What is an Alfa Romeo SZ

Walter De Silva, ex-Head of Alfa Romeo Centro Stile Alfa Romeo’s in-house design team says he was not responsible for the Alfa SZ. That an Alfa Romeo man should distance himself from an Alfa, any Alfa, is very unusual. But Walter is a hedonist, who surrounds himself with beautiful things; Walter probably never thought that the SZ was a pretty thing. A few people may well agree with him. His team came up with a design for a two-seater coupe, which, according to the briefing, had to look ‘special’; and so did a second team, headed by Mario Maioli, overall in charge of Alfa, Lancia and Fiat. It was 1987. De Silva’s team used pencils, paper and clay; Maioli’s used a new CAD/CAM technology, where the drawings and all the relevant information were fed into a computer connected to a milling machine, which then reproduced the ideas into a three-dimensional job. Maybe that’s why the SZ looks the way it does. Looks, they say are in the eye of the beholder and whatever your views are on the SZ there’s no denying it’s
not a superb driver’s car and a sure-fore modern classic.

History

Italians like to take their time for most things; even their ragú (meat sauce) takes three hours to cook. But the Alfa SZ went from being a blink in the designer’s eye to fullsize model in seven months. After that, Zagato (yes, the famous coachbuilder from Milano) got the order, and the car has been known as a Zagato ever since. It only took nineteen months from conception to birth.

Alfa Romeo wanted specific materials to be used for this car: light, moulded resin glassfibre composite for the main body of the car, carbon-fibre for the spoiler, aluminium for the roof panel. The mechanical parts were to come from the existing Alfa Romeo 75, and much was asked of the racing engineers who had created the 75 Evoluzione, a saloon with chillies in its pants. The choice for the engine was easy: a slightly modified version of the Alfa V6, already performing well in the 164 and 75, longitudinal (obviously) front position, driving the back wheels through a rearmounted five-speed transaxle. So, this car had the legs of a racing Alfa 75, a Zagato steel bodyshell, a champion’s V6 heart, and moulded resin panels. No wonder that the Italian press called it the ‘Mostro’, the ‘Monster’, probably referring to the Frankeinsteinesque philosophy which underpins the SZ’s entire ‘raison d’être’. The result of glueing the composite bodyshell to the steel inner structure, and reinforcing some areas like the load-bearing suspension points is immense stiffness, and a 20 per cent more torsional rigidity than a standard steel monocoque. Love it or hate it, nobody can ever be indifferent to the Alfa SZ.

It was just the same when the car was shown in Geneva for the first time in 1989. Though Alfa Romeo was quick in signing the car off, and presenting the running prototype in record time, it then took forever for the production cars to find their rightful owners. Alfa Romeo declared that the SZ would be made in limited numbers, to preserve its uniqueness, and no right-hand drives were ever made. Only a handful (100) were scheduled to come to this market but some 200 now exist in the UK. A true sports car, and a future classic, but the car was quietly dropped in 1993.

Driving

You always know when you’ve been ‘Zagatoed’. From a distance you wonder what on hearth the SZ is. You get closer, and realise that this beast virtually rests on the ground, to help with aerodynamics (in fact, the SZ has a coefficient of drag of a very respectable 0.3, amazing for a car which looks like a bar of WW2 soap on wheels). It is possible to raise the ride height, of course, but as an Alfa virgin you don’t know that, and just laugh at the idea of your missus taking it to the shopping centre with all those lovely bumps and rough surfaces. Your missus laughs at you for even conceiving the idea of owning such a strange car. She likes the Audi TT…

Anyway, you look around you to make sure that the owner is not around, and tap on the body, here and there. The sound it makes is a bit strange, hollow, and it feels like a toy, light and ‘plasticky’. Don’t be fooled into believing that this is a DIY car. Pirelli didn’t just make sexy calendars and it just so happens that it provided the Alfa SZ with some magical, asymmetrically treaded (now hard and pricey to obtain) P Zero tyres; Pirelli also gave advice about fine-tuning that fantastic chassis too that can pull 1.4g through the bends.

Alfa Racing cooked all the ingredients and delivered two working prototype chassis: the most extreme and uncompromising was chosen. After all, Alfa Romeo’s briefing did talk about a truly special car.

You peer in, and notice that there are only two seats, with a great big space at the back, though only for luggage. The cabin wonderfully is minimalistic, the seats in black leather. You actually wonder what it may be like to drive, and walk round it, to the back, where you find a badge that says only two letters: S.Z. Sport Zagato.By now you have feelings for this car, and you haven’t even tested it.

Fifteen years ago, the Alfa SZ’s rear wheel chassis was a truly spectacular achievement. At launch, some of the UK press felt that the SZ had the best chassis behaviour among the Alfa’s contemporaries, like the BMW 535i SE, Ford Sierra Cosworth S500, Honda NSX and the Lotus Esprit Turbo SE; the Spartan interior added to the feeling of ‘neo-racer’, a term coined by Alfa Romeo itself. Sitting so close to the driving rear wheels adds to the experience of being at one with the machine, and the ride is harsh, with a suspension travel shorter than Richard Hammond. The brakes, ABS-free as yet another sign of a pure racer, lack of feel and are not too impressing and something which could be said of most Alfa Romeos’ brakes, even more modern models. It’s a good thing that the SZ is so great in many departments because the one area where it disappoints, sadly, is outright performance. Sure, the engine sounds as wonderful as any Alfa but in straight 210bhp terms it’s not that quick. That said with 60 coming up in around seven and a bit seconds, it’s hardly a slouch either.

Prices

As there are only some 200 in the UK, prices are hard to pin down. When new the SZ carried a rather lofty £35,000 price tag. None are worth that these days; the best price you will pay is around £23-25,000 for a mint car and perhaps ten grand less for an average example, of which most are. In terms of their future values it’s a car that will surely rise over the next few year.