TOURING-BODIED ALFA ROMEO
8C 2900B LE MANS SPECIAL
There is an evocative 1930s picture of two girls at the Touring coachworks factory in Milan effortlessly holding the complete inner-body framework for a Lancia Aprilia. This is Touring’s famous Superleggera (‘superlight’) construction system, in which a complete inner basketwork of tubes defines and supports an outer skin in sheet aluminium alloy.
Carrozzeria Touring was one of the glories of the great age of the automobile in Italy and formed a wonderful symbiosis with Alfa Romeo, also in Milan. Felice Bianchi Anderloni (1883–1948), the man who steered it, was a deep thinker, interested in both aerodynamics and structural engineering, but also chic, immaculately turned out and gifted with unerring good taste. During his early career he worked at Isotta Fraschini, rubbing shoulders with car stars such as the Maserati brothers.
The body conceived for the Alfa Romeo’s 1939 Le Mans race entry represents the ultimate evolution of Touring’s aerodynamic and aesthetic thinking before World War II called a halt to development. It preserves, in an extraordinary way, the ghostly outlines of the ‘classical’ vintage car, which seem to be morphing before our eyes into a true wind-sculpted, modern shape. After 1945, this was to be the point of departure for the Cisitalia and the postwar ‘Italian line’.
During the 1950s Touring remained influential and formed strong associations in the UK with Bristol, Jensen and, above all, Aston Martin, which built its cars on the Superleggera system for many years. In terms of pure ‘class’, Touring was unequalled, but, sadly, it failed to transform itself from bespoke coachbuilder into a global consultancy such as Bertone and Pininfarina and the firm folded in 1964.
The inner framework of steel tubes for Touring’s patent ‘superlight’ body system.
As far as it got before World War II – performance streamlining applied to Alfa Romeo’s Le Mans contender. BMW liked it so much that it commissioned a near-identical body for the 328 entered in Le Mans the following year.