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Story and photos by Robert Little

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Constructing the World Famous 33TT12 Chassis and body

“Descendants of the Italian Renaissance”

The very heart of race car fabrication are the artisans who mold and shape raw materials with their bare hands …transforming metal into valuable and highly unique works of art; all in a day’s work for these exceptionally skilled individuals.

This segment of “Inside the Walls” goes to the very core of Autodelta – featuring those men I choose to term “the true Descendants of the Italian Renaissance” – creating some of the most emotionally captivating and fastest moving pieces of art we as mere mortals have ever seen.

The photographs you are about to see are among my most highly treasured, recapturing the hours, days and weeks spent on the shop floor with these men, who were entrusted by Ing. Chiti to execute his aspirations to perfection.

And that they did.

In fact this entire website series “Inside the Walls” has been dedicated to those men and their legacy.

Beginning the process of constructing the T-33 is the physical transfer of the tubular chassis fabricated by next door neighbor Aletti and parting a leather curtain between the wall of the two adjoining firms and carrying the chassis through the wall to the Autodelta carrozzeria area. I had only seen it done once and was not in a position at that moment to get my camera and record the actual birth of the 105.33 chassis…much like, perhaps the fumbling that goes on in advance of the birth of a child.

I simply wasn’t ready. I missed it.

Everything else you will see was captured exactly as it occurred 43 years ago.

By Robert Little
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Settling in at Autodelta

After a short time, I settled into my new duties at Autodelta. I became the resident “Americano” who walked around learning the construction and assembly processes while becoming a friend to the mechanics. I also served as a type of exchange student to some of their families, who would invite me over to their homes for dinner.

That small door on the left side of the image with the circle and cross on it was known to others as the ‘Infirmaria’ but was known to me as my 'bedroom' for a short period of time in 1972. Photo copyright Robert Little

I arrived at a time of intense work and increased growth as well as competition, and Chiti needed to put his best foot forward. I believe Ing. Chiti came to recognize that team managers such as Roger Penske and Luca di Montezemolo of Ferrari were transforming the image of international racing, and raising the bar of meticulous appearance of the cars in much the same way that they had lifted the bar in their approach to the mechanical preparation of their cars.

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By Robert Little

The photographs you are about to see are the only images known to privately or publicly exist of the inside of Autodelta taken since 1967. Not even the factory, nor the Alfa Romeo Museo Storico has any images inside the high walls of the Autodelta factory, nor has any Alfa Romeo S.p.A. employee ever seen these images…until now. All materials are under the copyright protection of the Bern Convention. All Rights Reserved.

Via Enrico Fermi 7, Settimo Milanese

As related in the Introduction, in 1972 I abruptly left Michigan State in my senior year and hopped a Milan-bound British Overseas Airlines flight. After a long and fairly expensive taxi drive, I finally reached the tiny farming hamlet of Settimo Milanese, the rural area chosen by Alfa Romeo S.p.A. for its walled compound, located in what was at the time a rural farming community in a distant suburb of Milano.

Above: The agrarian surroundings of Settimo Milanese as taken from the neighboring village of Baggio; Via Enrico Fermi served as a busy passageway for local farmers tending their flocks while passing the employee parking lot of Autodelta in the 1960s and 1970s. Years of political struggle in Italy between the Communist Party, Socialists, Democratic Libertarians and the strong labor union movement caused labor strife throughout the country, but did not seem to affect the production of Autodelta and it’s relatively highly-paid workers…who would see freshly painted political slogans and ‘manifesti’ on the outer walls.

The Autodelta compound is shown to the right side of the small tubular fabrication shop 'Aletti' visible on the extreme left.