This past weekend I went to Macchinissima, a new Italian car show that was held in downtown Los Angeles. It was full of all sorts of weird and wonderful cars and bikes, including some seriously rare stuff, but the star of the show was this one-of-one Abarth-Alfa Romeo with unique bodywork by the legendary Luigi Colani.
Over his 60-plus-year-long career, the late Colani created all manner of groundbreaking vehicles, from sports coupes and concept vehicles to semi trucks and motorcycles, in addition to designing furniture, cameras, sunglasses and other items. His focus was on organic forms and rounded shapes, once saying, “Why should I join the straying mass who want to make everything angular? I am going to pursue Galileo Galilei’s philosophy: my world is also round.” Colani was especially interested in aerodynamics, which is reflected by the slippery, low-slung shapes he designed.
But this Abarth-Alfa Romeo 1300 Berlinetta is one of the most special of Colani’s cars. Carlo Abarth had commissioned Colani — who had already worked with Fiat earlier in the decade — to design an experimental sports car using the tube frame chassis of a wrecked 1958 Abarth-Alfa Romeo 1000 GT, of which only three were made to begin with. A larger 1300-cc engine was fitted, in addition to Colani’s new fiberglass bodywork.
With 110 horsepower and a weight of just 1,720 pounds, nearly 200 pounds less than the standard car, the Colani Alfa was able to reach a top speed of 130 mph, a hugely impressive figure for a car of its size and era. It’s also said to be the first road car to lap the Nürburgring in under ten minutes. (It wouldn’t be the last time a Colani car broke a speed record, either.)
At Macchinissima the Colani Alfa was placed in its own little room, making it easy to just stand around and gawp at how wild it looks. The long, pointy nose with its covered headlights look like something out of Speed Racer, and the front fender vents have shades of BMW 507.
It has a slight Zagato-style double-bubble roof, and all of the greenhouse glass is gloriously rounded. The giant rear window wraps around the body and also has a double-bubble design, and that shape is echoed by the scooped-out rear end treatment, which features oval-shaped taillights placed at an angle in the concave surface of the kammback tail.
It’s hard to find much info about the Colani Alfa and how the car spent its life after being created. The car was offered for sale in Goodwood in 2007, after which it resided in Italy for a while. Now, the car is newly restored and in the hands of the L.A.-based Caretakers Collection, who is amassing a fleet of more than a dozen of Colani’s vehicles.
