Re: alfa-digest V8 #928

["Frank Livesay" <flivesay@domain.elided>]

Damn!!  I love a good researcher and a detailed historian!!!   John H does
it so well.  Begone Infidels!!!!

fl


Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 13:42:45 -0400
From: "John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>
Subject: Quadrivariables

In 8-926 Clay Leopold, responding to something in 8-923, writes "I believe
Alfa changed over to injection, in the early ;80;s." For the USA cars, Alfa
certainly changed from one form of injection to another in the early
eighties,
but for rest-of-world cars the best information I have is that for the
Spider
injection was first used in 1989 on either the Tipo 115A1 or Tipo 115A1A.
There is some ambiguity here (either a misprint or sloppy scholarship) so if
someone can verify first use of injection and/or last use of carbs on the
non-US Spiders I can correct whatever the error is. The same source says
that
on the 90 injection was available from the 1984 start and the carbed
versions
phased out in 1986, and that on the 75 an injected version was introduced in
March 1987. If it is correct, there was much more variation in the adoption
of
fuel injection elsewhere than there was in the US.

Still in #926 Richard Welty is certainly correct that the serpent badges on
the C-pillar of the 2000 GT Veloce was green and that the all-silver ones
have
simply lost their enamel.

James Tyson is equally correct that the Giulia Sprint GT (tipo 105.02) had
no
badge there and that the Giulia Sprint GT Veloce (tipo 105.36) had the green
quadrifoglio badge there. In addition the 1750 GT Veloce (Tipo 105.44) had a
gold quadrifoglio in place of the green; this change seems possibly related
to
the first uses of "Quadrifoglio" as part of a model name fifteen years later
when "Quadrifoglio Oro" and "Quadrifoglio Verde" models were introduced at
approximately the same time mainly for the larger-engined versions of
several
Alfa lines. The distinction was generally that the "Quadrifoglio Oro" was a
more luxurious version of the top car a particular line, while the
"Quadrifoglio Verde" was a performance-enhanced version of the more
performance-oriented top car of the line. The Alfetta 2000, Alfa Sei, and
Alfa
90 all got "Quadrifoglio Oro" versions; the Alfasud ti (lower case, no
periods, in contrast to the 1900, Giulietta, and Giulia T.I.s) and Alfasud
Sprint got "Quadrifoglio Verde" versions while the non-ti Alfasud Berlinas
got
"Quadrifoglio Oro" versions. The logic was not rigorously applied; in 1986 a
Spider Quadrifoglio Verde, which came to the US as a simple Quadrifoglio,
would have been a Spider Quadrifoglio Oro if the naming precedents had been
followed.

James Bratek gives an extended quote from David Styles' "Alfa Romeo: The
Spirit of Milan" which links the quadrifoglio to its traditional reading as
a
good luck charm (as other different stories also do):

"Piera Romeo (Nicola Romeo's daughter) and Daniella Maestri-Romeo (a
granddaughter of Nicola Romeo) related the story of a garden party where,
after an Alfa Romeo victory, the subject of a good luck charm came under
discussion. Children at the party who were playing on the lawn picked a
four-leafed clover. It was drawn to the attention of the group in
conversation
and there it was -- the Alfa Romeo good luck emblem. Nicola Romeo seized on
it, and thenceforth had it painted (mostly) inside a white triangle on all
his
racing cars. It even survived a couple of years after Scuderia Ferrari took
over the racing activities of Alfa Romeo."

There is a huge hole in the logic of that story; it is that both three-leaf
and four-leaf clovers were used in the early years. There are many photos
which appear to possibly show three-leaf clovers, but which are arguably
indistinct - odd light, bad camera angle, fast moving car, the three-leaf
interpretation is wrong, the viewer's eyes are playing tricks on him. But
there are others which cannot be rebutted; clear, sharp, unambiguous photos
of
stationary cars before or after major events, with three-leaf clovers. Two
such are in David Venables' "First Among Champions"; p.39, Campari in his P2
at Spa in June 1925, with Brilli Perri's car behind, both cars with
three-leaf
clovers; p.41, Campari waiting for the start of the GP d'Italia at Monza in
September 1925, the event in which Alfa took its legendary First World
Championship, with an unmistakable three-leaf clover. And there are others
which look quite convincing to me. To buy any of the stories of the
four-leafed clover emblem's origin as the Alfa Romeo good luck charm one
must
also accept the idea that the team frequently wished something quite
different
for several of its principal drivers and cars.

I also seriously differ with Styles' statement that "It even survived a
couple
of years after Scuderia Ferrari took over the racing activities of Alfa
Romeo." I have never seen a period photo (as distinct from a recent photo of
a
"restored" car) with any hint of a quadrifoglio from any of the years when
the
Scuderia Ferrari had control of the former factory cars. If someone knows
otherwise I will be glad to stand corrected. But I will be firm in not
accepting after-restoration photos as evidence; every post-restoration photo
of the 512 shows the clover, no pre-restoration photo does, and I've spent
enough time around museums, curators, and histories to want more solid
evidence for historic facts. (And the Alfa Museum is as good, and as bad, as
any in this respect.)

Cordially,

John H.
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