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Automotive Lifestyle
VINTAGE: Alfa Cabriolet Reflects Glorious Decade
Italian marque's success in racing spawned remarkable road cars during the 1930s.
Wouter Melissen  | http://www.ultimatecarpage.com  |  Posted January 29, 2010   Pebble Beach, CA
The Alfa Romeo Castagna Cabriolet on the road during the Pebble Beach Tour d'Elegance. (Photo: Wouter Melissen)
During the 2009 Gooding & Company auction in Pebble Beach, a magnificent 1933 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 equipped with a beautifully understated Castagna cabriolet body sold for a staggering $4.18 million, including buyer's premium.

The remarkable sale marked another high-water mark for Alfa Romeo’s golden decade of the 1930s, when the Italian cars’ beauty, grace and competitive performance were at their peak.

The story of Alfa’s success began with the hiring of engineer Vittorio Jano, originally brought on board in 1923 to design a race-winning machine for Alfa Romeo. Jano was reassigned to road-car development after the company retired from racing at the end of two very successful seasons.

The first road car he produced was the 6C 1500 launched early in 1927. While the six-cylinder Alfa was designed specifically for road use, the higher-performance versions proved to be very competitive on the track. In fact, the 6C won the Mille Miglia for three years running.

The aluminum 2.3-liter straight-eight engine was built from two inline-fours. (Photo: Wouter Melissen)
Encouraged by the success of the 6C, Alfa Romeo brought out Jano's old P2 Grand Prix car for 1930 and commissioned him to design a brand new sports racer and GP car for 1931. The new GP car was a hugely complex twin-engine machine that was hardly competitive, but the new 8C 2300 sports racer has gone into history as one of the finest and most successful racing cars ever constructed.

Jano's biggest priority was designing a new and, most importantly, larger engine to take on the ever-growing competition. As with the P2 of 1924, he opted for a straight-eight configuration, but he started with a clean sheet.

The engine was built up from two blocks of four cylinders with the gear drive to the overhead camshafts sandwiched in between. This effectively cut in half the length of the camshafts, which were prone to flexing in such long engines. The two blocks were initially cast in steel, which was soon replaced by a lighter aluminum alloy. A Roots-type supercharger was driven from the center of the engine.

The displacement was set at just over 2.3 liters by virtue of an exceptionally long stroke of 88 mm compared with a bore of 65 mm. In standard trim, the engine produced between 155 and 165 horsepower. The competition engines were good for around 180 horsepower. Towards the end of the 8C 2300’s life, many engines were bored out to keep the cars competitive.

One of the reasons the 6C was so successful was its nimble and lightweight chassis. Its sheet-steel ladder frame was carried over virtually unaltered and offered in short- (2,750 mm) and long-wheelbase (3,100 mm) versions.

Suspension was also very conventional, with live axles, semi-elliptic leaf springs and friction dampers all-round. Stopping power was provided by cable-operated drums. Bolted to a four-speed gearbox, the straight-eight engine was installed behind the front axle. A short-wheelbase rolling chassis weighed at 2,200 pounds.

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Wouter Melissen

UltimateCarPage.com

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