Alfa Romeo is one of the most loved brands in the automotive industry. The fans – known as alfistas – defend them staunchly to the point of settling any argument about mechanics or reliability with the lapidary phrase “an Alfa is an Alfa.”
It is true that it is a brand forever linked in the collective imagination to elements of Italian passion: the sensuality of the curves of its red bodywork, the search for high performance in competition. Machines that always provoke an emotional response in their drivers.
Simply seeing a classic Spider immediately conjures up mental images of driving in summer along the Amalfi coast, smelling salt at sunset, on the way to a spritz and a plate of spaghetti vongole…
The origin of the brand dates back to 1906, when Alexandre Darracq, a French businessman, seeing the opportunity in the Italian market due to very high tariffs on machinery, decided to create the Darracq Italian Joint Stock Company (SAID) in Naples.
A year later, he moved the factory to Milan, a decision that would mark its history forever. Darracq did not have much success in the Italian market and ended up selling his company in 1910 to several local businessmen, mentored by Ugo Stella, who had directed SAID. The new group constitutes Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili or, for short, Alfa.
With the outbreak of the First World War, Alfa could not cope with its results and had to close, at which point the Milanese industrialist Nicola Romeo took control and began supplying the Government with war material: aviation engines, ammunition and compressors.
After the war, they settled permanently as Alfa Romeo and began using the six-cylinder engines they developed to begin to dominate racing in the 1920s. That his test driver was in such an Enzo Ferrari could only have helped.
Now that we know the origin of the name, we have to investigate the logo. The Alfa Romeo emblem is made up of two parts in a circle: on the left side, there is the cross of Saint George, red on a white background, which is the symbol of the city of Milan. On the right side there is a snake – 'biscione' in Italian – devouring a man.
The origin of this symbol is more cryptic. For more than a thousand years, it has belonged to one of the most emblematic lineages of the Italian city, the Visconti family. There is a legend from the 5th century, which refers to a terrifying creature, a huge snake that devoured the citizens of Milan until Archbishop Ottone Visconti confronted the beast and killed it.
Another is that a descendant of that Visconti found the design on the shield of a Saracen soldier defeated in the crusades, which the Italian nobleman brought back to his home and incorporated into his heraldry. This symbol appears on the most noble Milanese shields such as the Duchy of Milan or the Scorza family.
Today, Alfa Romeo belongs to the French-Italian-American conglomerate Stellantis, which claims that the man being devoured by the snake is actually being returned to the world, as a reborn person.
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