Alfa's Pre War Racing History
Luigi Fusi may not have been a well known driver in competition events, but to
Alfa Romeo he was an all important part of their pre-war racing history. Fusi joined
Alfa Romeo in 1920, as he put it: "in short pants". His father, who had worked at Alfa Romeo since 1914, had managed to help him obtain a job. He began as an archivist in the technical department, a time when such designs used Indian Ink. At the time he got to work with the two greats of pre-war sports car design - Merosi and Jano. As a test driver he travelled to the great Grands Prix' around the globe, with the great drivers -
Tazio Nuvolari and
Achille Varzi.
In an interview conducted in
1977 he stated" "
Varzi was an artist. But I always preferred
Nuvolari. He drove with his heart." At that time the 8C 2300 Monza was one of Alfa's great racing cars. It swept all before it in the early 1930s. Between 1920 and 1937 - the great years for Alfa, Fusi worked largely in the competitions department, first as a draughtsman, then as a designer. From
1955, until his retirement, he was in charge of the Drawing Checking Department. Then, in retirement, he was kept on by
Alfa as curator at their Hall of Fame museum just outside Milano. There, Fusi was Alfa's link with the past, and for a time he remained a part of Alfa's living history and as important a part of the company's heritage as the cars for which he cared for.
Vittorio Jano
Fusi was on the original design team of the legendary 8C2300 Monza - the little giant which humbled the greats long after, at least in Grand Prix terms. That design team consisted of seven or eight skilled individuals, dedicated workers. Most had been around when Alfa's first designer Giuseppe Merosi was in power. Merosi resigned in 1926 when it seemed that Vittorio Jano, formerly with Fiat and a supercharging specialist who joined Alfa in 1923, was getting more than his fair share of the design task.
Jano had built the 1926 world championship-winning P2 and the consumer sports cars, the 6Cs. Now it was his task to turn out a new car - a basic design which could be used as a tourer, a sports car, a long distance racer and a grand prix car. It was no small order. Jano's answer was the 8C. At first glance the Spider version looked not unlike a stretched 6C. But it had a straight-eight blown engine, cast in two blocks of four with one long alloy
cylinder head stretching over both. It was dry-sumped. A basic 8C produced in excess of 104 kW (140 bhp) at 4900 rpm. It was capable of 184 km/h (115 mph). But few 8Cs were basic. Tweaks could reap 123 kW (165 bhp) without too much effort, or strain on the motor. It was no wonder the
brakes were correspondingly huge - 400 mm (15.75 inch) internal diameter. They completely filled the wire wheels.
Alfa Romeo 8C and Tipo A
In 1931 Jano designed and built both the
8C and the Tipo A grand prix car. The latter was a 12-cylinder monster, the product of two six cylinder engines, mated. Jano expected to wind Grands Prix with it. He didn't. On May 24, Tipo A was entered in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. The Grand Prix was to be held over 10 hours (then the regulations). As a saver Alfa entered also a lightened, gutted and highly-tweaked
8C. At its wheel were two drivers,
Tazio Nuvolari and
Giuseppe Campari. When the A-car failed,
Nuvolari and the
8C went on to win. The "Monza" model had been born.
In 1931, a four seater version driven by
Sir Henry Birkin and Lord Howe won the
Le Mans 24 hour race from the
Mercedes-Benz and
Bentleys. It became "the Le Mans" type. Producing 116 kW (155 bhp), it went on to win for the next three years. In 1932 Barconin Borzacchini drove through the debris of his team-mates' crashes to win the
Mille Miglia, his
8C became the "
Mille Miglia" model. For two years the 8Cs swept all before them. Nuvolari took the Monaco Grand Prix in a Monza model after his unofficial team-mate, the German
Rudolf Caracciola slowed at the finish to let him through.
Scuderia Ferrari
The Bugattis and Maseratis had, to all intents and purposes, been vanquished. In the middle of 1932 Jano debuted his P3, an eight cylinder Grand Prix car developing 160 kW (215 bhp) at 5400 rpm. At its first outing - Monza - the P3 won. The days of the Monza model seemed over. Then, in 1933 Alfa Romeo went into liquidation. With its P3 program brought to a halt, Alfa entrusted its race team to the ostensibly private entrant, Scuderia Ferrari. Works backed,
Enzo Ferrari continued to campaign the Monzas for another year. Called on to perform Herculean tasks they became increasingly unreliable. By mid-1933 Ferrari had bored them to 2.6 litres and had them producing in excess of 130 kW (180 bhp). As they started blowing, Alfa, concerned for its reputation, resurrected the P3. The day of the Monza was over - but in its death it had forced Alfa back into works motor racing. It was the ultimate sacrifice.
In
1955, Fusi was appointed Head of Control Drawings, a position he kept until
1961, and on retirement he remained with
Alfa as a consultant. He was commissioned by Giuseppe Luraghi to set up the Historical Museum, a commitment that he completed after twelve years of research following extensive collaboration with Alfa-Romeo collectors and enthusiasts around the world. During that time he found, purchased and did what he could to recover, restore and rebuild many of the cars and components that would make up the pre-war exhibits that would grace the floor of the Alfa Romeo Museum in Arese.
Re-Building The Monza
In
1972, Alfa-Romeo gave Luigi Fusi the go-ahead to build a Monza. In charge of the company's museum since his retirement in
1967, Fusi had overseen several restoration programs, but never one like this. The lack of a Monza left a large gap in the museum's lineage. With no Monza readily available, Fusi was given virtual carte blanche to solve the problem. He was a man with an incredible range of contacts (it was reported that he had, for example, a file on every Merosi and Jano model in Australia). After instituting a world-wide search he found a basic car in Argentina. It was a wreck. It would need major chassis repairs, springs, a body; the engine was little more than a block.
Nowhere in the archives were there spare parts. But there were drawings. Fusi had seen to that. All the intricate model design plans which Jano and he / he and Jano had devised some forty years earlier were still intact, meticulously set aside. Alfa assigned Luigi Fusi a team of apprentices - part time. For three years they worked, hand-crafting any part which couldn't be resurrected. Fusi had a few ideas of his own (he'd always had them) but he suppressed them. This car had to be perfect. Exact in every detail ... just as Jano and he had designed it. In March
1976 the blood red Monza was rolled onto the museum floor, and took pride and place in the middle of the display area. The instruments were tucked in under the overhanging cowling, so that if you were tall you had to duck your head to read the tacho.
The seating was narrow and high so that the top of your head was always in the open. The scream of the straight-cut gears harmonising with the whine of the supercharger in an unholy symphony. The mechanical
brakes were, for the time, finely balanced. On 20 February
1985, Luigi Fusi celebrated sixty-fifth year at Alfa Romeo, setting a record unlikely to ever be repeated. He was also curator of the Italian Alfa Romeo Register. He wrote many books, the most famous is considered the Bible of the Alfisti: Alfa Romeo, all cars since 1910. Fusi died on December 27th, 1996 - and a living legend passed in the annals of history.
Also see: Honour Roll - Founding Fathers Of The Automotive Industry |
Alfa Romeo Car Tests and Reviews
