the rebel
zagato
6 October 2024 • Written By Virgiliu Andone
As you circle around this red-and-yellow 1954 1900 C Super Sprint Zagato you’d be tempted to class it as a Gran Turismo, the type of car meant to devour long journeys in style and comfort, a luxurious experience for the fortunate few. You’d be wrong. Although just 39 were made, at a price that wasn’t bringing it within reach of the masses, this Alfa was not destined for spirited drives around Lake Como, but its stomping ground was to be found on the period’s great road races, from Mille Miglia to Targa Florio and everything in between.
Six of them took the road from Brescia to Rome and back in 1955, one year before this Madrid-registered one got her original Spanish plates that it still wears to this day. Kike Garcia looks after this carefully restored car in his Granollers garage, in the shadows of the Circuit de Catalunya, on the outskirts of Barcelona.
Its exuberant exterior is strongly contrasted by a sparse interior, with beautiful dials but not much if any evidence of luxury. And so it was meant to be. This is a sports car. This is Zagato’s bread-and- butter product and the quintessence of its over a century-old existence. Looking at the narrow bulge of the bonnet of the 1900 CSS, you notice that a propeller wouldn’t look completely out of place, spinning furiously just in front of the scudetto.
Veneto-born Ugo Zagato set up shop in Milan, after a stint at Officine Aeronautiche Pomilio, having had his hand in the making of planes such as the 1918 Ansaldo Pomilio SVA 5P. His shop on Corso Sempione was meant to repair both aeroplanes and automobiles, but a string of illustrious Alfas set the course towards something much more ambitious. By 1923, the Quadrifoglio-adorned RL Targa Florio Zagatos were wearing the factory colours and delivered Alfa’s astounding victory that year, breaking the curse once and for all and opening the floodgates to the innumerable competition successes to come.
