How’s this for forbidden fruit? Hands down, this is the hottest 156 we have ever laid eyes on. The GTA wheels (probably love or hate to most, but definitely love to us), the stance, the color (our favorite at the moment), even the factory option Zender body kit (normally anathema to us)— we love it all.
If there was ever a manufacturer to not make us care about “wrong wheel drive,” it’s Alfa.
“EspenO’s” car on alfa156.net
You don’t need us to tell you that Alfa Romeo is (or at least was) an illustrious brand, with a decorated history (though not uniformly so) dating back to the early 1900s. The 1938 8C 2900B Le Mans was one of the many pearls from very early on in Alfa’s proverbial oyster. Hear it thunder:
Another Zagato that’s always been more curiosity than lust object. But here, we think we’ve discovered what is perhaps the best-looking angle on the Junior Zagato. Has a bit of Saab Sonett to it, but with less front overhang and more greenhouse. It looks absolutely fantastic on arch-filling Panasport mags and low-profile tires. So purposeful.
Maybe that’s all they ever really needed for us to get on board— upgraded stance and rolling gear.
Here’s that 75 – Milano, as it was known in North America – that forms the basis of the SZ. To many it looks weird (all odd lines and angles) but to us it’s just beautiful— our judgment clouded in no small part, we’re sure, by visions of near-perfect weight distribution and handling that’s been touched by King Midas himself. And in a sea of rosso corsa – what you almost always see these in, even on the Internets – this one looks fabulous in black. We’d love a Milano Verde with the 3.0L V6, but wonder if any good examples even exist anymore.
Maybe in California.
This marque has always been littered with models we don’t exactly love; the Sprint Zagato (more prosaically, the ES-30) is one of them. It has always been too weird for us: the fascia elicits an intense reaction (not what you’d call a good one), and why is the beltline so damn high? But there’s something about these stock photos – the first one with the bird’s-eye view, especially – that make the car look very, very sexy, warts and all. And we admit that its story and limited production run make it pretty compelling.
Just don’t look at it from head-on.
The ES-30 was Alfa Romeo’s swan song to rear-wheel drive and independence. It was based on the 75 sedan, the last Alfa conceived before Fiat ownership. As deliciously classic a layout as sports sedans come: Giuseppe Busso’s wonderful 3-liter V6 up front with the transmission in the back in a transaxle layout. Power is sent via a limited-slip differential to rear wheels suspended by a de Dion tube. It was balanced, simple and lithe, with a body mass very much on the near side of 3,000 pounds…
You can never quite shake the feeling that the ES-30 is a kit car. It is too angular, too plastic, too downright quirky to be an official product, yet that’s exactly what it it. Alfa Romeo produced 1036 coupés—called SZ for Sprint Zagato—and 284 Roadster Zagatos. You could have any engine you desired, as long as it was Alfa’s mellifluent screaming and bellowing 3-liter V6, the one with all six intake manifold pipes lined up in a regiment of chrome almost too pretty to look at.
Alfa Romeo never made another car quite like it. After production of the ES-30 wrapped up in 1993, there wasn’t a rear-wheel drive Alfa until the 8C Competizione. And that V6 engine is also gone now, replaced with a GM unit using Alfa cylinder heads (source).
For no other reason than to thin out a backlog of material we have amassed and/or have had on the brain! It’s a good a reason as any, we figure. It won’t be comprehensive, or even pretend to be, but we hope you enjoy the random mishmash of Alfas (mostly street cars) about to come your way.
And now, here’s a sharp-looking 164 with the rather signature two-tone paint and tasty Zender Milanos, which look so right on these cars:
More on the 164 here, plus a very nice Quadrifoglio (like the one seen above) on sale now here.
In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays a contract killer with samurai instincts. A razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture—with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology—maverick director Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterpiece Le Samouraï defines cool (source).
Much as the DS defines innovative French engineering.
Some interesting trivia about the film:
Hong Kong director John Woo’s 1989 film, The Killer, was heavily influenced by Le Samouraï’s plot, the bar’s female pianist being replaced by a singer. Chow Yun-fat’s character Jeffrey Chow (international character name for Ah Jong) was obviously inspired by Alain Delon’s Jef. The inspiration, or homage, is confirmed by the similarity in the character names. Woo acknowledged his influences by writing a short essay on Le Samouraï and Melville’s techniques for the film’s Criterion Collection DVD release.
Walter Hill’s existential thriller The Driver, starring Ryan O’Neal, Bruce Dern, and Isabelle Adjani, is also believed to have been influenced by Le Samouraï.
Jim Jarmusch paid homage to Le Samouraï with the 1999 crime-drama, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, starring Forest Whitaker as a meditative, loner assassin who lives by the bushido code. In the same manner that Jef Costello has a huge ring of keys that enables him to steal any Citroën DS, the hitman Ghost Dog has an electronic “key” to break into luxury cars (source).
A perennial favorite— probably a top ten, and one of the rare times we prefer forced induction to natural aspiration.
We’re split on the black-on-black look. On the one hand, this is not a look that we’ve traditionally loved. On the other hand, it has admittedly grown on us over the years (a sign that we’ve made peace with our inner boy racer?) and has at times been used to spectacular effect.
Here, the 993 Turbo is almost too pretty for black Turbo Twist wheels (this example also ‘needs moar spacer’). But still, it’s pretty damn hard to peel your eyes away.
Images via shinyside.net
Motoring Con Brio 