjoyed success with his taxis in Paris and London, French pioneer Alexandre Darracq decided to chance his hand in the growing Italian market. To evade import taxes, Darracq shipped his cars in dismantled form to the port of Naples, where they were assembled by a company he established in February 1906. At the end of that year, he set up a base for sales and service at a district called “Portello,” after a nearby gateway, on the northwest outskirts of Milan.

Alexandre Darracq’s venture was ill starred. Vehicles that coped well with the roads of the northern capitals struggled on Italy’s hills and loose surfaces. The financial crisis of 1907 was another rod for the Frenchman’s back. In the autumn of 1909, Darracq declared his company’s closure. Seeing possibilities in the Portello operation, a group led by the Italian company’s head, Ugo Stella, obtained a half-million-lire line of credit from the Banca Agricola di Milano and prepared to make cars on their own.

At the beginning of 1910, Portello’s gates opened on the Società Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili, the last four letters spelling ALFA or Alfa. To design their new cars, the directors hired Giuseppe Merosi, just turned 37. Merosi’s first two Alfas were the 15/20 of 2.4 liters and the 20/30 with 4.1 liters, both conventional, side-valve, 4-cylinder designs. Nevertheless, the 20/30 had sporting potential that was realized after World War I in its 20/30 ES Sport version, both as a limited-production model for Italy’s bloods and as a mount for the company’s works drivers.

The 40/60 of 1913 also showed sporting ambition with overhead valves serving its 6.1 liters. One accounted for the first appearance of an Alfa in a major race, Nino Franchini’s third place in the 1914 Coppa Florio behind a Scat and the winning Nazzaro. Substantially updated, in 1921 the model in racing trim was timed at 91.7 mph over a flying kilometer at Brescia.

By far, Giuseppe Merosi’s most ambitious prewar effort was a pure 4-cylinder racing engine for the 4½-liter Grand Prix formula that took effect in 1914. Its design seemed bang up to date with its twin overhead camshafts, driven by a combination of gears and chains, and four valves per cylinder. However, its power was moderate, 88 bhp at 2950 rpm, and it was installed in a tall, antiquated-looking chassis. Worst of all, the car was not ready for that year’s French Grand Prix and so failed to take part in the last such classic race before the war.

Though making more than 200 cars yearly by 1912 and receiving orders for military equipment, the Società Alfa was still operating on credit. The bulk of its obligations were held by an affiliate of the Banca Italiana di Sconto, which had been set up at the end of 1914 to fund projects for the military. Effectively controlling Alfa, the bank decided to place management of the company in the hands of entrepreneur Nicola Romeo.

Short, bald and luxuriously moustached, Neapolitan Romeo was 39 years old in 1915 when he added Alfa to his portfolio. Based in Milan since 1902, he had built up substantial companies that made equipment for mining and rail electrification. Romeo swiftly converted the Portello premises to production for the military. When he restructured his activities in 1918, his Alfa car operation was subsumed into the Società Anonima Ing. Nicola Romeo & Co. The cars soon became known as Alfa Romeos.

Automobile production was only one of his manifold activities, and Nicola Romeo saw it primarily as a means of promoting his businesses. He asked Merosi to take the 4½-liter Grand Prix engine out of mothballs, update it and fit it to a more appropriate chassis. With such a car, Giuseppe Campari was the outright winner of the 242-mile Mugello Circuit races of 1920 and 1921.

Getting back into its stride as a carmaker in 1922, the year in which Italy’s king asked Benito Mussolini’s Fascists to form a new government, Alfa Romeo began production of Giuseppe Merosi’s capolavoro, his 6-cylinder 2916cc Type RL. Although principally built and sold as a road car of considerable sporting style, the RL also served as the basis of competition cars raced by the factory. With vertical overhead valves operated by pushrods, the six normally had four main bearings and was built in a seven-bearing version for racing with capacities up to 3.6 liters.

Competing with 3.2-liter engines, the Type RL’s finest hour was the April 1923 Targa Florio. Works driver Ugo Sivocci won the 268-mile Sicilian race with Antonio Ascari second and Giulio Masetti fourth. With only 17 starters, “little foreign competition and a reduced average speed,” wrote W.F. Bradley, this Targa Florio “was one of the dull races.” Nevertheless, it was a triumph for Alfa in a classic event that brought the company a wave of positive publicity.

Alfa needed good press; since 1922, Romeo’s enterprises were in the hands of the Banca Nationale di Credito, a new entity created by the government to sweep up the wreckage of the Banca Italiana di Sconto, which collapsed spectacularly in 1921 while holding more than $4 million of Nicola Romeo’s debts. Though the BNC sold off several of Romeo’s properties, it kept his car company going.

Convinced by the kudos gained for Alfa by the 1923 Targa success that participation in top-line racing was a good thing, Romeo approved Merosi’s plan to build a new Grand Prix car to compete under the 2.0-liter formula. Gestating since the autumn of 1922, Merosi’s Type P1 seemed the goods with its low profile and long, louvered hood. Under the latter, however, was a 6-cylinder engine whose design looked alarmingly agricultural with two separated 3-cylinder blocks. The P1’s 93 bhp paled in comparison to the 112 claimed by Fiat for its 2.0-liter six of a year earlier.

Debut for the P1 was 1923’s Italian Grand Prix in Monza’s second season. Although the race was set for September 9, practice began on August 12. It was marred by two accidents, one killing the riding mechanic of a Fiat and the other fatally injuring Targa winner Ugo Sivocci, whose mechanic escaped death. As Austro Daimler had done the year before in similar circumstances, Alfa Romeo withdrew its team as a tribute to poor Sivocci. It is unlikely, however, that their pace would have discomfited the latest 8-cylinder supercharged Fiats. The withdrawal may have been as much strategic as respectful.

The inadequacies of Merosi’s design were evident to engineer Romeo. Soon after the Monza disaster, he sat with members of his racing team. Whom did they know, he asked, who could produce a successful Grand Prix car? Among them were Luigi Bazzi, recently arrived from Fiat, and Enzo Ferrari, who had recruited Bazzi. The latter sang the praises of Vittorio Jano (pronounced “Yarno”). With Fiat since 1911 as a protégé of Carlo Cavalli, Jano had headed a design group there since 1921. Working closely with Tranquillo Zerbi, he left his fingerprints on all the latest racing cars.

Now 32, Jano was wedded to Fiat and Turin. He was reluctant to leave hearth, home and Fiat’s world-beating racing cars for a job in Milan, which the hard-working Torinese disparaged as a frivolous environment. However, the offer of a doubling of his salary appealed. By October, Vittorio Jano was at work in Portello assisted by designer Secondo Molino, another ex-Fiat engineer.

The newcomer’s assignment was chiefly racing cars, with Giuseppe Merosi remaining in charge of Alfa’s production models. The two men worked harmoniously, recalled mechanic Giulio Ramponi: “They respected each other and were great friends. In terms of seriousness, meticulousness and patience, both had the same mentality.” Recognizing, however, the arrival of a striking new talent – at the end of 1924 Jano was asked to design a touring car for Alfa – Merosi resigned in January 1926.

Jano’s new regime was a dash of cold water for Portello’s racers. On the engine test bed, mechanic Giovanni Battista Guidotti told Doug Nye that under Merosi they took full-power readings with a run of only 30 seconds because any longer would risk the engine. When Jano saw this “he said no, no, no and took the throttle and opened it wide and hung a weight on it. It was around 5 p.m. He said, ‘Now, I’m going home for a bite to eat. Don’t touch the throttle and call me at home about 8 o’clock to tell me how it’s going.’ We were flabbergasted.”

Equally flabbergasting was the need to have a team of cars ready for the French Grand Prix, scheduled for August 3, 1924. “Jano took command in Milan,” Enzo Ferrari recalled, “established an iron military discipline and in scant months created the P2 from scratch.” Guidotti was adamant that Jano brought no Fiat drawings with him. If that were so, he had a phenomenal memory or his sidekick Molino brought the drawings, because the very detail of the new P2 engine was identical to that of Fiat’s Type 805. It produced 145 bhp at 5500 rpm.

Instead of the 805’s dimensions of 60 x 87.5 mm, Jano chose 61 x 85 mm for his P2. Instead of a combination of spur gears and shafts to drive the twin camshafts, he used spur gears alone. Instead of combining the steel-jacketed cylinders in blocks of four, he chose blocks of two to reduce the rate of manufacturing loss from rejected cylinder groups. Otherwise, the two straight eights were virtually identical with their 10 roller main bearings, finger-type cam followers, triple valve springs and front-mounted superchargers. When Fiat’s Pietro Bordino first saw the cars, he said to one of the Alfa drivers, “Eh! If you need some spare parts, just come and ask us!”

The eight first ran in March of 1924. Antonio Ascari was so pleased with the unpainted P2’s first canter around the Portello courtyard on June 2, he urged its entry for the 200-mile race over the fast Cremona road circuit only a week later. Wielding authority as Alfa’s Milan distributor, Ascari was listened to by Nicola Romeo. Brushing aside Jano’s protests that the car was virtually untested, Ascari took it to Cremona. He won in a virtual demonstration at 98.3 mph and covered a timed 10 kilometers, six miles, at 121.18 mph.

“We were all very surprised and delighted by this sudden success,” said Guidotti. “Even Jano seemed a little surprised that his new car had gone so well and won at Cremona.” They had little time to reflect on this because Ascari demanded an all-out effort to prepare four cars for the French classic less than two months later. “Every engineer, technician and fitter was called in to build the team of cars,” Guidotti recalled.

The result, reflected Jano later, was “Alfa’s birth announcement in the world of Grand Prix racing.” Although only three of the cars started the 503-mile race on the Lyon circuit, Enzo Ferrari being unwell, the P2s of Ascari and Campari took command after shrugging off an early challenge by Bordino’s Fiat. Ascari retired while leading just before the finish, leaving the win to Giuseppe Campari with Louis Wagner fourth behind two V12 Delages. Alfa had achieved that most unusual feat, a victory in a great classic race for a new car on its first attempt.

This was grist to the publicity mill of Giorgio Rimini, Alfa Romeo’s commercial director in the early 1920s. A strong supporter of newcomer Vittorio Jano and his creations, engineer Rimini was also a close ally of Nicola Romeo. Rimini was a committed advocate of the merits of racing to generate positive publicity for cars and companies. He traveled with the team to give his enthusiastic support to its major races and events.

Like the racing cars of 1923, the works P2s of 1924 carried a distinctive emblem on their hoods. This was a green four-leaf clover in a white triangle, set against Alfa’s characteristically deep crimson. This attractive hallmark of a factory-entered car survived for many decades of competition cars from Portello.

For the rest of the 2.0-liter Grand Prix formula, expiring after 1925, the Alfas dominated. Their only loss in a major race was in France in 1925, when the team was withdrawn after Antonio Ascari’s fatal crash. Fortunately, if that word can be used, riding mechanics were no longer carried. Victories were tallied in Italy in 1924 and in Belgium and Italy in 1925. In that year Alfa easily annexed the new World Grand Prix Championship, in honor of which it encircled its badge with a laurel wreath.

When a new 1½-liter Grand Prix formula took effect in 1926, the controlling bank, the Banca Nationale di Credito, forbade the building of new Alfa Romeo racing cars. At the beginning of the year, Alfa’s technical board member, Giuseppe Merosi, resigned, followed later by Giorgio Rimini. The last link with the original company was broken in May 1928 when Nicola Romeo was forced from of its board of directors. In 1929, Prospero Gianferrari, who had placed second in that year’s Trento-Bondone hill climb with his 6C 1500 Alfa, became the company’s new managing director.

In the meantime, the 1½-liter formula had proved less than a smashing success, with only a few companies building cars for it. The international racing authority, Association Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnus (AIACR), threw up its well-manicured hands and offered what amounted to free formula rules for 1928. Seizing the day, Alfa Romeo dusted off its P2 racing cars and began entering them on behalf of such drivers as Giuseppe Campari and Achille Varzi.

Many successes resulted. None was of greater impact than 26-year-old Varzi’s victory in the 1930 Targa Florio after five straight years of blue Bugatti domination. By then, the old cars were updated in both suspension and body shape to resemble the more current 6C 1750 Gran Sport model while their supercharging systems were modified and new alcohol-blend fuels used to bring their power to 175 bhp at 5500 rpm.

Varzi’s victory came in the first season of the entry of Alfa Romeo racing cars by the new team or Scuderia set up by Enzo Ferrari. Racing only occasionally after 1924, Enzo Ferrari had concentrated on his responsibilities at Portello, where he was acting as the right arm of Giorgio Rimini. Although his Alfa Romeo distributorship in Modena was considerable compensation, Ferrari had lost important allies in Romeo and Rimini. When the new 6C 1500 and 1750 models came out, he returned to the cockpit, the better to promote his sales of these attractive models.

But Enzo Ferrari, in his own words an “agitator of men,” had another idea. Hatched ironically at a celebratory dinner at Bologna for a Maserati driver, Ferrari’s brain wave was to set up a private racing team. Backed by his Bologna dinner partners, textile-making brothers Augusto and Alfredo Caniato, he set up the Scuderia Ferrari in 1929. At the young age of 31 Enzo Ferrari was ready to put wheels under other drivers.

Ferrari’s timing was good. In 1929 his Scuderia was perfectly placed to take over the racing preparation and entries of Alfa Romeo’s cars, the company having decided to unburden itself of this activity and to entrust it to a knowledgeable outsider. Founded in September, the Modena-based Scuderia Ferrari became Portello’s official entrant in December.

By the mid-1930s, the Scuderia had become an engineering-racing division of Alfa Romeo, having been allocated the racing function entirely in August of 1933. With this more businesslike orientation, Count Carlo Felice Trossi, himself a driver of considerable merit, brought out the interests of the founding Caniatos.

For Ferrari’s drivers, Vittorio Jano created a new high-performance model that made its bow in 1931. The exigencies of the time, with the Depression taking its toll, meant that he had to build it with an economy of means that was a tribute to Jano’s ingenuity, for the 8C 2300 became an outstandingly successful racing car as well as a magnificent sporting road car.

Starting in 1929, Jano and his team designed an 8-cylinder version of their six. Although they began with a 2-liter eight using the 6C 1500’s dimensions, their final engine had the 6C 1750 bore and stroke (65 x 88 mm) to give it 2336 cc. This meant that they could use the six’s valve gear intact, effecting a saving in cost. Its bottom end as well, using plain bearings like the sixes instead of the P2’s Fiat-inherited roller bearings, would suit a less costly creation.

For the engine’s bottom end, Jano recalled the layout used by Frenchman Emile Petit for Salmson’s 1.1-liter eight of 1928. He laid out the engine as two fours back to back with a gear train between them to drive the camshafts and accessories. The drive to the clutch was still taken from one end of the crankshaft, but for the rest of the engine’s rotating and reciprocating parts, the advantage of a short, stiff 4-cylinder layout was still present.

While the 8C 2300’s aluminum crankcase was one piece, its heads, blocks and crankshaft were made in two pieces and bolted together. All these eights were supercharged. In road cars, their output was 142 bhp; for sports-car racing, they were developed to 165 bhp and further to 178 bhp at 5400 rpm for Grand Prix racing.

The new model’s chassis was conventional, with a solid front axle and live rear axle guided by a torque tube. Wheelbase lengths were 122 inches for road cars and Le Mans racers, 108 inches for sports racers, as for the Mille Miglia, and 104 inches for the 8C 2300 Monza, which had a two-seated cockpit that allowed it to race in Grands Prix as well as in the Targa Florio.

Although the 8C 2300 was much more sports car than racing car, in stripped short-wheelbase form it was Alfa’s entry in 1931’s Italian Grand Prix. Lasting 10 hours, in accord with the AIACR’s prevailing Grand Prix rules, the race was moved from its usual September date to midsummer on May 24. A starting time of 8 a.m. promised a finish in daylight. Two 8C 2300s were the class of a mixed field, placing first and second ahead of a Bugatti with an ample 4.9 liters. The racing model’s “Monza” nickname was a benison of this brilliant success.

In their debut year of 1931, the 2.3-liter Alfas won a total of nine major events. One of these successes opened a new chapter of Portello’s golden book. In 1930, Britain’s Lord Howe raced a 6C 1750 at in the now-classic 24 Hours of Le Mans, placing fifth. Howe returned in 1931 with a long-wheelbase 8C 2300, wearing cycle wings and the mandatory folding hood. With Tim Birkin, he won the race at the record speed of 78.13 mph, becoming the first to cover more than 3,000 kilometers in the daylong race.

Thus began a new dynasty that rivaled Bentley’s of the late 1920s. An 8C 2300 won again in 1932, Raymond Sommer and Luigi Chinetti driving. Frenchman Sommer repeated in 1933 with Tazio Nuvolari sharing the wheel. Remarkably, the 8C 2300 won again in 1934, now with the team of Chinetti with France’s Philippe Etancelin. A sports-racing car conceived as a high-performance road car turned out to be a good formula for long-distance racing success.

In short-wheelbase form, the 8C 2300 was well suited to Sicily’s Targa Florio. Nuvolari used one to win in a wet and muddy 1931 Targa. For 1932, hoping to avoid weather problems, Vincenzo Florio planned a short cut to eliminate the highest regions. On this “short” 44-mile circuit Nuvolari won again in 1932, while Antonio Brivio was the 1933 winner, both on 8C 2300 Alfas.

In this interim period of uncertain regulations and Formula Libre races, the 8C 2300 Monza was also a useful Grand Prix racer. With his private car, Philippe Etancelin won several G. P.s in 1931 while Fernando Minoia placed well enough to be European champion. Competition from bigger-engined Bugattis and Maseratis was met by blocks with larger bores that raised capacity to 2.6 and later 2.7 liters, the latter producing 180 bhp in 1933. At Monaco in 1932, Nuvolari won ahead of Rudy Caracciola’s similar 8C 2300, his painted German white. In both 1932 and ’33, this Alfa model won the Eifelrennen on Germany’s Nürburgring.

Never satisfied with the compromised 8C 2300, which he thought “came out too heavy, not a masterpiece,” Vittorio Jano was working in the meantime on the design of a proper racing car. Dubbed simply the Type B, the new car first raced on June 5 in 1932’s Italian Grand Prix, a race that had been reduced to a mere five hours. Two were entered by the factory’s own racing entity, Alfa Corse, for aces Nuvolari and Campari, while Ferrari made do with his Monzas. Against strong Maserati opposition, the result was victory by a lap for Nuvolari with Campari fourth. As with the P2 it was a win for a Jano design on its first attempt.

The B’s engine was akin to that of the 8C 2300 but with the longer stroke of 100 mm. Though it debuted at 2654 cc, successive bore increases took it to 2905 and then 3165 cc, with power moving up the scale from 200 to 265 bhp. Vittorio Jano’s concentration on lightness created an engine weighing only 440 pounds in a car scaling a modest 1,680 pounds dry.

While frame and springing were conventional, drive to the rear wheels was unique. Jano put the differential behind the gearbox and from there drove each rear wheel’s ring and pinion by a separate shaft. This moved the mass of the differential forward, to improve handling, while also making it easy to change overall drive ratios with the gear pairs next to the differential. The driver also could sit slightly lower and centrally, as was permitted by new 1932 rules. It was thus a monoposto or single-seater. Although tall, the Type B’s bodywork was slim and stylish with a well-louvered hood, looking the very picture of a perfect Grand Prix car.

Between its 1932 debut and mid-1934, Alfa Romeo’s Type B took part in 26 races, winning 22. It achieved a 92 percent finishing record from 62 race starts in these years, an impressive achievement. The successes included three victories at Monza, one at an average speed in excess of 110 mph with a car capable of 145 mph. For the 1934 season, the first under the new 750-kilogram formula, its capacity was increased to 2.9 liters. That year the Type B, informally known as the “P3” in homage to its great predecessor the P2, won the 1934 Monaco and French Grands Prix.

These wins came after a hiatus in 1933 when a newly created Italian national entity, the Istituto per la Recostruzione Industriale or IRI, took over and effectively nationalized Alfa Romeo. Prospero Gianferrari was out and a new man, ex-Fiat engineer and production expert Ugo Gobbato, was in. Enzo Ferrari had to fight the Grand Prix wars with his Monzas. The Type Bs were withdrawn to Portello until Ferrari’s pleas, given weight by a frustrated Tazio Nuvolari’s defection to Maserati, were finally heeded.

Although in 1934 the developed Type B was faster than its Bugatti and Maserati rivals, it couldn’t match the exotic new cars from Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union. Couldn’t, that is, unless Tazio Nuvolari was at the wheel. In 1935 at the Nürburgring, the heartland of the enemy, he took first place in the German Grand Prix on the last of 22 laps when the leading Mercedes-Benz, under heavy pressure, blew a rear tire. It was an epic victory for both Nuvolari and Alfa.

For the 1935 season, Vittorio Jano produced an expanded version of his Type B eight with increased distances between its cylinders to permit a displacement increase to 3.8 liters. Installed in a new chassis with a rear-mounted gearbox, swing-axle rear suspension and independent front springing, this was the Type 8C 1935. This more modern-looking car was to Nuvolari’s liking. He won with it in Hungary and in the Coppa Ciano in 1936.

The suspension and transmission features of the 8C 1935 monoposto were married in 1936 with the Type B’s 2.9-liter eight to create the 8C 2900 sports-racing car. Three of these placed first, second and fourth in the 1936 Mille Miglia, the gap being filled by a cycle-winged Type B driven by Carlo Pintacuda, the 1935 winner. Driving a developed 8C 2900 sports racer, Pintacuda won again in 1937 and placed second in 1938, when Clemente Biondetti was the winner in another Alfa. The 8C 2900 is secure in history as one of the finest of all sports cars.

Jano’s new Grand Prix chassis received a new V12 engine in time for the Tripoli Grand Prix in North Africa on May 10, 1936. Renamed the 12C, the new 12 was a work of commendable purity. Its vee angle was 60 degrees, while its two valves per cylinder were angled symmetrically at the wide spread that Jano favoured, 104 degrees, using typical Jano valve gear. The engine’s main castings were in light alloy, with the crankcase cast of magnesium alloy.

By Alfa Romeo’s racing-car standards, this was an epic engine, its most potent yet. The 12’s capacity of 4064 cc produced 370 bhp at 5800 rpm. At its first race outing at Tripoli, it showed promise. On this very fast circuit, the Alfas were only two seconds slower than the Mercedes-Benzes on a lap of 3¾ minutes. At the finish, however, the three 12s were sixth, seventh and eighth and, indeed, behind an 8C Alfa in fifth.

On a more challenging track at Barcelona’s Montjuich Park on June 7, Tazio Nuvolari drove the sole 12C-36 to a tremendous victory over both German teams in spite of two pit stops over 188 miles; the new car was proving hard on its tires. Nuvolari won three more times that year in the new 12, at Milan, Modena and, most importantly, the 300-mile race on the new Roosevelt Raceway on New York’s Long Island for the George Vanderbilt Cup. Though no Germans were present, this gave both Tazio and Alfa Romeo major bragging rights over the winter.

For 1937, the 12 was enlarged to 4495 cc. Boosted higher, the revised engine produced 430 bhp at 5800 rpm. This was for naught, however, against the 575 horses of Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union’s 520-plus. In the major races, the best that Alfa could muster was Nuvolari’s fourth in the German Grand Prix. Wins only came in minor events at Turin, Naples and Milan.

Portello nursed high expectations for a new low-chassis model that made its debut at Pescara in August. Marrying the existing power train and suspension to a narrow chassis – virtually a backbone – and a much lower profile, the new model was far off the pace. Of the two entries, only one started for Nuvolari, who struggled to run ninth before handing his car to Nino Farina, who retired. This catastrophic launch on home territory, said Alfa engineer Luigi Fusi, “cost Jano his parting with Alfa Romeo.” He left at the end of 1937 to join Lancia.

For 1938, Grand Prix cars could be 4.5 liters unblown and 3.0 liters supercharged. With odds strongly favouring the latter, Alfa shrank its 12 to 2997 cc (66 x 73 mm) and extracted 350 bhp at 6500 rpm. This, in the lower chassis, was Alfa’s Type 312 for 1938.

The 312’s performance in its few 1938 appearances led many to suggest that this Alfa could be a contender if its maker were inclined to back it with conviction. Problems in setting up a new in-house racing effort, the revived Alfa Corse, didn’t help, nor did Alfa’s dalliance with 8- and 16-cylinder engines for the new formula and its heightened interest in the 1.5-liter Voiturette category, for which it had an 8-cylinder car, the Type 158, built in Enzo Ferrari’s Modena workshops.

In the absence of engineer Jano and the practical racing skills of Ferrari, Alfa Romeo’s Grand Prix effort was embarrassing – for such a great marque – in 1938 and ’39. In none of the major national Grands Prix did its drivers manage even a podium place. In a “waste not, want not” frame of mind, Alfa Corse made a pair of sports-racing cars with redundant 4.5-liter V12s. Not ready until mid-1939, they had no time to prove their merits before war stopped play.

Success has been known to come out of chaos and so it was with Alfa Romeo’s Type 158 Voiturette, which was revived after World War II to become the dominant Grand Prix car of 1947 to 1951. This was an affirmation by Portello of its racing expertise and commitment, nurtured by its great competition cars of the 1920s and 1930s, cars that helped make Alfa Romeo one of the greatest marques of all time.

Read more about Milan’s Mighty Racers | Volume 50 No. 2

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Milan’s Mighty Racers | Karl Ludvigsen