The Pride of Portello (was: The Shame of Portello)

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

I was going to stay out of the Pictures-from-Milan business, partly
because my opinions are generally based on hearsay, but Alan Lamberts
admonition to Bob Little to Get a life Bob does not permit my sideline
sitting. With all due respect to Alan (who probably has a life, whatever
it may be) Bob Little certainly has a life, albeit not as contented a one
as he once had with Alfa Romeo (by which I mean Alfa Romeo, not Fiat);
and the ones he had with Alfa Romeo and with ARI, the Alfa subsidiary in
this country, entitle him to a reasonably respectful hearing even if one
does not agree with all of his values or opinions or all of his manners
of expression, as some won't.

 The way I heard it Bob Little went to work for Autodelta (the real one,
not any would-be reflected-glory-snatcher imagination-challenged
ostensible clone) before Autodelta became an integral part of Alfa Romeo
in 1966. He wanted to work there, but it happened there wasn't a slot in
the budget, so he made the personally inconvenient choice of working
there, off the books, for no pay, rather than taking a salary from some
less worthy (in his eyes) car company. A hard life, in some respects  I
am told that with no money for room rent, he slept under the tables in
the company lunchroom  but hard or not it WAS a life, and it places a
certainly unintended resonance on Alans declaration that Alfa Romeo,
and it's officers are in business precisely because there exists the
greed for profits. Some people  some in Milan, some in New Jersey 
invested a dedication to that company which no amount of greed could buy.
Bob Little and Don Black were two of those people, and some of their
mentors in Italy were others. Both Little and Black have shared with me
worthless/priceless mementos they each had salvaged from the debris of
the older Portello buildings which were razed when the new plant at Arese
opened, and it was certainly obvious to me that the place, and the
residual wisps of its history, meant far more than any balance-sheets to
such people. They have my respect.

 That said, I would try to draw a line between the corporate culture of
the Alfa community and the archaeological remains of its physical
environment. Leonardo has commented with feeling on the photos from the
old Alfa works at Portello, "taken in November apparently just before the
factory was torn down." Part of Leonardo's comment - "The pics show the
Portello factory, the first Alfa production factory"  suggest that an
important part of Alfa's early history was being trashed. As far as the
physical buildings of the factory are concerned I believe the most recent
demolition was not really that big a loss.

 Portello had been the location of the shops of the Societa Italiana
Automobili Darracq before it became the Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica
Automobili (or A.L.F.A.) in 1910. There are photographs of both the
exterior and interior of the plant from 1910 and from many following
periods - 1916, greatly expanded, 1920, 1924, then a radical
modernization and expansion in 1934; and so-on. The location was a
constant, and some existing parts remained whenever newer parts were
added, but it was a working factory, not an industrial museum dedicated
to preserving an historic material heritage.

 Before and during the early part of the war the factory was only
incidentally a car factory, with a small fraction of its work-force
(almost fourteen thousand at the peak) building a few cars, (91 cars in
1935, ten in 1936) but was primarily building trucks, aircraft engines,
and other military supplies. The factory was thus a prime industrial
target during the war, and was heavily damaged in bombing raids on 14
February 1944 and 13 August 1944, and then essentially completely
destroyed in Milan's heaviest air raid on 20 October 1944. There are both
ground-level photos and aerial reconnaissance records of the destruction
which are widely available; rubble and salvage material, but little
remaining intact from the buildings of the thirties.

 In February 1946 car production resumed in a partially rebuilt factory,
building 6C 2500s on an artisan basis without an assembly line, (162 cars
in 1946, 281 cars in 1947, 444 in 1948) but interior photos from that era
show a completely different type of work-space than one sees in photos
from as early as 1951 with 1900s on a genuine assembly line in a
spacious, well-lit modern factory (1,228 cars in 1951, 3,556 in 1952,
5,411 in 1953 -). It was this facility which was building nearly 36,000
Giuliettas in 1961, before Little and Black became parts of the
community.

 I can't claim any knowledge about particular dates of construction and
of demolition of particular parts of the complex, but my impression is
that no historically significant part of the older facilities had
survived intact, that the parts torn down in the sixties were almost
entirely early post-war buildings and that the parts just recently torn
down were essentially generic factory buildings of the fifties and later;
obsolete, for industrial uses, but of little or no historical
significance. Their destruction is still salt in old wounds for some, one
more reminder (of many!) of a much larger and much less tangible loss
which occurred when Alfa Romeo SpA became a small part of a very
different company. The anguish I can understand; so also can I understand
why people with shorter memories and/or more slender connections to the
earlier company might wonder what the fuss was about. Sic transit, etc.

 Be satisfied with yours, if you are 

 John H.

   

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