This car, Lot 59, sold for $1,012,000, including buyer’s premium, at the Gooding & Company Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance sale on August 16, 2014.
I loved this car. I loved it for several reasons: First, it was born in the same year I was. Second, I was introduced to the intoxicating world of Italian cars by Alfa Romeo, and this car is a product of one of its brightest periods. Third, one of my passions is custom Italian coachwork of the 1950s, and Zagato creations of the period are especially appealing. Fourth, because it so clearly represents nearly the best of what a barn find could and should be — and now allows me yet again to wax eloquent on one of my favorite topics.
If you were present at the Gooding & Company preview, the SCM Insider’s Seminar, the lunch stop of the Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance, or on the lawn at Pebble Beach on Sunday, you would have had a chance to see two examples of the Alfa Romeo 1900 C SS bodied by Zagato. One was a 1954 sister of this 1955 model, and together they serve as poster children for the difference between a preservation car and restoration candidate.
The preserved Pebble Beach car
Italian collezionista straordinario Corrado Lopresto is a Milanese architect who has a passion for rare Italian cars. While many of us do, what sets this modern-day Cosimo de Medici apart is that he has focused on prototypes, one-offs, serial number 001 and preserved original examples.
Lopresto brought his 1954 Alfa 1900 C SS Zagato to Pebble Beach this year, and that car provided a fascinating contrast to our profile subject. Lopresto’s car was sold new in Italy and enjoyed a very brief, very minor competition career but was soon sold to a series of owners in the mid-1950s who used it only as street transport. It was parked in a dry, secure garage in Rome in 1969, and there it remained for more than 44 years until Lopresto rescued the car.
The car was gently re-commissioned mechanically, and the faded — but largely complete — paint was cleaned as were the well-conserved cloth seats of the interior.
All the surfaces as finished at the Zagato Works were virtually intact, with the exception of the thin, blade-type bumpers, which had been replaced in the 1960s with tubular ones.
The car was started, the later bumpers removed and it instantly began its journey to the leading concours of the world to serve as an exemplar of the production techniques and materials of Carrozzeria Zagato and Alfa Romeo at the mid-century mark. First seen in America at the Amelia Island Concours, it was understandably rewarded with a First in Class, Post-War Preservation this past August at the 2014 Pebble Beach Concours.
Our subject 1900 C SS
On the other hand, our subject vehicle was also sold early in its life to owners who would lightly campaign it. During the late 1970s, the car was stripped and largely dismantled for a restoration that never really commenced.
At some point after being taken apart, the seats were retrimmed in an imaginative fashion in very dramatic red and black vinyl. Most of the pieces taken off the car were present, and some very important small trim pieces remained on the body. A brief inspection of the body indicates that the original body panels — brittle and somewhat worn — may serve well as patterns for newly made pieces. The bare metal gives full testimony of how many smaller pieces were welded together to make those sensual curves.
The car came with three engines. All were unfortunately not the correct “Tipo 1308” as it would have had from new, but they are instead “Tipo 1306” versions of the Alfa DOHC inline 4-cylinder. The differences between the two types of engine are many, most mattering only to the most hard core of the Alfisti, as the engines are identical in appearance. Nevertheless, there are important variations, and they had a direct effect on performance in the period. The 1308 engine, in addition to having stronger crank bearings, bigger valves and a higher compression ratio, may also have in some C SS models an alloy sump as well. This engine was made in both 1,884-cc and 1,975-cc versions and fitted to the Super and TI Berlinas (sedans) and Super Sprint (SS) coupes.
Our subject car did come with the very important carburetor intake airbox, a beautifully shaped piece of black-crackle-painted sculpture without which the 1900 C SS engine compartment is woefully incomplete. At least the engines are of the old style, complete with the semi-diabolical button-screw value adjustment and not the later, 1,975-cc unit used in the so called “Cast Iron 2000,” which has a traditional valve adjustment mechanism and lacks the wide “buttons” which are found on the cam covers of the earlier engines.
That one of the engines had been fitted to the car since 1956 is also not a bad thing. It’s not unlikely that the original engine may have suffered a failure, which is what resulted in the car being “returned to Alfa Romeo shortly thereafter” by the original owner. Alfa may well have fitted a lower-performance unit into the coupe before selling it to an unsuspecting U.S. serviceman.
An excellent car for restoration
Chassis 01947 will make an excellent restoration project for the new owner. As my friend and esteemed SCM colleague Miles Collier discussed in his presentation “Preservation vs. Restoration: The Tipping Points” at the SCM Insider’s Seminar in Gooding’s Pebble Beach tent, it’s clear that this car had passed the intersection point between vehicles that can tell a story of how they were made by not being touched and one which can only begin to tell that story by being made into a modern but well-considered simulacrum of what left the Zagato workshop in 1955.
That work will be easier because this car has suffered little at the hands of ill-conceived, badly researched renovation or refurbishment during its life — the strident vinyl interior notwithstanding.
When our subject car’s restoration is done, it could be wonderful example of a very important car, even without a 1308 engine. If I were the new owner, I would make a great effort to find one, as the car deserves it. Even without it, it still serves its history well. Despite the high price — an auction record for the model — another such opportunity seems unrepeatable. Well sold — but also appropriately bought. ♦
(Introductory description courtesy of Gooding & Company.)
