The Alfa Romeo Museum Is The Greatest Car Museum In The World

Nuvola Concept

By Ken Saito, Jalopnik

In a country with a rich automotive history as Italy, there are bound to be some special automotive museums scattered around the place. On my last trip to Italy I went to some of the more obvious ones such as Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Pagani. This trip I was in search of some lesser known museums. And located in the outskirts of Milan in a place called Arese, not far from the headquarters of Zagato and Touring Superleggera, is perhaps the best automotive museum in the world.
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Home to the Museo Storico Alfa Romeo, or the Alfa Romeo Museum, it’s a six-story celebration of one of the most legendary automotive brands in the world. And the museum lives up to Alfa’s glory.

It’s easy to forget how significant Alfa Romeo used to be these days. Alfas of recent memories have been somewhat lackluster, and that’s coming from someone who’s a self-confessed Alfisti. They’ve been on a comeback streak as of late, but the past few decades have been dogged by forgettable front-wheel drive hatchbacks and the like.

Deservedly so, you won’t find a MiTo or Giulietta in the museum, or even an Arna. This museum aims to celebrate the best of the best from Alfa’s 108-year history.

The museum is located where Alfa’s old headquarters was before becoming part of the Fiat empire. The Arese plant also was where some of the most beloved cars from the ’60s to the ’90s were made, including the original Giula, GTV6, and later GTV/Spider models. Driving through the main gate I had the same feeling most other people would get going to Disneyland.

As soon as you enter the main building you’re greeted with a couple of Nürburgring lap record breakers; the Stelvio Quadrifolgio and Giulia Quadrifolgio in all their camouflaged glory. Neat.
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But we’re not here to see Stelvios and Giulias. After paying the 12 euro entrance fee, the least expensive of all the Italian car museums I’ve been to so far, it was time to venture down the rabbit hole that was the Alfa Romeo Museum.

33 Navajo

Before going up to the “main section” of the museum there are already several fantastic and weird prototype cars for you to gander at. If there’s one major selling point of this place, it’s that it is as much as museum to famed design houses such as Bertone, Zagato, Pininfarina, and Giugiaro and their wacky designers as it is to Alfa Romeo.

P33 Cueno

The first cars you notice are the two 33 prototypes; the Navajo by Bertone and the P33 Cueno by Pininfarina. This is what concept cars should look like—crazy design exercises that might not make into production but who cares when they look as cool as this. But we’ll see more of those later.

Speaking of unforgettable designs, there were also a couple of Alfa’s best hits such as a model of the 8C Competizione, a car I believe to be the best looking car from this century, and a Montreal prototype shown at the 1967 Montreal Expo.
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Alfetta Spider

There was also a very pretty 2600 SZ in yellow next to it, which would be an attention stealer in any other situation but not when it’s in a room with something like the Navajo and Cueno.

Around the corner were more prototypes from Alfa’s interesting past. First up was the 1972 Alfetta Spider by Pininfarina. Designed around the same time other manufactures were worried convertible cars were going to be outlawed, the result was a targa top car.

Next was the Zeta 6 by Zagato, a project that was supposed to be Zagato’s return to fame the project very nearly went ahead before Alfa pulled the plug at the last minute. A shame because with its futuristic Zagato styling and GTV6 underpinnings, it could’ve been a classic.