gardening and promiscuity

[<JHertzman@xxxxxxx>]

In AD7-001 Bryan Carter remembers "seeing a picture of a Milano wagon" and
asks "I'm curious if this model was ever actually produced and what country's
it was sold in."

The 75 Sport Wagon which has been pictured in Alfa Owner and elsewhere was a
one-off produced by Rayton Fissore, and was shown at the Geneva show in 1987
to test public reaction. Never produced. 

The 33 Giardinetta was, however, produced in several variants, sometimes
called a Giardinetta and sometimes a Sport Wagon. The 1.5 liter 4 x 4 was
introduced in June 1984, followed by a two wheel drive version, a 1.7 liter
version in 1987, and a 1.3 liter version in 1988, both in both two-wheel and
four-wheel drive versions. The big d'Amico-Tabucchi book, so useful in some
ways and so frustrating in others, gives a table of total number of "cars
produced" which cannot be reconciled with the descriptive data in the main
text. For the Sport Wagon it gives numbers only from 1987, and only for the
1.3, 1.7, and 1.7 4x4 versions. For those three subsets the numbers total
42,654 units. For comparison, the total number of GTV-6s was just 22,381,
barely half as many, and the number of Milano/75 V-6s was just 9,526. The
numbers of 1.5 liter Giardinettas and Sport wagons are presumably subsumed in
the undifferentiated 1.5 liter figures, and the numbers of all before 1987 are
presumably also lumped in with the general population. Since the numbers of
33s are vastly greater than the numbers of 75s (1,259,670 units against
364,652) one may assume that Alfa felt the wagon market was well enough served
by the wide range of 33 variants.

The other noteworthy Alfa production wagons were the Giulietta Promiscua,
built for Alfa by Colli, of which 91 examples were built, and the Giulia
Promiscua, also built by Colli and others with Alfa's cooperation. The
Giulietta Promiscua was for some reason considered a production car, and is
listed in both Fusi and d'Amico-Tabucchi. The Giulia TI Promiscua, which was
used by the police and is almost certainly more numerous, is not listed as a
production car in d'Amico-Tabucchi nor in Fusi. Fusi does list sixteen Giulia
Super Promiscuas- five in '68, nine in '69, plus one RHD in each year, but not
the TI versions.

The Giulia wagons are generally considered to be by Colli. I did see one at a
Dutch dealer who said with great certainty that it had been built in his body-
shop. The d'Amico-Tabucchi reference to Colli and others suggests that the
special panels were made by one of the numerous metal-stamping subcontractors
and assembled usually by Colli but available to others who had a reason.

The roster of Alfa wagons would not be complete without including the 164
wagon built by Tom Zat, using the roof and tailgate of a Ford Taurus. They had
small problems with the rear quarter windows, but it was an extremely neat and
convincing conversion.

John

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