Alfa Romeo

Alfa Romeo, a manufacturer of luxury performance cars, is one of the oldest automotive brands still in operation. 

Though iconically Italian, the manufacturer’s roots lie in the failed Italian expansion of the French Darracq company, which built a factory in Portello, a suburb of Milan, in 1906. When the Darracqs failed to find favor among well-heeled Italians, the company was wound down. In its factory a new company Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili, or A.L.F.A., was created by some of the Italian Darracq investors in 1910. A.L.F.A. produced its first car, the six-cylinder 24 HP, named for its Italian tax rating, a year later.

A series of cars followed, and A.L.F.A. ventured into Grand Prix racing in 1914, only to have WW1 cut short it automotive endeavors. In 1915 it A.L.F.A. came under the control of engineer turned mining magnate Nicola Romeo. Car production resumed in 1919, and the company became Alfa Romeo in 1921. The first car to wear the new badge was a descendant of the original 24HP.

In 1920, the company tasted racing success for the first time, with Enzo Ferrari himself being one of its drivers, finishing second in that year’s Targa Florio race. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the company built high-end luxury cars and blisteringly fast sports cars, and its racing efforts were run through Scuderia Ferrari from 1929, honing its reputation for endurance and speed. 

The company continued to win races, including in Le Mans, Formula 1, and the Mille Miglia, and build truly exotic cars, but it often had trouble making money. Nicola Romeo left in 1928 and the company was taken over by the Italian state in 1933, who then used it as a PR tool to show off Italy’s industrial and racing achievements before finally converting the factory to make airplane engines during WW2.  

After the war, the company returned to building fancy coachbuilt models like the 6C 2500, a car featured in the Italian scenes of The Godfather, but with most of its prewar staff gone, including Ferrari, and the market for such cars very small, it eventually turned to making more mainstream cars, starting with the 1900 sedan in 1951 and then even smaller cars like the 1954 Giulietta.

In the 1960s, it still built a large car, the 2600, but it produced mostly upper-middle-class designs like the Giulia, a square-rigged machine with sophisticated engines and keen handling. In the USA, it appealed mostly to a small clique of enthusiasts until an Alfa Romeo Duetto Spider, a derivative of the Giulia, appeared in the 1967 film The Graduate. The Spider would continue with changes until 1993 and be Alfa Romeo’s most popular U.S. model ever.

In the 1970s, Alfa Romeo’s European lineup expanded into economy cars with the AlfaSud and a new Giulietta debuted, but only the Spider and Alfetta, a compact sedan and coupe, were sold in the USA. A small dealer network and serious labor relations problems in Italy led to a reputation for questionable quality and unreliability, but Alfas were still fun to drive. Unable to afford to develop entirely new platforms on its own in the 1980s, Alfa partnered with Fiat and Saab to develop the 164 sedan before the Italian state finally sold the company to Fiat in 1986.

Alfa Romeo continued to offer the Spider in the USA until 1993 and made plans for a replacement, but declining sales convinced the Italian management to pull out of the American market instead, and U.S. sales ended in the fall of 1995.

In a sense, Alfa returned in 2007 with the limited-production 8C Competizione supercar, sold in tiny numbers, but it wasn’t until the era of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles that the brand made a proper return. The first new U.S. Alfa was the 4C, a two-seat sports car, followed by a reborn Giulia sedan in 2016 and the Stelvio—the company’s first SUV—in 2017. The Giulia and Stelvio are both built on the same platform, named “Giorgio” in FCA-speak. It also re-joined Formula 1 as a constructor in 2018, but its past success in the sport remained elusive.

When FCA merged with the French Groupe PSA (parent of Peugeot and Citroën) in 2019, Stellantis Group was born. In early 2021, the company said it was working on future electric vehicles and would be transitioning away from the Giorgio platform.