Many people familiar with the history of Alfa Romeo like to refer to this well loved car manufacturer as the company that was once saved from extinction by famous Italian dictator Mussolini…
Alfa Romeo History
…however this is unfair because Alfa has a pretty colourful and eventful history that is definitely not limited to this one single event that happened at a crucial time of the Alfa story.
It all started with a man called Ugo Stella. Stella was a Milanese aristocrat who founded the company as Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili which is what led to the acronym ALFA.
But what is even more important was his vision. He wanted his new car company to focus very closely on the cutting edge technology of its’ day and this is what has kept the company going through difficult times and lifted the Alfa Romeo name to an almost cult status with owners clubs in Australia and scattered all over the world.
Starting of as Alfa, Romeo was added to the company name in 1920. It came from a designer hailing from Naples who joined Alfa in 1916. In those early days Alfa produced cars for Italian motor racing. The peak of this era came between the world wars when they boasted the services of stylish racing legend Enzo Ferrari.
Ferrari later left to found his own car racing company. The direction completely changed for Alfa Romeo after the factory was bombed and completely destroyed during the second world war. In rebuilding the company executives were forced to turn to ordinary cars.
This saw the birth of the Giulietta range which was carried by what became the very popular 1.33 Alfa Romeo Twin Cam engine. Amazingly this engine remained in production until 1995 (by this time it was in 2 litre form). Despite the many ups and downs since the 1950s Alfa Romeo has to this day stuck closely to its’ original DNA of producing stylish and sporty cars. This remained true even after Fiat bought out the company in 1986.
High performance innovation is still an accurate way of describing Alfa Romeo cars today. Italians call Alfa Romeo enthusiasts the Alfisti and they regularly still get together all over the world.
