The Shame of Portello

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Allow me to share with you some reawakened personal remembrances of the
downtown factory buildings captured in disgraceful and disfigured
abandonment by Roberto Zini.  While my eternal torch for those wonderful
Alfa Romeo vehicles conceived and constructed at Portello by  thousands of
proud Milanese over the past eight decades continue to burn brightly in my
heart, Zini's images brought a renewed sense of utter terror and brutal
violence to me...much like the photographs we've all witnessed of the mass
slaughter of innocents, the killing fields of Southeast Asia or .....of the
beginning of the destruction of the factory grounds that I had witnessed in
the late seventies.  As sacred ground, I am heartbroken to learn that the
last vestige of that chapter of Milanese automotive history is now destroyed
forever and that nobody cared enough to try to save even a small portion of
it for later generations to feel and appreciate.

With that thought in mind, those who share my lament of the passing of these
buildings might be interested to know that a few of us at Alfa Romeo, Inc
working at the headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey in the late
seventies saw what was happening to the original factory entrance and
courtyard at 45 Gattamelata-around the corner from the site of many of those
Zini pictures-and wanted to do something.  No, we were not in the position
to buy the land or lobby the Comune di Milano to restrict development of the
parcel.  We began to conceive of a loosely organized plan to secretly import
actual highly polished reddish porcelain floor tiles from the final assembly
line floor by placing some tiles into the trunks of certain  Alfetta sedans
and Alfetta GTs headed to Port Newark, New Jersey.  We also were looking at
the actual cobblestones from the courtyard where so many hundred of factory
photographs over the past 80 years had depicted shiny new Alfa Romeo
vehicles in the u-shaped center courtyard of 45 Gattamelata.  Not to be the
least bit greedy, we were also gunning for the 18" x 24" shiny brass
engraved plaque on the outer front wall with the familiar Alfa Romeo script
and address and the giant 6' letters above the courtyard fence "ALFA ROMEO".
You've all seen these items in black and white pages of Fusi and other Alfa
Romeo history books.  If you don't recall, go ahead and grab your favorite
historical text and take a quick look. At that time these assets were in a
state of virtual abandonment just waiting for some enterprising subterranean
corporate historian types to capture them much like we all would have done
with the carelessly discarded prototypes and historical artwork depicted in
those sad images of Mr. Zini and described by Leonardo from Hungary in a
later posting. Not even the factory wanted them.  I believe it was the same
management team in place at that time that later wanted to sell off the
entire Museo Storico in the early 1980s to raise money for product
development.  Because our ringleader was afraid of losing his job and taking
several Milanese engineers and factory workers down with him, we were not
able to act on these plans.  Travelling alone to Milan at some later point,
I found some enterprising soul had pried the name plate off the wall, some
other band of privateers helped steal the giant ALFA ROMEO letters and the
construction crews got the original factory floor tiles and dumped all of
them in some anonymous land fill.   Oh, by the way, Alfisti around the world
were to be offered a chance to acquire the tiles from the original floor
mounted on a wooden plaque for roughly the cost of having an outside
contractor fabricate the plaques and mount and mail the assembled product.
The brass plaque would have been presented to the Museo as a gift from the
employee enthusiasts of Alfa Romeo, Inc. The giant letters would prove to be
a question mark.

My point in all of this is that Alfa Romeo S.p.A. could have done a hell of
a lot more to preserve it's proud heritage when the original elemental
pieces were still in place.  I can observe personally, for example that
Director Generale of the Alfa Romeo racing division Ingeniere Carlo Chiti
struck me as being somewhat oblivious and insensitive to the needs of
history except when it came to selling his old cars and parts to a museum
somewhere or to a privateer to generate revenue.  He seemed to have no
interest in yesterdays accomplishments except as it might have related to a
new product idea tomorrow.   I seem to have noticed that people in various
walks of life, especially in the car business seem to be similarly
disinterested in the value of their current endeavors, preferring to leave
preservation to the Jacqueline Kennedys of this world to wake up their
sensitivities before its too late...or after it's too late.  In the world of
trains, enthusiasts are degradingly called "foamers" as in those who form
foam from their lips at the sight of a special engine or unique car.  Maybe
we are just a bunch of foamers to Alfa Romeo.

Yes, we have a wonderfully exceptional Alfa Romeo museum to enjoy ...that
.....curiously... is being moved I understand inside the boundries of Milan
from it's current location in Arese so more people will visit.  Why could it
not have been placed within  the holy ground of Ground Zero at 45
Gattemelata?

I suppose that the rights and requirements of fair goers and condominium
owners were more important.  What's next?

Bob Little

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