The maintenance and restoration work on our Alfa Romeo continues, thanks to the work of "Super Mario", the museum's secret mechanic.

The morning air was warm and humid and the smell of oil and engines saturated the first breaths. Mario began his rite of entry slowly, turning on the switches, checking the counter and reading the work order of the day several times. The air conditioning gradually made the climate more acceptable and the work began to pick up pace. "Today it's time to check the handles and locks, there's an important order to go and there's no time to lose," he said to himself. It's not easy to find spare parts, but Mario found a good opportunity. The Alfa Spider, known as "The Cuttlefish Bone", is the cause of some concern, it needs an open door operation, better get to work because at the end of the day everything will have to return to its former glory. And while the screwdrivers operate between screws and bolts, here comes, inevitable, that "ti ti ti ti ti ti tiiiiii..." hummed as the mind flies to California, with the wind in the hair, Dustin Hoffman driving a fantastic red Alfa Spider and Simon & Garfunkel as the soundtrack. 

#SaveTheBeauty is the column with which we tell the restoration work that our secret mechanic, whom we will call Mario, is doing on the cars in the collection. This important intervention is made possible thanks to all the companies and people who have chosen the Fratelli Cozzi Museum as the location for their events and thanks to Fideuram, Smeg and the architects Buratti who have decided to adopt some of the museum's cars.

The Alfa Spider is still waiting to be adopted, do you want to add it to your family album? Write to elisabetta@museofratellicozzi.com

 

SOME CURIOSITIES: As a prelude to the presentation in the USA, an Atlantic crossing cruise was organised from Genoa to New York, stopping in Cannes for the film festival of the same name. On board the turbonave Raffaello, with 1,300 guests from the worlds of fashion, show business, music and sport - including Vittorio Gassman, Rossella Falk, Anna Moffo and Marie Laforêt - three examples of the "Duetto", one green, one white and one red, were taken on board to represent the Italian flag. During the cruise, there was a lottery to be held among the participants, with the prize being a "Duetto". The winner was the model Heidi Gover, at that time Oleg Cassini's top model (photo archives Fratelli Cozzi Museum).

AN ICON: Great international popularity came in 1967, when the "Duetto" became something of a movie star with the film The Graduate, starring Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman. Since that first appearance, the 'Duetto' has been used as a stage car in some 300 film and television productions.

DON'T CALL IT A DUET From June 1966, the name was officially attached to the 1st series of the '1600 Spider', but could only be used for the first 190 examples, due to homonymy with a chocolate snack of the time, for which Pavesi claimed the right to use the name 'Duetto' commercially, obtaining exclusive use from the Court of Milan. The name "Duetto" was therefore dropped, but it remained so ingrained in common language that all subsequent evolutions of the Alfa Romeo spider, descending from that first model, are normally (albeit improperly) identified as "Duetto". (source Wikipedia)