Re: Stepnose

[jack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Jack Hagerty)]

From: JHertzman@domain.elided

>The stepnose was either a culmination- his finest, in his eyes, absolute
>perfection, which he could not improve- or a dead-end detail, interesting,
>well done, but not a fruitful beginning susceptible to further development.

Before everyone gets caught up in motivations, I belive the answer is much 
simpler. The "inset hood" (or bonnet for our Imperial cousins) is quite
expensive to manufacture. It requires you to completely surround the, uh,
engine hatch with a frame of unbroken sheetmetal. In this case, the only
seams showing are the two at the windshield end that allow the cowl (scuttle)
to be removed. At the nose end, there is a fiendish amount of leading 
and finishing required to blend the crosspiece into the fenders (wings), 
especially with all of the compound curves that GG had shaped into the 
design. Since this was supposed to be an inexpesive car, I beleive that 
Alfa decided that it wasn't cost effective to invest the manpower necessary 
to properly finish it off, and the stepnose was the result.

A few year on, with some of the production tooling amortized and the car
starting to move upmarket, they decided to make the investment and do a
much more finished job.

Just my HO.

- - Jack

+-----------------------------+---------------------------------------------+
| Jack Hagerty                |                                             | 
| jack@domain.elided   |                                             |
| Robotic Midwives, Ltd.      |  Black holes are where God divided by zero. |
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