Walter Da Silva, and why

[JHertzman@domain.elided]

Greetings all. I sent the following yesterday, under a subject-line which 
probably had contraband characters, (slashes? are they verboten?) and it 
disappeared into the vast empyrean, presumably orbiting the web forever. If 
perchance the original lands, resulting in duplication, my apologies. The 
original subject line, separated by slashes, consisted of "Re: Da Di De di' 
da' dum"
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Scott Johnson writes: 
"Last time I heard, Da Silva was leaving Alfa for SEAT or some other funky 
spanish car company. While Alfa's plans ultimately rest with whatever the 
Agnelli family wants, it does mean that's one less anti-US person in the 
higher-up chain.

"Of course, Da Silva is responsible for most of the new product at Alfa, so 
who
knows what will happen to them now..."

Democracy rules, sorta, sometimes only by default. Scott joins Jess Liao and 
Chris Robyn in spelling the name Da Silva; Ian Evans opts for DaSilva without 
a space; Rich Lasner chose DiSilva with an 'i' but again no space; and dug 
seed in chose (wut els?) disilva, 'i', no space, no caps. Low-tech dead-tree 
hardcopy (at least from Alfa) spells it de'Silva, with an apostrophe, 'e', 
and lower-case 'd'. I think that is probably correct. But Luca Cifieri in the 
trade press "Automotive News Europe" goes De' Silva with capital 'D', l.c. 
'e', apostrophe, and an extra space. Open season, I guess. I will go with 
de'Silva at least until I see how the Spaniards spell it.

Anyhow, Scott is correct on the job-change; as of last November Walter 
de'Silva, who was in charge of Centro Stile at Alfa, and Wolfgang Egger, 
chief designer of the 166, and Zbigniew Maurer, of the design team which did 
the 156, have all left for new jobs at Seat, the Spanish brand which parent 
company Volkswagen wants to move into Alfa's market niche. Concurrently, 
Andrea Zapatinas, who had done much of the work on the Fiat Coupe, Barchetta 
and Alfa 145 while at Fiat but had moved with Chris Bangle from Fiat to BMW 
in 1994, has returned to Fiat to take charge of Alfa's styling. Whether Fiat 
canned them, or VW made a better offer, or they initiated a patronage change 
for their own reasons, is something I cannot guess. Certainly there has been 
a massive move from Arese to Spain, and from Turin to BMW and back to Arese. 
Curious.

I think Scott is overstating the case when he says "Of course, Da Silva is 
responsible for most of the new product at Alfa, so who knows what will 
happen to them now..." He was head of Centro Stile, the styling center, and 
presumably had nothing to do with anything else.

I also wonder about "it does mean that's one less anti-US person in the 
higher-up chain." I don't know de'Silva's educational background or 
philosophy, but the vast majority of the Centro Stile crew were educated in 
Los Angeles, and I would be surprised if he wasn't also. I have read nothing 
in remarks attributed to him which suggested a bias against the US or US 
enthusiasts. I also know of nothing to suggest that the opinions of Centro 
Stile staff carried the weight in Turin that the "one less anti-US person in 
the higher-up chain" remark suggests.

At the time that Chris Bangle left Fiat for BMW he articulated a point of 
view which I suspect that de'Silva and most or all of the Fiat-employed Los 
Angeles graduates would share; that the most profound essence of corporate 
and/or national character, as expressed in design, can be divined and turned 
off and on at will by a properly trained designer regardless of his own 
corporate or national background. One day this American was designing the 
most Italian of Italian cars for Fiat, and he was quite certain that the next 
week he would be designing BMWs which were more quintessentially BMW than any 
Bavarian could possibly have done unless he, too, had been educated in Los 
Angeles. It is a very short jump to the idea that a genius musician of valve 
clatters and muffler resonances could take outsourced machinery from anywhere 
and make it sound absolutely Neopolitan or totally Teutonic by deft 
adjustments; that it is just as easy to produce, under a Mercedes badge, 
something which looks, sounds, feels, and smells like a Mercedes, as it is to 
produce, under an Alfa Romeo badge, something which looks, sounds, feels, and 
smells like an Alfa Romeo.

And that is, when push comes to shove, why I don't regret not being able to 
buy a 156. A 105 is not, by George, a cosmeticized and sound-staged version 
of something else.

Cheers,

John

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