110 Years of Alfa-Romeo – or is it?

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2020 is a bit of a special year for Alfa-Romeo as it is 110 years since the company was founded in Portello, just outside Milan on June 24th, 1910. And to celebrate the anniversary the company organized a grand get-together in and around the works museum. You can watch back a resume of the celebrations here. In real Italian style and trying hard to follow all the health and safety guidelines it seems to have been a lovely chaotic event.

But nitpickers as we are, we can ask ourselves whether the anniversary is correct, though. As a matter of fact, the company had started building cars in a factory founded four years earlier by Alexandre Darracq as an Italian subsidiary to his French motoring business. This was initially named Società Anonima Italiana Darracq (S.A.I.D.) but didn’t do very well in Italy and thus became A.L.F.A. (Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili – or Anonymous Lombard Automobile Factory) on that day in June 1910.

Hang on, we’re not there yet. ALFA ventured at racing and that turned out to become a great undertaking, although there was soon a great war in the way. When Neapolitan entrepreneur Nicola Romeo came at the helm, he converted the old Darracq factory to produce military hardware and later renamed the company Alfa-Romeo when they’d picked up the pieces after the war. And so the first Alfa-Romeo cars were actually completed as late as in 1919 or 1920. The new name was first used in 1920. We have not been able to find an exact date, but are positive this will be possible to find.

So. Happy centenary Alfa-Romeo! That leaves another 20 years before another world war started. These were certainly not the easiest two decades for Alfa-Romeo although they did bring forth some fantastic designs. A four-cylinder engine with double overhead cams, four valves per cylinder and twin ignition before WW1? Check. This was a decade before Vittorio Jano came into the picture. There were sports, racing and rallying cars, but also beauty contestants with bodies by Touring, Zagato and Castagna.

Words by Jeroen Booij. Picture from the archive.

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