Alfa Romeo P3 Tipo B 1932 Blueprint

The Alfa Romeo P3 Tipo B was the first genuine single-seat Grand Prix racing car. The car featured twin roots superchargers and split twin gearboxes that proved overly complex and unreliable.

 

But the car only weighed 701 kilograms and the engine put out 255 HP which made the Alfa Romeo P3 an exceptionally fast Grand Prix car in the early to mid-1930s.

 

The P3 and its predecessor the P2 were designed by Vittorio Jano, a Hungarian immigrant to Italy who had a lot of influence on early Alfas. He’s credited with developing the engine architecture most commonly associated with classic Alfa Romeos: Lightweight alloy construction, double-overhead cams, twin rows of valves (per bank), hemispherical combustion chambers and centrally located spark plugs. Vittorio later worked closely with Dino Ferrari developing the V6 and V8 engines that would challenge the traditional V12s.

 

In 1929 the Great Depression led to dramatic losses for Alfa Romeo and the company fell in debt with the Italian government. All motor racing activities had to be stopped, but former Alfa Romeo racing driver Enzo Ferrari had launched already his own racing team called Scuderia Ferrari in 1932. After seeing the Maserati Brothers consistently beating their Alfa Romeo 8C Monza, Alfa entrusted their newer P3 to Enzo’s young team which immediately began paying off.

 

The Ferrari-livered Alfa P3’s were modified by the racing team and they managed to score wins at the Coppa Acerbo, the Italian and Spanish Grand Prix, Monaco, Alessandria, Tripoli, Casablanca, the Targa Florio, and the most famous 1/2/3 finish at the French Grand Prix.

 

Luigi Fusi has redrawn and preserved many pre-war original Alfa Romeo blueprints because many were partly destroyed during WWII. Fusi joined Alfa Romeo in 1920 and he began as an archivist in the technical department, a time when designs used Indian Ink. Between 1920 - 1937 Fusi worked largely in the competitions department, first as a draughtsman and then as a designer. In 1955, Fusi was appointed Head of Control Drawings, a position he kept until his retirement in 1967. After his retirement, Alfa Romeo kept him as curator at their Hall of Fame museum just outside Milano. There, Fusi was Alfa's link with the past, and for a time he remained a part of Alfa's living history and an important part of the company's heritage. Fusi wrote many books, the most famous is considered the Bible of the Alfisti: Alfa Romeo, TUTTE LE VETTURE DAL 1910. “ALL CARS FROM 1910”. Fusi died in 1996.

 

The Arese Plant was Alfa Romeo’s head office for more than two decades prior to 1986 when the Fiat Group purchased Alfa Romeo in 1986. Arese then became one of the assembly plants of the Fiat Group. Fiat didn’t want to preserve the old blueprints and most of them ended up being recycled. Plant workers have taken some of these prints home and shared them with friends and family who kept them in their collection. There are only a handful of copies out there which makes them very rare.

Today, the Arese plant is almost closed and abandoned since Fiat has moved design and production to other factories inside and outside of Italy. The company's final manufacturing activities at Arese ended in 2005 when the Alfa Romeo V6 engine production stopped.