Having recently landed from California and been saturated by the enduringly big, brash and bold car culture of the USA, we thought it would be good to share our Friday car crush live and direct from the good earth of Europe. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, so while we were cruising the highways of Los Angles, we began to ache for the understated charm of European auto culture. And no car epitomises this stylish aspect of Euroismius than the Alfa 105 series coupé.

The cars featured here are the ones we photographed a couple of years ago: beautiful recreation of the track sepecced GTA put together by the expert and loving hands of Max and the crew at Alfaholics, in the Bristol area. The GTA was lighter, faster and mean looking than the standard 105 series Coupés - but their Bertone design speaks of a distinctly European, compact idea of speed and agility that is altogether absent from the multi laned highways of America.

It's great to be home!

All factory GTAs were produced in either Red or White. The tricolor of this replica is strikingly unique.

Classic Bertone lines are set off beautifully by the cloverleaf motif

This is Max Banks's own GTA replica.

This was the GTA replica Alfaholics used to launch the programme

The mesh grille was unique to factory GTAs

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Every now and then it's great to have a look at a concept for pure novelty value. This, though, is not the most outrageous concept to come out of Italy in the sixties, but for us it's one of the most interesting.

The Scarabeo Prototipo came as the result of a goodly boomtime for Alfa - the Guilietta had been selling hugely, and the ache of mediocrity that popular success sometimes brings must have become something of an unbearable itch. The idea was to develop a series of racing prototypes to offset the uncomfortably staid image of the Guilietta. Alfa had, after all, officially pulled out of racing as far back as 1953.

In late 1964 Alfa sent three H-shaped racing chassis to OSI of Turin, a styling subsidiary of Ghia, and the stylists there came up with a variety of body treatments. One of the key features of the cars was a driving position way back in the middle of the chassis: which, it was thought, would give the driver maximum control; as well as necessitated that long low, flat nose and the squat, breadvan like rear end.

One of the cool innovations the Scarabeo featured was that fuel tanks were incorporated into the large diameter tube chassis to distribute weight evenly: an idea that survives to this day and features in contemporary superbikes and some racing cars. This sensible idea was carried through to the lovely Tipo 33.

Innovative materials such as magnesium was used in the car's build, too and the clutch and gearbox were integrated into the main body of the engine.

Two of the three chassis survive and are on display in the Alfa Museum - and the silver one apparently lives in a private collection somewhere in the wilds of Canada.

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2 Alfasud Giardinetta

The Sud’ wasn’t the prettiest car in designer Giugiaro’s portfolio but anyone who has driven one will testify that its supreme chuckability more than makes up for its workaday looks. Not far short of a million of these pocket rockets sold during its sixteen year currency. The Giardinetta wagon would be the utility vehicle with supremely leftfield Kudos.

3 105 - Series GTA_M

The lightened, larger-engined M derivative of the Bertone bodied GTA is our favourite for its mystic phatness. Built by Autodelta – Alfa’s motorsport workshop as well as pieced together as an idea in various other private operations, no-one really knows how many true examples there are, which only adds to the appeal. There’s something about that Guilia design that reeks of high-octane Italian testosterone.

4 Canguro

For our money the Canguro concept, built on the platform of the Guilia TZ2 racing car, is one of the most aesthetically appealing machines ever to bear the Alfa badge. At the other end of the ugly scale to the ‘Sud, the Canguro is a mellifluous flow of Giugiario drawn curves and angles blended together with the unity of a true masterpiece. Unique magnesium wheels, check. Starkly cool interior, check. Curved, glazed cabin, yessiree.

5 166

The 166 was a woefully neglected Alfa. The result of the company’s attempt to step up to the challenges of BMW and Audi motorway-eating executive rides, it had in its earliest form that audacious droop-eyed, wedgy stance that put many people off. This was updated with a very successful facelift in 2003 – but we loved the early version too. It drove brilliantly, ate oil by the supertanker (especially the 3Litre V6) and if you didn’t treat it with kid gloves it deteriorated like a fragile starlet with obsessive-compulsive disorder. So much more stylish than and interesting than the ubiquitous A4 - and these days you can pick them up for a song.

6 Disco Volante

The Disco Volante (flying saucer) was based on the very lovely 1900 series of cars, and were racing concepts that, many insist, inspired Malcolm Sayer’s epoch making E-Type Jaguar. If you’d ever wondered where the otherworldly lines and curves of the E-type came from, this is a revelation. Only a fistful were ever produced, one for the great Fangio himself.

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This week we're contemplating sixty odd years of aesthetic and technology

Innovation ebbs and flows. Technical solutions sweep all before them, until they too are made obsolete by the passage of time.

Ferrari's FF, the newly released 12 cylinder, four wheel drive shooting brake, has as much cutting edge technology crammed into its intelligent insides as the average human brain. And the exactitude of its electronic nervous system reaches to the furthest extent of its delightful sinews.

The Alfa C 2500 Competizione from 1948, on the other hand, has none of these things. This beauty was motored by good old valves and carbs and hammered out by Italian craftsmen amid the wreckage of the second world war.

You couldn't ostensibly find two vehicles farther apart in terms of their way of being-in-the-world.

But of course, they are remarkably close in essence. Gentlemanly in their conception and beautiful in their execution, they are separated by half a century of human ingenuity - yet they share the same balance of form and beauty.

We're in love with both of them, but for completely different reasons.

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Alfa's Montreal is one of those cars that seem too rarified, too exotic and graceful to lower itself to the rigours of a track day.

But our squeamishness is blasted out the window by this hand-made onboard of a Montreal-heavy trackday at the Adria Raceway in the Veneto, Northern Italy.

It was, after all, powered by an engine derived from that in the beautiful type 33 Stradale, and built for long distance ragging. You can see the composure these Gandini-penned beauties show on the limit, and what short shrift they give modern GTis and other minnows of the world of automotive style.

Nice sounds and snappy gearbox action, too...

Click here to view the embedded video.

Video via www.automobiliac.com

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It's been a while since we posted pics of an interesting concept from the past. But Alfa's Scighera is a fine example of a piece of imagineering from the 1990a that is up there with some of the most outragous concepts from the mid seventies.

It might be no coincidence that this beauty springs from the mind of Fabrizio Giugiaro (yes, the son of the great Giorgetto himself).

It's difficult to see what this design study from Italdesign was aiming at, but you can see the influence the design has hoovered up. There are elements from Bertone designed classics like the Alfa Carabo, the Lamborghini Miura and even the Stratos zero.

There are pure bred Italdesign flourishes too, though, like the low slung, vented front that recalls early concepts that lead to the BMW M1. And last, and you can't forget of course, Mr G senior's ugly Aztec.

The prototype had a mid-engined, twin-turbo 3 litre V6 which apparently produced 400bhp and its 4WD handling must be a doozy.

Apparently the car can be seen in the permanent collection on display in the Italdesign atelier.

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It's a bit of a cliché to say that cars are often the stars of many a movie.

But sometimes its not the tyre smoking rubber-laying car-chase moments through cinematic streets that are the lasting impressions.
There was, for example , the spooky Lambo is Roger Moore's pre-bond performance in the Man Who Haunted Himself..

And Harvey Keitel's NSX driving trouble shooter was the coolest character in Pulp Fiction.

Dustin Hoffman's classic portrayal or a privileged kid in his Alfa Duetto is a more immediately iconic moment.

In Louis Malle's first film Lift to the Scaffold the cars are only outdone by the cool moodiness of the Miles Davis soundtrack.

The strangely balletic duel however, between the 911 and the Alfa Montreal, is ruined by an awful hurdy gurdy soundtrack .

We think that the car driven by the eponymous antihero of The Day of the Jackal is an Alfa Guilietta Spider, but we can't be sure.

Anyway, it's a killer car and a killer thriller.

Sometimes its the more fleeting, less in-your-face car characterisations that burn into the brain.

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Not sure how we missed it at the time, but back in April at the exceedingly posh Villa D'Este car show, an incredible one-off special was announced that celebrated Alfa's 100th year.

Just as well we didn't spot it at the time, because we would have spend a whole summer lusting hopelessly after this beauty, mind-driving it through the workaday motoring moments of the week. The collaboration between Alfa and Zagato has always for us been a lovely bit of car-type cooperation, both the original TZ and the TZ2 being gorgeous pieces of breadvan-like sleekitude - crossed of course with the angular quirk of the Zagato pen.

The TZ3 Corsa is a one off built by Zagato for jammy git car collector Martin Kapp, and no, you will never own one. It is, however, based on the already otherworldly 8C Compezione, but has a super light weight carbon frame and that hand-wrought steel panel loveliness that the Z-cars are known for.

Fast, light and incredible to behold. It's tuesday, I'm in Love.

The post Car Crush No. 7: Alfa TZ3 Corsa appeared first on Influx Magazine.

With the Paris car show looming in the headlights, we thought it timely to devote a daily post to our occasional study of automotive marketing.

One the the great and enduring perennials of any car industry event is, of course, the Promotional Girl.

And despite the fact that Beauty Contest -baiting political correctness is a little long-in-the-tooth and that even liberated laddettism seems quaint and sort of nineties-ish these days, there seems to be no sign of car companies slowing down there search for the perfect female figure to sell their product.

Fashions change of course, and the looks sported by promo people ebbs and flows with the cultural currents - but our favourite era remains the late sixties and early seventies, a time when a naive sort of psychedelia seemed to infuse everything and knee-high boots were par for the course.

The concept cars from that era – all wedgy and space-aged - were fairly out there, and the look of the girls were pretty alien too. Here is a little selection of our faves.

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