Roadsters, Spiders, Supers, Normales, etc.

[JHertzman@domain.elided]

Russ Neely asks "Ignoring the race cars and prototypes like the Disco Volante,
has Alfa built any roadsters since WW2?  The only "production" car I can think
of with no roll up side windows in recent times is the 66 to 68 4R Zagato or
Quattroruote, if you can call 92 examples a production car."

The short answer is that Alfa never built a production roadster, convertible,
or other open car in their own facilities prior to the current unobtanium (in
the USA) front-wheel-drive Spider. 

The Giuliettas, Giulias and 105/115 Spiders were all built by Pininfarina. The
Quattroruotes were all built by Zagato. The 102 and 106 Spiders were all built
by Touring, with an indeterminate amount of contracting-out the stampings and
assembly operations to presswork companies like ILCA. The 1900 Cabriolets, all
91 of them, were built by Pininfarina. All open 6C 2500s had been supplied as
chassis to coachbuilders who built the bodies individually for private
clients, as were all earlier open Alfas.

Alfa did have modest in-house body-building facilities for sedans from 1929
on, and also had, at least occasionally, an in-house coachbuilding facility
which very occasionally built one-off bodies exactly as an outside
coachbuilder would have; there is at least one 8C 2900 which any observer
would call a body by Touring except that the bodybuilder's badge is Alfa.

This bears on the historic use of the term "Spider" for various cars prior to
the Giuliettas. Alfa themselves never used the term on anything they built. It
also bears, somewhat, on the legitimacy of the retroactive application of the
term "Normale" to the cars which were not Veloces. And it also bears on the
propriety of Alfa's use of "Super" instead of Veloce for the enhanced version
of the Giuliettas for the US market.

Production figures, year by year and model by model, were listed as "vetture"
(cars) or as "autotelai" (chassis) until 1939, when Fusi lumps them all
together as vetture. From 1920 through 1940 the numbers I get (checked but not
double-checked) show a total production of 9,232 units, of which 3,553 were
"vetture"
and 5,679 were "autotelai". Of the 5,679 autotelai 2,620 had type names
implying some degree of sports intent; "Sport", "Super Sport", "Gran Sport",
"Pescara", or "Mille Miglia" or (like all of the 8C cars) are types known to
have been exclusively sports-oriented. The remaining 3,059 chassis as well as
the 3,553 complete cars had type names of Normale, Turismo, Gran Turismo, or,
in 1939, "Corto" and "Lungo" for the four-window and six-window sedans.

Some of the Normale, Turismo, and Gran Turismo chassis were bodied as
torpedoes or cabriolets, so one can't say exactly how many were sedans. Some
of the Sport and Super Sport chassis were bodied as berlinas, coupes, and
cabriolets; the Pescaras and Mille Miglias were all Touring-bodied
berlinettas, close-coupled two-door four-seat sedans, which also fuzzes the
number of sedans.

So, it seems safe to say that "Spider" was not an established Alfa body-type
name, but a standard industry term in the coachbuilding trade; that "Normale"
was a standard term used by Alfa for some base-models as early as 1921; and
that "Super" was a term used for enhanced versions of sports models as early
as 1925; and that "Veloce" was not used by Alfa until 1956.

The initial use of "Super" instead of "Veloce" for the enhanced Spiders Max
Hoffman brought to the USA should be less surprising if one realizes that
virtually all of the Alfas owned (or wanted) by cognoscenti in the USA at that
time would have been 1900 Super Sprints, 2500 Super Sports, or, in a few
cases, 1500 or 1750 Super Sports. Once enough owners started calling their
Super Spiders "Veloces" the name-change was inevitable, but the initial use of
"Super" was understandable.

There was some discussion of the use of Spider, borrowed from the English,
attributing the use to a wish to cultivate an export market. "Super" and
"Sport" are also borrowed English words, and Alfas very limited export market,
almost entirely to England, would have been as chassis which were then bodied
by James Young, Vanden Plas, The Carlton Carriage Company, Freestone & Webb,
Corsica and other British coachbuilders. The use of "Spider" by Touring,
Zagato, Dux, Brianza and other Italian coachbuilders would simply have been
trade-standard practice in the domestic market.

John H.
Raleigh, N.C.

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