Re: Alfa's side airbag

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

In reply to my statement that "In the seventies Alfa did much work on safety
(including developing and patenting the side-airbag head protection" Luca asks
"are you saying that the side airbag we are getting now on moder cars is an
Alfa Romeo developmente and patent? You also say it's a 70s thing, aren't you?
I am amazed to know this, but I'd like to know your sources please."

My source was Don Black, who had written "This concept, along with several
others had already been patented by Ing Garcea, and later Ing Surace more than
two decades ago!  Specifically the aircurtain (and the "soft sallet") designs
may be seen in U.S. Patent No. 3.953.049 dated Apr 27, 1976 and filed in the
name of Filipo Surace by this writer. A paper covering this work was presented
at one of the early "ESV" conferences."

I don't know how much time passed between the start of the development work
and the final issuance of the patent, but April 1976 was certainly a
conclusion and not a beginning date. The "soft sallet" he mentioned was a term
unfamiliar to me; "sallet" is in the dictionary only as a mediaeval light
helmet with a projection over the neck. When I questioned him Don wrote that
the "soft sallet" was a protective "face curtain" that could drop out of the
headliner, which had been patented by Garcea.

Giampaolo Garcea (who had been Black's mentor at Portello, and remained a
lifelong friend) and Filipo Surace were two of the four or five primary
engineering talents working under Orazio Satta Puliga, who was the brain and
heart behind the 1900 and the 750, 101, 102, 105, 106 and 115 cars which are
all to some degree lineal descendants of the 1900, as distinct from the
Alfasud and the rear transaxle cars which can be credited more to Rodolfo
Hruska, an Austrian with a strong Porsche background who succeeded Satta. It
would be difficult for anyone who was there, let alone who was not there, to
really separate the interwoven threads of the Satta and Hruska eras, or to say
just when particular lines of design research occurred, but however
indefensibly I link Satta, Garcea, Surace and their peers to the Alfa Romeo
which was explicitly a Milanese entity, and Hruska and his staff to an Alfa
Romeo which was much more broadly Italian (Alfasud and Alfanord) rather than
Milanese, and aspiring to be a player in the international commerce, which
perhaps inevitably culminated in Fiatization and GMization. Not necessarily
bad, some will say vastly better, but certainly different. Call it a
narrow-minded prejudice, but I'm stuck with it.

Cheers,

John H.
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