Alfa Romeo

November 9th, 2007 by Shenron

In 1910 a little company was founded with an acronym for a name. It would later become one of the most prominent names in the automotive industry… “Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili” is the acronym used and thus Alfa Romeo was born – but not before having a different name first four years earlier. SAID was the said name (get it? No? Fine) and it was also an acronym (Societá Anonima Italiana Darracq) by an Italian man named Stella – a very wealthy man from Milan in a dual ownership with the French company Alexandre Darracq which itself had basically revolutionized the manufacturing of chassis from steel that was pressed and was first to begin using machines to produce parts – rather than craftsmen. Well, after Alfa Romeo was producing vehicles war broke out in Europe, and for a while they manufactured war goods for the Italian army – until the war finished.

After the war Alfa Romeo cars were, and are, known to be some of the hardest to beat in events with their designs and overall power output through better engines. In the seventies and sixties they were one of the most dominating racecar manufacturers in the world – and in many respects still are. Alfa ran into some economic issues and ended up with Fiat taking control of assets, thus creating Alfa Lancia, which lead to many combinations between the Alfa and Lancia vehicles being combined to be more economically efficient to produce. Most recently just two years ago Maserati was bought back from Ferrari and is now also under the ownership of Fiat. Fiat now has many ideas and plans for what will come out of this with such things as sports and high class divisions being divvied out between Alfa Romeo and Maserati along with engines, platforms, and such to share markets.