They haven't made REAL Alfas since - -

[JHertzman@domain.elided]

In AD7-1451 Joe Italiacars writes "Whether it's GM Alfa, FIAT Alfa or before, 
it's is all the same. They haven't made REAL Alfas since WWll."
 
Ah. But when did WWII really begin, and when did it really end?? And are we 
talking beginning or end? After all, 100% of Alfa Romeo road car production 
from 1939 through 1950 was the 6C 2500. Was the critical factor the 2 mm bore 
increase of the 2500 from the 6C 2300 - no "real" Alfa has a bore over 70 mm? 
Or was the critical factor the independant suspension introduced in 1935 with 
the "B" version of the 6C 2300, and used also on that meretricious 8C 2900?  
Or was it the (shudder) introduction of an integral crankcase and cylinder 
block together with (gag) chain-drive for the camshafts which came with the 
original el cheapo 6C 2300 in early 1934?

No. It must have been when that cafone Jano (a Fiat employee! Even BORN in 
Torino!) snuk into the Portello drawing office with the connivance of that 
perfidious Enzo Ferrari, who even then must have been plotting the subversion 
and eventual demise of Giuseppe Merosi's (and Nicola Romeo's) masterworks and 
business.

Nonetheless there will be those who will wonder (if Joe will permit an 
analogy) what is the connection between the current Bugatti and the cars once 
built at Molsheim. Not that the current Bugattis are not excellent cars - not 
that they are not even in almost all ways better than the best of the ones 
built by Bugatti in Molsheim - - but there surely must be bugattistes who 
would admire them, and perhaps even covet them, as much or more if they were 
called by some other name. Just as there were old fud Bentley people who 
preferred the Lagonda to "The Silent Sports Car" from Crewe, which also was, 
in many ways, a very superior machine to W.O.'s crude lories.

What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

Or, as Gertrude Stein said, "a rose is a rose is a rose - - "

John H. 
Raleigh N.C.

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