Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale | Crafting a masterpiece | 02. PASSIONE

Alfa Romeo Head of Strategic Projects Cristiano Fiorio takes us through his emotions and tells us about his passion of having the chance to bring back to life the most iconic car of the Brand.

It’s 11pm and TG is wandering through Alfa Romeo’s museum with scarcely another soul to be seen. This is quite the privilege and it prompts an important thought: the hit rate of these guys is extraordinary. There’s a pale blue late Thirties 8C 2900B Lungo, a TZ2, a classic Giulia Super in blue and sirened Carabinieri form (pronto intervento)... 70 cars on permanent display, all in all, with more treasure stashed away backstage.

But this is a human story, too. Take Alfa’s Sixties CEO Giuseppe Eugenio Luraghi, an engineer who also happened to be a poet, writer and polymath. Like so many Italian grandees of this period, his eyewear was on point, too. More importantly, it was he who decreed Alfa Romeo should go racing again, and he hired former Ferrari engineer and all-round genius Carlo Chiti to facilitate. The result was the 33 bloodline, a series of competition cars to rival the best that Ferrari and Porsche conjured up.

Teasing them all was the 33 Stradale, a road car designed by Franco Scaglione, the author of more great cars than there is space to list (check out the Alfa Romeo BAT cars and Lamborghini 350 GTV as a primer). But the 33 is his masterpiece, a car that retains its capacity to flabbergast 56 years later. Only 18 were made, and six were cannibalised to underpin some of the world’s most influential concepts, including 1968’s seismic Alfa Carabo.