Footnote to the Alfa diesel story

[JHertzman@domain.elided]

Since the questions and comments on diesel-engined Alfas came up, a friend 
mentioned to me one US-built diesel-engined Alfa sports car.

Filippo Surace had gone to work at Alfa in 1956 under Giampaolo Garcea, one 
of Satta's core group of engineers, who had also been Don Black's mentor 
during Black's acclimatization to the Alfa culture at Portello before he 
assumed his responsibilities at ARI in New Jersey. Surace rose through the 
ranks and was appointed director of the Research and Design Center 
(Responsibile del Centro Studi e Ricerche) in 1966 and head of design 
(Direttore della Progettazione) in 1976. (These are terms from the books, the 
friend who told me about this just referred to him as Director of the Centro 
Tecnico at Arese.) Along with many other things in his research 
responsibilities Surace was actively interested in the refinement and 
commercial feasability of diesel engines for passenger car use. One year 
Surace was to present a paper on the subject at the annual SAE Congress in 
Detroit, and to enliven the proceedings Don Black installed one of Surace's 
extremely efficient VM diesels, fitted with a Brown Boveri "Comprex" 
supercharger, in a GTV which was made available for demonstration runs on the 
roof of Cobo Hall. The car made a very favorable impression, many of the 
drivers not being able to tell it was a diesel.

No word on what happened to the car afterwards- but if you find a dusty GTV 
in a barn somewhere, with a funny engine in it, don't be too quick to write 
it off as some lunkhead amateur's bastardization.

John H.
Raleigh N.C.

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