The drive – Page 3

The absolute satisfaction of a sporty drive

To see it is to love it: wide tyres, low-slung ride and styling of poised aggression. To die for, in fact. Hear the engine and weep: a full, convincing throaty roar. Now all that remains is to sit behind the wheel, engage first gear and you are off to try out your Alfa 8C Competizione.

You are left with one doubt: how will you drive a sports model whose bonnet conceals a 4700 cc eight cylinder engine hat unleashes 450 bhp of power and 470 Nm of torque when you touch the accelerator.

The unexpected answer is: with great ease - even more easily, simply and instinctively than your normal car in fact. Provided you allow yourself the time and satisfaction (because this is about pleasure, after all) of getting used to the more direct controls and prompter responses: the sort you could only expect from a true sports car on mixed routes or – even more so – on the track where speed and transverse acceleration are much more controllable.

The new Alfa 8C Competizione is self-avowedly an Alfa in its uncompromising sense of control and driving satisfaction. Driving comfort and dynamic behaviour have always been specific features of Alfa Romeo cars: on this car, they amount to a real strength.

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Alfa 8C Competizione

A legendary name for a unique car

Since the very beginning, the Alfa Romeo spirit has been driven by a constant quest for technical perfection, achieving performances that are better and better. This is all about the engine: the beating heart of every Alfa Romeo car. Racetracks throughout the world have provided the perfect backdrops for truly unique technical and technological progress, with Alfa Romeo always occupying the highest position on the winners’ podium.

The key to Alfa Romeo’s engineering prominence was the 8 cylinder engine developed during the first half of the Twenties by a young engineer named Vittorio Jano. His original brief was to revise the 6 cylinder engine to meet the needs of standard production model buyers and also to stand up to the competition offered by rival manufacturers in races.

The first 8C was tested in 1923, with the P1, already fitted with a compressor and twin spark ignition, and then the P2. Its debut could not have gone better: in 1925 the Alfa Romeo P2 won first place in the first World Championship. The positive effects of these innovations were not restricted to the engines of production cars but the glory of this result was included in the ‘Alfa Romeo – Milan’ badge in the form of the laurel crown that was to adorn all Alfa Romeo cars from that day on.

At the beginning of the Thirties, the powerfully reliable 8 cylinder engines – now in light alloy – purred like cats under the bonnets of stylish cabriolets and coupes (whose bodies were built by the Milanese Zagato and Castagna) and roared like lions in the dust of races such as the Mille Miglia and Targa Florio, that added to the impressive list of victories. The thrilling wins achieved by the Alfa Romeo 8C in 1931, 1932, 1933 and 1934 at Le Mans deserve special attention (the car was later called the ‘Le Mans’ in the wake of these great successes).

The 8 cylinder engine achieved its technical peak in the Alfa Romeo Tipo B engine, known as the ‘P3’ to highlight its technological relationship with the P2. Campari, Nuvolari, Caracciola, Borzacchini, Marinoni, Guidotti and Fagioli were just some of the champions who owed their successes to the 1932 and 1934 versions of the 8C engine in the face of the challenges posed by the most prestigious circuits in the world.

The continual progress and consistent technical research culminated in the 8C 2900, the unbeaten star of racing from the Mille Miglia to the Le Mans 24 hour. The car, an extremely stylish 8C with its body built by Touring especially for Le Mans, was driven peerlessly by its driver Biondetti. This engine was exceptionally long-lived: an 8C 2900 B driven by Biondetti and Romano won the Mille Miglia again in 1947, proving yet again and over an exceptionally arduous route, that Alfa Romeo engines were possessed of truly extraordinary power and reliability.

World War II only halted the victorious progress of the 158 for a short period. The legendary ‘Alfetta’, a distillate of superlative automotive engineering qualities, first saw the light in 1946. In the words of Juan Manuel Fangio, driving this 8 cylinder car was like ‘holding the bow of a Stradivarius in your hands’. First the 158 and later the 159 brought Alfa Romeo laurels in the first two modern Formula 1 world championships, with Nino Farina in 1950 and with Fangio in 1951.

After the Formula 1 victories, Alfa Romeo decided to withdraw from racing to devote itself to the demands put on it by its latest arrival, the 1900 and later the Giulietta range. 1967 saw the return of the powerful 8 cylinder engine fitted to racing 33 models and responsible for the attractive, resolute shape of the road version of the 33. This car also enjoyed a very encouraging racing debut, with Teodoro Zeccoli taking top position on the winners’ podium after the uphill race in Fleron, Belgium, in a 33/2 Sport Prototype.

Other 33 cars met with considerable success on tracks and circuits throughout the world during the Seventies. This technical perfection was transferred to standard production cars such as the Montreal, a car of great prestige and performance, whose 8 Cylinder engine was derived from the unit fitted to the 33 models used for racing. In 1977, the 8 cylinder engine was fitted to a limited series of the Alfetta GTV, produced by Autodelta which thus continued the sporting tradition applied to engine production.

Now the legendary heart of that engine comes back to beat under the bonnet of the new Alfa 8C Competizione.

Prices and availability for the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione will be announced at the Paris Motor Show on 28 September 2006

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