HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALPHA... SOUTH!

The month of June is very important to us for two reasons:

• Alfa Romeo's birthday on 24 June
• This year in particular is also the 50th anniversary of Alfasud, an occasion we wanted to celebrate with a shot of our white 1974 TI (more on that later).

We blow out the candles starting with the biggest cake: the cake for 111 years of the Alfa Romeo legend!

111 YEARS OF ALFA ROMEO

It was called A.L.F.A. (Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili) the company founded in Milan on 24 June 1910 that would become the Alfa Romeo we all know 8 years later, after the company was acquired by engineer Nicola Romeo.

The brand was born on the foundations of a former car manufacturing company based in Portello. We told you that Portello is an important reference point for Alfisti all over the world!

What not everyone knows, and which allows us to link up with Alfasud's anniversary, is that the Milanese and Lombard car factory par excellence has fragments of a Neapolitan heart in its DNA. Not only was Romeo an engineer originally from Sant'Antimo, a town in the province of Naples, but the Portello plant was previously occupied by the Neapolitan Società Italiana Automobili Darracq, which had been put into liquidation and relaunched under the name A.L.F.A.

The rest, well, is history!

50 YEARS OF ALFASUD

The Alfasud is one of those Alfa Romeo models that have entered the collective imagination in a daring way.

Initially, in fact, the Alfasud was not received with great enthusiasm by Alfa enthusiasts: the North-South stereotypes contributed to its lack of appreciation and its being sidelined compared to other Alfa Romeo productions that were immediately considered iconic for their performance and design.

Fifty years after its birth, however, Alfasud has finally taken its revenge and people are beginning to recognise that the Pomigliano D'Arco project had an experimental and innovative soul that was unique for those years!

Alfasud, in fact, was the first model to be produced at the plant near Naples and went down in cinema history as it also appeared in the 1981film 'Bianco, Rosso e Verdone'.

How can we forget Carlo Verdone who, in the role of the emigrant Pasquale Amitrano, returns from Germany to Basilicata to vote in the elections aboard an Alfasud which, like him, will go through all sorts of things?

Our director Elisabetta Cozzi wanted to pay a special tribute to Alfasud and Amitrano with a unique and self-ironic shot. The result? You judge!

Alfa Romeo has been part of our country's imagination, everyday life and dreams for 111 years: let's blow out the candles together because this milestone belongs to 60 million Italians!

Our director Elisabetta Cozzi imitates the legendary Pasquale Amitrano, aka Carlo Verdone, posing in front of the Alfasud on display at the Museum