Artisanal Alfas and the paradigm shift

[JHertzman@domain.elided]

In AD7-960 Richard Bies commented on the "paradigm shift, in which 'hand 
made' is switching from denoting the finest of fit, to relatively crude", and 
mentioned "Recall the image of the craftsman at his table with micrometer and 
calipers, hand fitting parts for the Alfa engine...."

In AD7-961 Andy Kress replied, asking for contemporaneous comparisons, 
writing "when the Alfa mechanic was standing at his bench with his 
micrometer, hand files, reamers, and balance - what were the other 
manufacturers doing?  My guess is that Alfa's manufacturing processes, and 
people were state of the art - as good as or better than you could buy 
anywhere."

It may be coincidence, but I suspect that Bies' image of the craftsman was 
derived, perhaps indirectly, from an essay I wrote in the early nineties for 
Fred DiMatteo's 'Velocissima', the AONE newsletter, which had been reprinted 
in various chapter newsletters. It was a rumination on "the shift from 
artisan production - craft production, to many - to full industrial 
production, which happened later in Italy than in this country or in northern 
Europe", and was titled "Artisanal Alfas".  I had gone from how we sometimes 
romanticize 'craft' production - Benvenuto Cellini and all that -, to a photo 
taken in the thirties in the Necchi sewing machine factory - "rows of 
grinders with very rudimentary safety guards, bins of castings, a few hanging 
light-fixtures, and the workers with goggles for their eyes and caps or 
kerchiefs for their hair, mostly women, ragged, dirty, and barefoot on the 
dirt floor with rough plank walkways, scratching their way from the 
seventeenth century into the twentieth, the hard way, in a country which had 
missed out on the industrial revolution while it was happening in the north" 
to a post-war photo "in the newest book on my Alfa shelf, which stopped me 
the way the one of the Necchi shop did. There is a skinny worker in shabby 
and very dirty coveralls, at a very battered wooden workbench with what 
appears to be a grocer's scale, two vices, a tray holding six pistons and six 
connecting rods, two hammers, some files, taps, reamers, and a dial 
indicator. He is building an engine for a 6C 2500, in 1946, reaming piston 
pin bushings one by one, balancing the reciprocating parts with the scale and 
a file. 'All hand made, by skilled craftsmen. They don't build them like that 
any more' some will say, with nostalgia. They sure don't."

With the opening, much later, of the new plant at Arese one could argue that, 
as Andy says, "Alfa's manufacturing processes, and people were state of the 
art - as good as or better than you could buy anywhere" but that was not the 
case in 1946 when the workers at Portello were scrabbling out of the debris 
of wartime destruction to resume car production, nor (most assuredly) was it 
the case when the first 750 Sprints were coming out of Bertone's shop.

Cordially,

John H. 
Raleigh, N.C.

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