Page 2.1 - the history of alfa romeo - please scroll down
Documentary narration by Matthew Franklin.
The
Alfa Romeo story really begins in 1906, when the 'Societa Italiana Automobili
Darracq' - a car company founded by
Alexandre Darracq (a Frenchman and
noted pioneer of automobile construction)
decides to build a car factory in southern Italy to produce low cost, affordable
cars. Despite such noble intentions the Darracq company’s fortunes soon
flounder - chiefly as a result of the once buoyant early 20th century
car market slowing down. It doesn’t help matters, that Darracq’s vehicles
are also universally regarded as being much too fragile and underpowered ...and thus never
likely to prove popular with Italian drivers! So in 1910, the Darracq factory,
built in the industrial suburb of Portello near Milan, is sold to a group of
local car enthusiasts and investors who call themselves the 'Anonima Lomarda
Fabbrica Automobili' …or ALFA for short.
The first ALFA automobile proudly leaves the Portello factory in 1910. Like many models that follow it, the '24HP' is designed by the legendary engineer Giuseppe Merosi. Sporting a 4.1 litre engine and a top speed of over 100 km/h, it's considered a sensation back then! From 1911 onwards, ALFA further prove their credibility as an automobile constructor with superb engineering prowess, by achieving great success in motor sport competition. But in spite of the many sporting triumphs they enjoy, and the excellent image the cars from Milan establish, the financial performance of Società Anonima Lombarda Fabricia Automobili proves less impressive - partly as a result of the political and economic upheaval of the day. The company's finances soon collapse, and ALFA is quickly acquired by engineer and industrialist, Nicola Romeo. Thus, through a combination of names and circumstance, Nicola Romeo adds his surname to the company ...and Alfa Romeo is born.
Nicola Romeo, was born near Naples in 1876, graduating in engineering in 1900, before then travelling overseas to gain wider work experience. On his return to Italy in 1911, Romeo starts his own company producing mining machinery and other associated heavy equipment. His purchase of the ailing ALFA concern, is apparently not even motivated, initially at least, by any desire to build cars. Instead, it's generally accepted that he purchases the ALFA company to simply gain control of the Portello factory - using it to manufacture military equipment to support his country's involvement in the First World War. With production successfully underway at the factory, Romeo is soon encouraged to start assembling trucks by the transportation starved Italian government …and so begins Alfa Romeo's vehicle manufacture under Nicola's ownership.
By the time the First World War has ended in 1918, Romeo has further acquired several other manufacturing companies - and in the company's first post war prospectus, published on the 3rd of February 1918, he grandly announces that the purpose of the new company is ..."the construction and management of engineering, steel, agricultural, mining, chemicals and quarrying companies with particular emphasis on military, aviation, marine and agricultural equipment as well as the building of internal combustion engines for all possible applications in airplanes, automobiles, locomotives and other wheeled transport"!
During this early formative period, another key person in the history of Alfa Romeo also joins the company, Ugo Gobbato. General Manager Gobbato will remain with the company, and extol massive influence upon it, until his rather mysterious death at the end of World War Two. But as Nicola Romeo makes clear to him at the launch of the company, he has no intention of limiting his new company to car mere production alone - although it is for this ultimately, that the company becomes world renowned and respected for. As a consequence of his grandiose ambition, Nicola Romeo chooses to surround himself with some of the finest engineers in Italy at the time ...who bring to the company a suitably wide range of skills and disciplines.
Like
many other companies that have spent the war building armaments and heavy equipment
suitable only for warfare, Romeo's new company quickly has to come to terms with
peacetime and the transition to manufacturing an entirely new range of products. With
financial assistance, care of large government subsidies, Romeo solves his
immediate problems by turning away from aeronautical production - concentrating
instead on the manufacture of cars. At this time, the company also begins to compete
successfully in motor sport competition again - with cars now carrying the 'Alfa
Romeo' badge. But despite these successes - both on and off the track - the company still
faces many problems.
In
1927 the company comes very close to liquidation, thanks in part to the collapse
of its majority shareholder, the Banca Italiana di Sconto. Thankfully however,
Alfa Romeo’s reputation is already well established in Europe and America ...and
the company is rescued. But the dictates and changes forced upon the company are too much for
Nicola Romeo, and in 1928 he severs all links with the company that famously bears his
name.
Despite the aforementioned rescue program, the company is still far away from enjoying financial stability, and in 1933 it is absorbed by the Italian state holding company IRI (Instituto di Riconstruzzione Industriale) which immediately sets about restructuring the company for its long-term survival. The company is dramatically reorganized in a manner which would more easily be recognised today, as downsizing! Elements of the company not directly related to car production are sold off, any superfluous workforce made redundant, and key areas of engineering and sales reduced in size. This restructuring program is completed by 1934.
With General Manager Ugo Gobbato's plans implemented, Alfa Romeo returns to strength, and by 1938 not only has the Portello factory grown to employ 6,000 people, but a new factory at Pomigliano d'Arco near Naples is also put under construction. But this growth is not entirely due to car production.
As the storm clouds of war, gather once again over Europe, the Alfa Romeo company is soon 'militarized' by the Italian government. Alfa quickly re-commence production of aero engines, and light military trucks - initially for use in Italy's early war time activities in Ethiopia, and the Spanish Civil War. Before the factory in southern Italy is even fully completed Alfa Romeo is building aero engines for the war effort.
During
the Second World War the Alfa Romeo factories are bombed a total of three times
- 1940, 1943 and 1944. After the 1944 bombing, the factory's design and
engineering facilities are finally relocated to a safer location, and the company once
again, reorganized. To avoid deportation by the occupying Germans - who now
control that part of Italy - the most skilled workers and their equipment,
including some race cars, are moved into caves near Costozza. Gobbato continues
to fight furiously to protect his workers and the company itself from plans
made by the Germans to seize the company and relocate it to the Fatherland.
Despite the war, and the constant threat of bombing, deportation, and forced
labour by the Germans, Alfa Romeo survives ...but only just! The global
conflict ends just in time, thwarting the forced merger of Alfa Romeo with a
German company, by the Nazis.
Tragically soon after the Second World War ends, Ugo Gobbato is killed in circumstances which even today remain shrouded in mystery. He is replaced by a Pasquale Gallo - first as temporary controller and then as company chairman. It is Gallo's task for the second time in the company’s short history, to demilitarize the company, and swiftly manufacture new products and seek new open markets. Gallo goes on record to report in 1946, "that whilst sales of commercial vehicles remain good, production is hard pressed to meet demand, because problems still exist with the supply of raw materials".
So at the end of the Second World War, Alfa Romeo's problems are not simply restricted to building a new product line or establishing greater market share. The Alfa Romeo factories have to be rebuilt, and a solution to the problems associated with the factory in southern Italy - a constant drain on the company's resources - has to be found. With the support of the workforce, who spend as much time rebuilding their factories as they do building cars, the factories are rebuilt and the south Italian factory keeps operational by manufacturing anything from window shutters to kitchen appliances to survive. Ultimately this factory will become part of the Alfasud factory in 1967.
Whilst
under the control of the IRI again, Alfa Romeo faces yet another restructure in
1948. This finally sees the end of the company’s truck and marine-engine
production so as to enable the company’s total focus on car production. Freed
of these and other manufacturing obligations, Alfa Romeo is soon back to
pre-war car production levels - although true recovery does not come until the
1950s, when Giuseppe Luraghi takes over as chairman. Luraghi initiates sign-off
for the full production of a new range of models, recognizing that the Italian
and European marketplaces are now demanding medium sized family cars.
By
1960 the company is doing so well that a new factory is built in Arese, just
outside of Milan. This factory campus now plays host to the Alfa Romeo Museum,
I recently visited, and which is featured here on 'Alfa Legend'. The new Arese
factory opens for business in 1963, as the Portello factory can no longer meet
the huge increases in demand. Production having risen from 6,104 cars in 1955
to more than 57,000 in 1960.
Inspired by this growth in demand for its cars, Alfa Romeo decides to move into the small car market. At the same time, the Italian Government thinks it an opportune moment to use Alfa Romeo’s expansion as a means of social engineering. Thus Alfa Romeo is pressurized into building the factory for its new car at its old southern Italian factory site, so as to encourage and bring new prosperity to southern Italy ...therefore, hopefully reducing the mass migration from the south to the north of the country.
Despite
Alfa Romeo’s new small car (which famously becomes known as the Alfasud)
receiving praise as the best car in its class, the new business is soon once
again embroiled in financial woe. The Alfasud is launched onto the global market just
as the world is plunging into the near decade-long economic downturn of the
1970s. Alfa Romeo's sales predictions for it's new car are hopelessly
optimistic, and the company itself also fails as a social engineering exercise, with
management and key staff, being imported from the north, instead of being
employed from locals hailing from the southern part of Italy. The seeds are now being
firmly sown, for the industrial turmoil that will beset the company, and indeed
Italy, for much of the 1970s.
In 1972 Giuseppe Luraghi leaves Alfa Romeo, and it is six long years before the company's problems are finally taken in hand by the newly appointed Chairman, Ettore Masaccesi. With yet another company-wide restructure, Massaccesi turns Alfa Romeo, from an essentially engineer driven company into one that is market driven. Too little, too late, some would later argue, as despite some success in the early 1980s, it becomes clear that Alfa Romeo is now too large to be truly considered a specialist car maker ...and yet too small, to compete in the mass market. After an ill-fated joint venture (the truly dreadful ARNA model project) fails with Nissan, the company is eventually sold to FIAT in 1986. FIAT then assigns the company to a new group alongside its Lancia brand. This forms the Alfa Lancia Spa company in 1987.
During
this period, and indeed up until the mid 1990s, Alfa Romeo struggles to find a
market position that enables it to capitalize on both the synergy and benefit of
building upon it’s heritage ...and being part of the massive FIAT Group. And yet
in 1996, a car is launched that many consider today the true landmark, in terms
of the company's more recent rebirth. 1996 witnesses the launch of the new Alfa
Romeo GTV, and it's convertible sibling, the Spider. Two models that were then,
and are still regarded today, as being both stylish and engineering led. The two new GTV models establish an intent of purpose that clearly signals a positioning
statement about the company. They are soon followed in 1997 by the launch of
the Alfa Romeo 156, a car which sets new standards in all areas of manufacture
for the company. Indeed, it becomes a model that receives almost universal praise,
so much so, that it captures the European Car of the Year award in 1998.
Today Alfa Romeo is entering into its strongest ever period and is poised for even greater international success - although a move back into the all important North American car market has been pushed back yet again. Nonetheless, despite having financial performance issues of it’s own, FIAT has established a clear and precise market position for the Alfa Romeo brand. Its stylists and engineers are producing cars that are once again congratulated, and seen, as being cutting edge ...and its sales are impressively growing in all markets. Alfa Romeo has clearly developed a relationship with it’s parent company that has enabled it to maximise all production, engineering and shared platform synergies, and its motor sport record of success looks set to continue.
So,
Alfa Romeo enters the early part of this new century with continued confidence.
As part of a financial programme, General Motors and Fiat Auto, Alfa Romeo's
parent company, have swapped share holdings in each other's company. The Alfa
147 has proved to be a great critical success, and has broadened the current
range, whilst selling very successfully. New models such as the GT hold
continued promise
for a rejuvenated manufacturer, who looks set to enjoy and celebrate it’s
centenary in fine shape!
