[alfa] ES30

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The recent discussion about the ES30 (or SZ) and its companion open version, the RZ, has mentioned a legal distinction for import purposes between productions of fewer than 500 units and more than 500 units, without any assertion I noticed on where the SZ production numbers fell. The book says 1,035 units for the SZ, 241 for the RZ.

More important, Luca wrote "Get a Milano, make it shorter, make it stiffer, put coil over front suspension, and an electronic suspension management and you got it." That "shorter" COULD be referring to overall length, but later he wrote "of course, you got a shorter car here, that makes a difference even in a matter of frame rigidity" which implicitly suggests that the platform is shorter. Again, the books say that the SZ, RZ, all versions of the 75 (and all versions of the Alfetta Berlina, Giulietta Nuova, and 90) share a 2510 mm wheelbase. There may be added braces, gussets, and seam-welding to augment rigidity, but there is no reason I can see why a Milano (or a 1975 Alfetta sedan, etc.) could not be as stiff and as well-balanced as an SZ. The Alfetta GT and GTV6 bodies are not as structurally rational, but they are not hopeless.
 
D'Amico & Tabucchi, in not their only bobble of scholarship, do say in an SZ illustration caption (p.968) "the wheelbase was drastically shortened", but the dimensioned factory three-views on p.926 (for the 75) and p.973 (for the RZ) do show identical 2510 mm wheelbases, with 355 mm shorter rear overhang and 5 mm shorter front overhang on the SZ/RZ than on the 75.
 
I don't think anyone mentioned weight, so far. The SZ is said to have made extensive use of glassfiber reinforced acrylic panels and other new technologies to save weight. The result (again by the book) is a weight of 1260 kg for the SZ, against 1190 kg for the heaviest petrol-engined 75 variant. (The heaviest 75 turbodiesel variant, with a big iron engine, also weighed as much, 1260 kg; the RZ adds another 120 kg.)
 
These weight figures are all from d'Amico & Tabucchi, presumably all from factory numbers, and do not include USA versions which are often heavier.
 
D'Amico & Tabucchi wrote that in 1996 (five years after production ended) unsold examples of the SZ "were still available at heavily discounted prices", and that still seems to be the case. The scuttlebutt when the car was introduced was that it was a somewhat quixotic project of Vittorio Ghidella intended to assert Alfa's independence from Fiat's smothering embrace. Perhaps so; it remains an anomaly, visually exciting to some people and rather pointless to others. It is arguably a dead-end, a perhaps exciting but never the less failed project to build a supercar on a circa 1970 production sedan platform. If you want one, good luck. If you want the semblance of one, it should be easy enough to build a fairly convincing superficial copy on a Milano base  convincing enough for anyone who didn't know the originals. A reasonable approach would be for two or three of the devotees to bring one into Mexico, Canada, or even the USA, pull molds off of it, and assemble fiberglass 'replica' bodies on Milano (or other 116) platforms. Should be able to do it for about the same cost as the Ereminas TZ replicas, $20,000 or $30,000 or so each. There would be a problem with the windshield, but one should be able to get a batch made for a thousand or so each. It doesn't represent much of what I most admired in past Alfas, but that may be my loss. I would tilt the other way  learn as much as I could from the chassis tweaks, and apply that and a Twin Spark to an Alfetta sedan Q-ship, which could be equal fun for perhaps a quarter the price.

Personal choices. Enjoy yours,
 
John H.
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