The Alfatross has a split personality. On the outside, the side that everyone can see, it's a Zagato. But on the inside it's all Alfa Romeo. You have to look closely to see either branding. Two tiny Zs, one on either side of the body just above the break line and just in front of the doors, are all that identifies The Alfatross as a Zagato. The Alfa Romeo name is also seen in two places: the 55 mm diameter circular cloisonne badge at the top of the central grille, and on the license plate light housing mounted on the trunk lid.
With several rubber seals, a clear Plexiglas window, two light bulbs, brass connectors for the bulbs, another clear Plexiglas "lens" bearing in negative relief the Alfa Romeo name in script, electrical connections, and a lot of fasteners to hold it all together, the trunk lid housing was a surprisingly time-consuming restoration. Like a lot of other sub-assemblies, I took it all apart years ago, cleaned all the parts and bagged them up according to their function.
By the time I got around to putting it back together the rubber seal had gone as hard and withered as a shrunken head and the plastic lens covering the lights was cracked and cloudy. The lens was relatively easy to reproduce from Plexiglas but the rubber seal was tricky with its curved shape, three holes and two windows.
Luckily, the original clear plastic placard with the Alfa Romeo name debossed in reverse on the back side was in excellent condition, but the gold paint used to highlight the Alfa Romeo name had tarnished. It was easy to remove the red paint off the back and gold paint out of the debossed letters with a mild paint solvent, but cleaning the placard, polishing out all the fine scratches, refilling the letters with the right shade of gold and repainting the back side red took longer than all the preceding work combined.
You could say The Alfatross' split personality is represented in miniature by the branding icons used by Zagato and Alfa Romeo. The simple, unified, elegant Zagato "Z" perfectly symbolizes the car's design objective while the mechanically complex, multi-purpose, outwardly simple-looking rear license plate housing with its multiplicity of hidden parts inside represents in miniature all that lies beneath the skin.
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| The Alfa Romeo badge, 55 mm in diameter, sits atop the distinctive tall, vertical grille. |
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| The Alfatross' Zagato emblem, a little over 50 x 50 mm: very under-stated. |
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| The place where you see the Alfa Romeo name displayed most prominently on the Alfatross' exterior. |
With several rubber seals, a clear Plexiglas window, two light bulbs, brass connectors for the bulbs, another clear Plexiglas "lens" bearing in negative relief the Alfa Romeo name in script, electrical connections, and a lot of fasteners to hold it all together, the trunk lid housing was a surprisingly time-consuming restoration. Like a lot of other sub-assemblies, I took it all apart years ago, cleaned all the parts and bagged them up according to their function.
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| The housing has 35 parts, more or less (actually, I stopped counting). |
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| I reproduced the rubber seal for the Plexiglas window by first making a rubbing of the recess it covers on tracing paper, transferring that to stiff cardboard, pinning that to a sheet of rubber, spraying over it with yellow paint, and carefully cutting out the shape shielded by the pattern: perfect fit! |
By the time I got around to putting it back together the rubber seal had gone as hard and withered as a shrunken head and the plastic lens covering the lights was cracked and cloudy. The lens was relatively easy to reproduce from Plexiglas but the rubber seal was tricky with its curved shape, three holes and two windows.
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| The debossed letters had to be filled with gold paint applied with a small syringe. Then I painted the entire back side of the placard red. This must have been done all by hand at the factory. |
Luckily, the original clear plastic placard with the Alfa Romeo name debossed in reverse on the back side was in excellent condition, but the gold paint used to highlight the Alfa Romeo name had tarnished. It was easy to remove the red paint off the back and gold paint out of the debossed letters with a mild paint solvent, but cleaning the placard, polishing out all the fine scratches, refilling the letters with the right shade of gold and repainting the back side red took longer than all the preceding work combined.
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| The final product turned out well. The registration plate was assigned to the car when it was acquired by its second owner in 1957. |
You could say The Alfatross' split personality is represented in miniature by the branding icons used by Zagato and Alfa Romeo. The simple, unified, elegant Zagato "Z" perfectly symbolizes the car's design objective while the mechanically complex, multi-purpose, outwardly simple-looking rear license plate housing with its multiplicity of hidden parts inside represents in miniature all that lies beneath the skin.
