Flying Star

[JHertzman@domain.elided]

After Bill Bergman commented on the white-on-white Alfa at the Blackhawk 
museum Jack Hagerty wrote: 

"That's the "Flying Star," Bill. It is an absolutely gorgeous one-off
by...by... waaaall shoot. I'm having a senior moment here. I think it
was by Zagato, but I don't know if they were around that far back."

"Flying Star", absolutely correct; "absolutely gorgeous", understatement of 
the year. "One-off", sorta; there were five Flying Stars, two Alfas, two 
Isotta Fraschinis, and one Fiat. "by...by... waaaall shoot. I'm having a 
senior moment here"- welcome to the club, junior. "I think it was by Zagato, 
but I don't know if they were around that far back." They were around, but it 
was by a younger upstart, Carrozzeria Touring.

Huge differences between Touring and Zagato, some quite visible and some 
important ones in the background of the founders, Ugo Zagato and Felice 
Bianchi Anderloni. 

Bianchi Anderloni and his partner Gaetano Ponzoni were both lawyers, members 
of the upper classes, and Bianchi Anderloni was well connected with Isotta 
Fraschini, the Milanese builders of Italy's most prestigious cars; he had 
gone to work for Isotta Fraschini in 1904, and his three sisters married 
Cesare Isotta and the two Fraschini brothers, Antonio and Vincenzo. In 1926, 
after Isotta Fraschini went public, with new shareholders and managers, 
Bianchi Anderloni and Ponzoni bought a controlling interest in Carrozzeria 
Falco and changed the name to Touring (a British-sounding name, chosen for 
snob value). Carrozzeria Falco was run by Vittorio Ascari whose brother 
Antonio was Alfa Romeo's (and Italy's) greatest driver, and Ascari stayed on 
at Touring. Thus Touring started out with great connections to Alfa Romeo, 
Isotta Fraschini, and the upper crusts of Milanese society, the beautiful 
people who wanted stunning cars to show in prestigious Concours. Bianchi 
Anderloni also had been a successful driver in the strictly amateur 
"Gentleman" classes, (more Briticisms) so had good contacts among the 
sporting elite. Touring's cars had to be competitive in a general sense, but 
above all they had to be beautiful, fashionable and perennially novel.

Ugo Zagato, eight years younger, was born in a poor farming family and 
emigrated to serve an apprenticeship as a mechanic in Cologne, returned for 
his compulsory military service (Bianchi Anderloni of course was an officer), 
worked briefly in a small Carrozzeria before the war and then in an aircraft 
company during the war. In 1919 he returned to coachbuilding on his own, 
applying his aircraft-building experience to car bodies, wrapping alloy 
panels around light steel structures of brake-formed strips. The early Zagato 
bodies were generally composed of simpler forms, flat panels, simple curves, 
lots of straight lines, with minimum (if any) decoration.

Touring, meanwhile, had plunged into the French Weymann system, with flexible 
wood frames sheathed in padded oilcloth, which allowed a lot more freedom of 
form, and they indulged much more in applied decoration. Bit by bit they 
added more conventional techniques, first alloy skins on the Weymann frames, 
then more metal, eventually all metal, but always with more sculptural forms, 
more applied decoration, and more interest in perennial novelty.

"Flying Star" got its name from the horizontal louvers, drooping at the rear, 
the name intended to suggest a comet's tail. The unframed windshield, with 
the two curves across the top, supported by two subtly formed sideposts, is 
another common feature, as is the brightwork "sweepspear" (remember Buick in 
the fifties?) down the side. Roof? No roof. Roofs are not elegant. If it 
rains, you take one of the other cars. Zagatos had functioning folding 
windshields, windshield wipers, clutzy roofs that looked like hell but kept 
the rain off, louver-like louvers, and as far as I know did not get shown by 
Society at Concours.

The remarkable fenders of the Blackhawk car, overlapping without touching 
each other, is not invariable on the Flying Stars - the two Isottas have 
connected fenders, one with a real running board- nor is it unique to the 
Flying Stars; Touring used it also on several examples of a "Coupe Royale" 
which Touring called the "Fugientem incurro diem", some of which repeated the 
comet motif in brightwork on the doors. Touring tended to go in for exotic 
names, often satanic- "Freccia di Belzebu", "Soffio di Satana", which, as far 
as I know, would not have occurred to Ugo Zagato.

Zagato also snorted at the implied light weight of Touring's Superleggera 
construction. Weigh them, he said. Weigh theirs, weigh mine.

Lovely car, the Flying Star, with its white steering wheel, white leather 
boots for the gearshift and handbrake, white everywhere, distilled 
extravagance as the economic world bottomed out in the depression. Those who 
think it might be Zagato might look, with some curiosity, at a few more 
Zagatos and a few more Tourings. Poles apart. 

Andy Kress quoted from the book, "Touring Superleggera Giant Among Classic 
Italian Coachbuilders"" by Carlo Felice Bianchi Anderloni & Angelo Tito 
Anselmi.
Carlo was Felice's son, and the book is a great read. I would read 
differently than Andy on some details- one Fiat, rather than several, one 
precursor O.M. rather than several, two Isottas rather than four or five, but 
these are details. But Carlo Bianchi Anderloni writes a poetic history which 
transcends his nominal subject, writing of the happy few in Italy living in 
an Indian Summer Scott Fitzgerald atmosphere, of the sublime incongruity of 
the four, five Flying Stars which blossomed like snowdrops in the bitter 
winter which blanketed gray Milan. "But surely looking for reasonableness in 
the Flying Star is like asking whether an evening dress is warm." A 
recommended read. 

There is more to Alfa than cars and a company.

John H.
Raleigh, N.C.

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End of alfa-digest V7 #729
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