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Old 11-15-2017, 11:13 AM
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Superleggera Superleggera is offline
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Join Date: May 2009
Location: Dry Heat, Arizona
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The coachwork is by Carrozzeria Touring (of Milan) and is named "Ala Spessa" (basically "thick wing"). It was a Felice Anderloni's concept to create an aerodynamic shape to slice through the wind like an airplane wing. A few style iterations of this (for Alfa and BMW) but when Anderloni did the coachwork for the 1939 BMW 328MM coupe (Le Mans and Mille Miglia raced), it was wind tunnel tested by BMW and actually instrumented (crude by todays standard but one of the first times it was done with automobiles). Years ago when a friend who owned the BMW 328MM coupe met with Anderloni's son (CiCi), CiCi said this design concept is what saved their company in the days before the war -- and most importantly AFTER the war itself. Post war the design was instrumental in the creation of "modern car design" as well as licensing of the design methodology itself to other coachbuilders.

Aside: I have a recent design project to do a variant of this concept. (with the skirted rear wheel setup) Intermixture of Alfa and BMW "ala spessa" design elements from 1938-1941 with the use of a modern BMW Z4 drivetrain in a custom tubular chassis. Moving the project to 3D CAD now and will do a scale version of it first before the go-ahead if given to do a full sized buck.
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• me: Mark • home: Dry Heat, Arizona USA • quote: What did you design or build today? • projects: Curve Grande and the 11Plus Le Mans Coupe
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