15.2 1969 Pininfarina Alfa Romeo 33 Coupe Prototipo, pictures wanted!

I purposely avoided mentioning something in my previous post while playing with Oscar.

The styling. Now given this is still a Maserati MC12, you may expect that the overall style of this car has to be somehow recognizable as Maserati’s, and you’d be right. Except, this year things are different.
Different meaning that with the Alfa Romeo’s 100th anniversary in air, we were given the opportunity to style this car after this other iconic Italian company. Many went for this option, showing how large is the place occupied by Alfa Romeo in enthusiasts’ hearts.
Sort of.
Keep reading after the jump to know more.

I always thought that trying to force an MC12 into something more practical and road friendly was a bit pointless, especially with the rest of Maserati’s line up being made of just, well you guessed it, grand touring cars. A mid engined exotic over 5 meters long isn’t exactly what you’d call a grand touring car, and while many tried with relative success to force GT aspects on it, others ended up designing something more similar to a Ferrari, but with a trident on the hood.

So it may even appear like picking Alfa Romeo could be a way to change this trend. Thing is Alfa Romeo doesn’t have something like this in its line up since…ages, unfortunately. Yep, the 8C Competizione is an example of what you can do even while you are selling 20.000 € mini cars, but that’s just another grand touring car at the end of the day, plus it’s a front engine one, so it would be a bit silly to force its shape onto this platform. Even more, I’m afraid it could even be kinda obvious.

The next car to be featured in our list of possible muses it’s the deadly gorgeous Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale, 1967. You gotta love the sixties. You may think it is even more obvious than the 8C Competizione, but you’d be surprised knowing how many of the students in the room thought about the other Alfa 33 when out teacher talked about the Tipo 33. Not only they were thinking of the wrong (very wrong) car, they didn’t even know about the Stradale either. That’s probably when you say “omg wtf?!”. True story.

Now the "Tipo" 33 Stradale, also reffered to as the "Tipo 33.2 Stradale" may even be good looking, but it’s also more than 40 years old, which means that it’s curvy beyond every possible level, that’s extremely low, and even more, that it’s small, really small. Once again the trend of building large and heavier cars creates once another problem.
Some of the following shots are taken from the book "Alfa Romeo, production cars from 1910 to 2007", which is the awesome present my lovable girlfriend bought to me for my recent degree. Divided into two volumes, it covers all production cars from Alfa, with chassis numbers, blue prints, specs, everything.
It's quite expensive as well...

Fortunately the 33 Stradale is very similar in proportion to the MC12, meaning that once you scaled the Alfa’s wheelbase to the MC12’s size, the height is very similar and the two overhangs are just a bit, a large bit, shorter on the Alfa. Which is great, as since the beginning I wanted to shorten the MC12 to at least 4.7 meters, so about half a meter shorter.
This would have been possible only shortening a little the front steel frame responsible for the passive protection and energy dissipation in case of accident, and moving elsewhere the two front radiators, responsible for the engine cooling. At the back, the only part I had to deal with was the gearbox, which is much shorter than the whole overhang so that wasn’t a problem at all.
Eventually, the car is now 4.45 meters long or thereabouts. It is also a bit higher than the MC12, being now 120 cm tall. As you can see the profile is somehow set, I’ve a few doubts on the position of the air intakes in front of the rear wheels, but everything else is somehow definitive. Many details are missing of course.

You should also notice that while the car is penned partially after the 1967 Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale, the main inputs come from the 1969 Pininfarina Alfa Romeo 33 Coupe Prototipo. This idea was actually rejected by other members of the team at first, but since I’m doing it myself I’ve decided to keep going with my original idea. Right because of the references to the 33 Coupe Prototipo, I think that perhaps those air intakes could be moved higher as in the yellow concept car, while maintaining a smaller air intake on the lower part of the side as well, so basically inverting what’s going on on the MC12. The longitudinal position of the intakes is set though, as the radiators are just a little after that, while moving them forward wouldn’t be possible if not by just a couple of inches, as the chassis considerably increase its wildness near the cockpit area.

Regardless, now I’m working on the aerial view and while things are quite sketchy at the moment, I already have some ideas. The front end is giving me quite some problems, and it may requires me to change the profile as well, something I’d rather avoid. The front overhang looks indeed a bit too short now that I'm looking at it again. Oh well.
Regardless, the point of this post should be the fact that I don’t have a clear shot from this point of view for as regards the Pininfarina concept car, and even if I think I’ll be fine nonetheless, I thought asking could hurt.

So this is the question. Does any of view have a picture of the 1969 Pininfarina Alfa Romeo 33 Coupe Prototipo from the top/aerial view? If yes, please contact me, I’d really appreciate it. Images of this car in general are OK now that I think about it, and consider the Pininfarina Ferrari P5 as well, as they are pretty similar as well.

Other than that, any sort of input, suggestion or critic is welcomed.

Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale and Pininfarina 33 Coupe images copyright: Wouter Melissen from Ultimatecarpage.com
All other images copyright: Damiano Garro
Want to know more?

15.1 The Italian Project: drawing a new bodywork for the Maserati MC12

I'm doing this project for one of my courses at university.

Basically we have to design the bodywork of a new car based on the Maserati MC12's underpinning.

Even if it is indeed very interesting and exciting, you’d terribly wrong assuming CAD programs, math and clay models are involved in the process.

It’s much “simpler”, and somehow disappointing. It all starts this way: our teacher brought various technical drawings (aka blueprints) of the Maserati MC12. They are all about the aerial and lateral views, but while one of them depicts the actual bodywork, the others are more and more focused on the actual chassis and mechanics, until we arrive at something like the following images.

Make the jump for more about this new project.

These blueprints are printed in 1:5 scale, which means we have to deal with more than 1 meter wide sheets, given the MC12’s length of 5,14 meters. Even if the process doesn’t mean designing in a technical way, we still have some tasks to face. First of all, the actual car in the drawings is the racing version of the MC12, so many things are supposed to be changed, like the wheels (we can actually maintain the racing ones), the ride height, but most of all, the drivers position. At this point, I’d like to introduce you my newest best friend forever… Oscar.

He is a funny guy, albeit he doesn’t speak much. 175 cm tall, 178 with the helmet which he never takes off, I’ve assumed he is The Stig's Italian cousin. Fortunately for my ears, he has much better music tastes.

Anyway, given the limited production nature even of the road going MC12, many things are to be changed.

The most annoying is his back’s inclination, which can’t be more than 25°. For the record, on the GT1 car it’s of about 45°. Now, you can’t just set the seat in a different position, because now my dear friend Oscar wouldn’t just fit in the car, because of the height of the cockpit. Even more, you have to simulate the rotation of the upper part of his body in case of an accident around the so called "H point" (his hip), and he doesn’t have to impact on anything except the airbag. So this required not only a new driving position, but also a new cockpit.

We were given clearance to modify the A-pillar and the windscreen at will, while the B-pillar was set in stone together with the air scoop. This is when things become a little…pointless. For lack of time and resources, we won’t do any sort of calculations to justify and verify our modifications to the chassis. The same goes for the impact structure at the front, and the position of the radiators. We're allowed to move the radiators elsewhere, we just should maintain theoretically their sizes and therefore the overall size of the air intakes and outlets.

As you can see in this hi-tech animation, the difference between the old and the new cockpit's profile is quite large.
With the older design and the new driving position, Oscar's head would impact on the upper part of the windscreen and on the transversal beam connecting the two A-pillars, for lack of a better word. The pillar itself wouldn't have been a problem as it's positioned on his side.

It’s a bit disappointing, but it would be barely impossible for us to do that at the moment and in such a short time frame, given it’s a 2/3 months project, about 4 hours a week and with what I think is a limited technical knowledge on these aspects.

All we are asked to do is to design a new bodywork around the given mechanics respecting actual production cars’ rules, maximum dimensions, angles, crash test areas and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, it would also be a good idea to drawn a decently looking car too.

Everything will be done on paper sheets of various kind, so using a CAD to design it would then require to print it in full scale first, and then to trace it again on a sheet with the use of a specific pen. Don’t ask.

About one month into the project, I think we are a bit behind the schedule. I said “we” because this is supposed to be a 6 people project, even if so far I’m basically the only one working after it. That may explain it.

Stay tuned for more, I may need your help too!

Maserati MC12 images Copyright: Maserati Spa
All other images Copyright: Damiano Garro
Want to know more?