Alfa Romeo manufacturing

A decade ago we published a few images from this 1961 Alfa advertising supplement, probably from an insert in Quattroruote.

This time, with improved scanning techniques, we present the entire 25 pages, consisting of 78 photographs which illustrate the complete assembly of an Alfa Romeo from raw materials to a ready for the road product. Actually, there are 79, but we do not have the very first page, which had photo number one. We don’t know what that photo was.

I can’t recall or confirm where I came upon this fascinating look at the Portello works and we apologize if we can’t give credit to the photographer, or even the source of these photos. No doubt the rights lie with Alfa Romeo, though, and if so, thank you Alfa Romeo.

But not only have we scanned each page for you, but when clicked each page will expand to 1200 pixels in hi res. That’s a pretty large file so have patience, and we have split the supplement up into two parts, pages 2-14 and 15-26 for easier downloading.

The following is the process from casting to the completion of those fantastic finned brake drums.

Bearing in mind that this was a photo-op and the workers and foreman knew to clean up their act beforehand, nevertheless one must be impressed by the overall cleanliness, and the pleasant appearance of the assembly line workers. And there were many workers, as in the days before robotics, almost everything needed to be hand assembled, welded, cast, adjusted and tested. The employees seem to be carrying out a useful and somewhat technical task, and knew that they were putting together a car which was respected around the world.

Read Part 2

[Read more…] about Birth of a Giulietta Part 1

Part 2 of the Birth of a Giulietta takes the manufacturing process of the 1961 Alfa Romeos from to loading the cars onto the truck for shipment to distributors. We have labeled these as pages 15 through 26; note the actual pages are numbered differently as they were apparently part of a longer magazine.

Bear in mind that the Sprint coupes were made in the Bertone factory and the completed bodies then shipped to Alfa for the engine and drivetrain installation; the same applied to the Pininfarina Spider. The Berlina was the only Alfa completely constructed at Portello.

Today, most cars are assembled from rather than produced. Not so at the old Alfa works, where virtually everything was produced in-house (a Ford idea). The carbs, electrics, gauges, lights, and some interior items were made by outside suppliers such as Bosch, Marelli, Weber, but at least on the Berlinas, virtually all mechanical items and body panels were produced in the same factory.

Read Part 1

[Read more…] about Birth of a Giulietta Part 2