Do Look Back

  Courtesy of Tony Berni Carlo Abarth’s manager of mechanical, chassis and body development , Mario Colucci, joined from Alfa Romeo following the collaborative Abarth-Alfa 1000 project which culminated in November ’58 with the presentation of a Scaglione-styled version at the Turin Motor Show.  This model featured a tube frame chassis, the preference of both Alfa Romeo corporately, and Colucci personally.  Following on from this, despite his own contrary chassis construction and engine location principles, Carlo Abarth gave Colucci the opportunity to design and develop a new line of lightweight spiders, initially with the Fiat 600-based 748 cc #221 engine.  By ’62, 1300, 1450 and 2000 cc versions had evolved, utilising the Simca-based engine.  However, these models did not achieve competitive successes to an extent which could attract an ongoing/increasing cohort of racing customers.  In addition, Carlo’s retained prejudices re-emerged in an edict which con...

Once again, the control of Alfa Romeo by the state organisation, Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale – IRI – through its finanziaria, (financial entity), Finmeccanica, would be highly influential.  Not for the first time, the managements of Alfa Romeo and Autodelta were compelled to make decisions constrained by directives formulated on the basis of political expediency rather than engineering savvy.  Responding to recurrent government diktaks seeking to promote the use/consumption of Italian-made products, Finmeccanica ‘s nose intruded into the 890 engine project, stipulating that its turbochargers must be locally-sourced.  Accordingly, the KKKs were soon replaced by units made by the Alfa Romeo aeronautical manufacturing subsidiary, Avio.  Unfortunately, the performance and reliability of these was clearly inferior to the German blowers.  At this stage of the 890’s development, the induction characteristics were rendered furthermore problematic by the di...