Wood-look steering wheels

[JHertzman@domain.elided]

After David Johnson's recent disappointment at finding that his "wood"
steering wheel wasn't, I remembered two other recent references:

In AD7- 546 Samantha asked "Could you please tell me step-by-step how to pull
the wood steering wheel off a 73 GT Veloce?"

In AD7-549 Marcus Alley wrote "I'm trying to swap the wooden steering wheel
from my '74 Berlina with the what-looks-to-be plastic wheel on my '71 GTV.

Back in October 1995 (AD1-174) I had replied to Erik Bucy who asked "Anyone as
disenchanted as me to find out that the steering wheels on the early GTV6s
were *plastic*? I wonder, did Alfa ever represent that they were wood? There's
certainly that perception floating around. The gear shift knobs are plastic
too, if you take a good look at them. The horror! The horror!"

Disenchantment understood, but did they ever represent- well, yes and no. A
1982 GTV-6 brochure, printed USA, refers to the "wood-grained" sport steering
wheel, and of course in smaller type printed "Alfa Romeo reserves the right to
change or modify equipment or specifications at any time -- details,
descriptions and illustrations are for information purposes only, as products
shown may vary for any reason, including constructional requirements."

A 1978 brochure on the Alfetta GTs and Sport Sedans speaks of "the generous
use of real wood trim. The steering wheel is real wood, for example, and the
new wood shift knob is shaped to fit the hand.. The look of luxurious wood is
carried through to new decorative areas on the panel--" The limited edition
Maratona ("Only 150 cars will ever be made") lists as a feature "hand-polished
wood-grain steering wheel". The '83 Spider Veloce brochure pictures a wood-
look wheel but refers only to "Hand finished steering wheel and shift knob"
while the '85 Spider Veloce brochure says "a genuine hand-finished mahogany
steering wheel. Matching wood-grained shift knob." The '77 Spider Veloce
brochure says "a crafted wood-grain steering wheel". A '75 Alfetta sedan
brochure calls the dinky Formica inserts in the arm-rests "mahogany accent
panels". A '74 2000 brochure (which I can't find in 1999) said "wood steering
wheel (Spider Veloce and GT Veloce only", leaving out Marcus Alley's '74
Bertina. 

And so it goes. The wording varies. A French brochure for the 116 Giulietta
sedans describes the Volant and the Pommeau levier de vitesses as "couleur
bois", the color of wood. Wood color, the look of wood, wood grain, mahogany,
genuine wood as well as hand polished, hand finished, and crafted. 

Both Samantha and Marcus were talking about '73-'74 cars- her '73 GT Veloce,
his '74 Berlina. Going back for a fresh look at the brochures of that period I
found a first series 1750 GT Veloce (rounded bumpers, floor pedals, buttress
seats) with a steering wheel called "wooden", with no "-grained" or "-look".
The 1971 GT Veloce brochure had a black plastic wheel. All of my 115 parts
cars and project cars ('69 and '72 Berlinas, '71, '73, and '74 GT Veloces)
have black plastic, so I can't personally sniff any wood of that vintage.

Many British wood-rimmed wheels had the rims cut and shaped out of plywood
with various African veneers. The Italian wood-rimmed wheels, Nardi and
imitators, use a much more labor intensive (ergo expensive) technique, winding
and gluing long lengths of thin veneers in a spiral so the rim can be machined
and applied to the aluminum rim and finished without any visible starting or
stopping point. At some point some resourceful plastics company developed
techniques to make damned convincing copies which would remain convincing
longer than most cars last. The only generalization we can make now is that
some convincing wood steering wheels and shift knobs on Alfas are not wood,
and some may be; and that Alfa often used weasel-words like "the look of
finely-crafted wood", and at least sometimes flat-out called things "wood"
which were not, like the formica inserts in various Alfetta arm-rests and
dashboards. My guess is that a few of the models in the late sixties has wood-
rimmed steering wheels, and that some of the wood look ones in the seventies
may have been wood but that most Alfa "wood" in the seventies, eighties and
nineties is plastic. In a case like Marcus Alley who has a plain black plastic
wheel on his relatively premium-priced GT Veloce and either a wood or a "wood"
wheel on his bread-and-butter Berlina, I wouldn't bet on it.  If I had one,
and cared, I would probably do some discrete exploration in a spot which
nobody would ever see.

Cheers, 

John H.
Raleigh, N.C.

------------------------------