In the oft-worshipped halls of exotic Italian sportscars of yore, the Alfa-Romeo Tipo 33 ‘Stradale’ is the stuff of dreams for petrolheads the world over. Yet, it didn’t exactly start out that way when it was first introduced at the Sport Car Show at Monza, Italy in September of 1967…
Essentially a road-legal version of Alfa’s Tipo 33 mid-engined racecar, the limited-run Stradale cost the equivalent of $17,000 when it was summoned upon the gazing eyes of the motoring world in ’67. That was astronomical money back then and as a result, Alfa struggled to find buyers for their luxuriously appointed, mid-engined Supercar that was carefully built by hand alongside their racing cars.
Churning out high-volume numbers of the Stradale was never going to be an issue so each Stradale was built-up over relaxed periods of time and therefore received evolutionary modifications and upgrades with each one produced. Subsequently, no two Stradales are alike, with earlier examples exhibiting twin-headlamps and later Stradales featuring vents behind the front and rear wheels to enable increased cooling capablities of the brakes.
Power for the Stradale came from Alfa’s first-ever V8 – A mildly-detuned version of their racecar’s 2-litre, all-aluminium, naturally-aspirated, dry-sumped, twin overhead camshaft engine that produced 230 bhp (it was capable of 270 bhp but ‘safely’ reigned-in for road-going purposes) and enabled the sprint to 60 in just 5.5 seconds and a top-speed of over 260 km/h. Rifling through the gears was a 6-speed Colotti gearbox and handling was aided by double wishbones all around. Stopping power was handled by Girling disc brakes on all four corners and helped along by the scant 700 kg curb weight of the entire rolling chassis. Accelerative prowess was a definite given with those numbers…
Franco Scaglione was a former employee at Bertone by the time he designed this evocative aluminium body for the Stradale – surely one of the most beautifully exotic, elegant, balanced and sexy designs to ever clothe a car. The signature (and rather clever) door-design being just one feature of the Stradale alongside many other design cues that permeate Italian flair and beauty like only the best of the best from the era.
With the Stradale struggling to find owners of the mere 18 examples created between late ’67 and March of 1969, five of them were eventually given to coach-builders Giugiaro/Italdesign, Pininfarina and Bertone to use as Stradale-based showcar concepts – the first one emerging from Bertone with their highly-influential, wedge-shaped ‘Carabo’ concept of ’68 (and the later Stradale-based ‘Navajo’ concept shown in ’76) followed by the ‘Iguana’ concept of ’69 from Giugiaro/Italdesign and two later Pininfarina-designed offerings. All five of those concepts survive to this day in the respective museums of their creators along with only 3 known road-going versions left in the wild- rare indeed.
What was considered a complete sales-failure at the time, it is now viewed as one of the most-cherished and adored pieces of Italian automotive creations. Its stunning lines and ferociously-lunged engine providing worldwide fanfare and adoration for this exquisitely created and rarest of Supercars from the 1960s.
-Blake J.
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