Car designers raved about it. Car journalists couldn’t thump their new electronic keyboards hard or fast enough to tell the world how fantastic it was to drive. Car fans, on the other hand, looked upon it mostly in bewilderment, unsure if it was a weird new mode of transport from Alfa Romeo or, perhaps, a work of art. In truth it was probably a bit of both.
Yet despite the furore that surrounded it I never quite got the Alfa Sprint Zagato. True, it was intriguing enough to look at, designed by an eclectic mix of creatives at Fiat’s Centro Stile design studio, tasked with the unholy mission of reviving Alfa’s sporting heritage following its sale to Fiat in 1986. (So what’s the Zagato connection? The same smoke and mirrors trick pulled when Pininfarina badges were stuck on the Fiat Coupé. Great carrozzeria they may have been, but on these occasions they were responsible only for building not designing the machines that carried their badges.) And, yes, its chassis was quite a bit tastier than the Alfa 75’s upon whose underpinnings the SZ was almost wholly based.
But improving on the 75’s dynamics was not exactly an achievement worth hollering about: we’re talking about one of the worst handling rear-wheel drive Alfas of all-time here, as far as I’m concerned. And although the SZ was certainly unusual in its design, even the people who created it admitted it was far from beautiful. They nicknamed it ‘Il Mostro’ internally – the monster – and if ever you got to see one in the flesh, close up, it wasn’t difficult to work out why.
