Ugliest Car Ever: but The Alfa Romeo SZ has Formula 1 DNA! | Revelations with Jason Cammisa | Ep. 14

Remember when you were scared of monsters?  Well the scariest thing about a monster is   the unknown — you don't know what it is! That's  not a monster! That's just Stewie! Hi! ...and   like a Pug the Alfa Romeo SZ is, ummm,  ugly (sorry buddy!) So ugly in fact   that internally Alfa Romeo referred to this as Il  Mostro – the monster but like my mom used to say,   "Jason, don't worry ugly is only skin deep  it's what's on the inside that counts!"   And if you pull back the skin of the  SZ you'll find an old formula one car! We all know that there's a point  at which something is so ugly   that it's cute... but that  is a subjective evaluation. and besides you've already made up  your mind about whether you like or   hate the SZ I love it but that's a question of  styling what i find more interesting to discuss   is design and that is a very different discussion  hey buddy design incorporates every facet of a   car including efficiency of packaging performance  of its intended function a lack of excess weight   and so on so the SZ styling wasn't just ugly it  was horrible from a design perspective as well!   the SZ is an Alfa Romeo Milano underneath called  75 to those outside the U.S. same wheelbase same   suspension powertrain blah blah and you'd think  a two-seat sports car based on a four-seat family   sedan would be lighter and would have a ton  more cargo space than the sedan it's based on   this monster doesn't even have a trunk it  has a space saver spare and a fuel tank   then that's it in the space where a back  seat would be we have um nothing and its   body panels were heavy very heavy because this was  effectively a steel chassis Milano underneath with   injection-molded thermoplastic resin body panels  glued to it well it didn't weigh any less than the   sedan at least it had 210 horsepower which was  enough to get it to 60 in under seven seconds   and it sounded great doing so because that  is a Busso, the best sounding v6 of all time   it was still in its original 12-valve form  and it was that form's largest displacement   3.0 liters and it was in a more aggressive  state of tune than it was in the Milano Verde. Giuseppe Busso died three days after the last  of his v6 engines was built which is both   incredibly sad and very romantic but he  was more than just the designer of this v6   in fact it was his goal to create a road-going  car with the same drivetrain and suspension   layout as the original Alfetta, which was  a formula one car created in the late 1930s   the Alfa Romeo 158's nickname meant Little Alfa  the Alfetta dominated racing in the equivalent   of today's formula two category and then it was  put on hold for several years during a small um   interruption perhaps you've heard  of it it was called World War II in 1950 the Alfetta came roaring back winning  every single race it entered in the new formula   one series - at 12 years old! the Alfetta was  slightly modified for '51 with a de Dion rear   axle becoming the 159 and it only won four out of  its seven races but wound up on the podium for the   other three so the team boss was probably not  too upset don't forget the boss was a man named   Enzo Ferrari perhaps you've heard of him? enzo...  enzo ferrari? Anyway the Alfetta race car's   drivetrain layout became the blueprint for the  1972 Alfetta street cars both sedan and coupe this   was the Busso dream years later the Alfetta coupe  matured into the GTV6 and the Alfetta sedan became   the Milano or 75 named to celebrate Alfa Romeo's  75th birthday and the 75 gave birth to the SZ and   that lineage means the SZ's layout is the same  as the 1951 Alfa Romeo 159 — the formula one car! okay so it had decades of improvement  but it still had the engine at the front   and a transaxle at the back this time with  inboard disc brakes to reduce unsprung weight   the de Dion rear axle isn't really high tech it's  not independent and it was invented in the 1800s   but what it did do is give the SZ the same  benefits as all the other transaxle Alfa Romeos,   meaning a really nice ride and very predictable  limit handling the SZ added in the lessons that   Alfa had learned racing the 75 in IMSA and  FIA Group A. The plastic panels may have been   heavy but they were bonded to the steel chassis  resulting in a body that was according to Alfa   20 percent stiffer than if it were made from only  steel as such the SZ's handling was compared to   the best cars of its day things that included  the original Acura NSX and the Lotus Esprit   ironically there was nothing really new about the  SZ's suspension except that it had a hydraulic   height adjustment system to raise its height by  almost two inches but the question remains why   would Alfa bother to make this crazy looking  coop and not just a two-door Milano or the   awesome-looking station wagon it was considering  well in 1986 FIAT took control over Alfa Romeo and   wanted to send a message that Alfa was back so it  came up with the ES-30 the experimental sports car   3.0 liters and it had to go from concept  to production in only 19 months so it   challenged three different departments to make the  styling for the attention-grabbing coupe. First   was Alfa's in-house design department second was  Fiat's in-house design department and third was   designer and coach builder Zagato. Under the watch  of Walter de silva the man later responsible for   some recent Audi masterpieces Alfa Romeo centro  stile came up with a soft rounded design that   looked more like the later Proteo concept  car Fiat Centro Stile came up with a design   that eventually went into production it was one  of the first cars designed completely by CAD.   clearly that 1980s computer-aided design couldn't  process surfaces in three dimensions and the CAD   program seems to have crashed entirely while it  was rendering the rear end because it just sort   of stops and the last thing you'd ever expect from  a car that's made of nothing but straight lines is   a curved windshield i mean somebody put this whole  greenhouse on backwards the computer crashed! The computer crashed! This this is a bug! here's the best part: Walter de Silva, who was  in charge of Alfa Romeo's design department when   this was designed went on record to say he had  nothing to do with it. and then so did Zagato!   i mean i've seen plenty of designers try to  take credit for each other's work but i've   never seen a car where so many designers threw  their hands in the air and were like wasn't me! Zagato saying wasn't me is especially crazy  since SZ stood for Sprint Zagato named after the   original Giulietta Sprint Sagato now look if you  look back through history Zagato's trademark is   vehicles with designs that are um... challenging  so it's easy to assume that the Alfa Romeo Sprint   Zagato which is challenging to look at and has  a Zagato badge on it might have been designed... by Zagato! but, and you're not gonna believe this,  Zagato's proposal was even uglier! after   building a thousand or so SZs for Alfa Romeo,  Zagato designed and then built the RZ (the   roadster version) which, in true Zagato style was  somehow even uglier than the car it was based on! It was perfectly on brand for Zagato! that takes talent especially since the SZ was  so incredibly bizarre looking to begin with   but the RZ was one bizarre too far. Of the 350  planned, Alfa was able to sell only 278 before   it had to pull the plug. Polarizing design is  a bit of a double-edged sword because it means   a car will appeal to far fewer people however  those who like it will love it but there weren't   really enough of those so the SZ was a tough sell  especially since it was almost as expensive as the   more usable Porsche 911. The better any car is  it being a transportation device when it's new   well then the less special it becomes when it's  a collectible and so by that measure the SZ is   completely off-the-chart special, especially  when you consider how it drives. the styling   might have been polarizing but the verdict is  unanimous on the way this thing drives it is   one hell of a driver's car that Busso revs and  blips like a motorcycle engine and this version   pulls so hard up top that it's unlike any other  Busso! the suspension's great the steering is   great the visibility is amazing this is the most  fun you can have in any car from this era period.   Today we might think of beauty when we talk of  the Alfa Romeo brand but this is the company   that created Enzo Ferrari and vice versa.  Historically Alfa Romeo was all about racing   the SZ was the last Alfa Romeo of that era.  Il Mostro wasn't just a monster because of   how it looked it was a monster because  of the enormity of what it represented.   Get to know it a little bit better and turns out  even the scariest monsters can be pretty cute okay so you're just gonna keep the Ferrari  framed out the entire time right yep okay   action i'm not some rich youtuber asking you to  like and subscribe hey up up up up up up up up up   up keep the Ferrari out i'm an automotive  journalist asking you to like and subscribe   and that's because that's how youtube works  if you don't click those buttons youtube   doesn't know you liked what you've just seen  and isn't going to show you any more of it   and if you don't like what you've  just seen well join the club   and by that i mean the Hagerty Drivers Club which  gets you access to this award-winning magazine   as well as discounts on amazing stuff and if if  you still don't like what you've seen well then   just leave a nasty comment because that's how  the internet works i need to go clean that up.

Channel: Hagerty

Views: 618,654

Keywords: Hagerty, Classic Car, Classic Cars, Hagerty Drivers Club, collector car, enthusiast car, collector cars, Alfa RZ, Walter de silva, alfa 75, Alfa Milano, Milano Verde, Busso V6, GTV6, GTV, Alfetta GT, Il Mostro, Monster, Plastic body, engine hoist, camissa, camisa, Sprint Zagato, Alfa Romero, Speciale, S.V., stunad, stuunad, license plate, stonato, hideous, ugly, dog, pug, ugly dog, Brutta, radwood, 1990s, 1980s, enzo ferrari

Id: nN9xtcmx5SM

Length: 12min 28sec (748 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 21 2021