Design was actually intended as Lancia Delta
Every weekend there is a focus on a very famous car detail from the past. This time the ‘dip’ of the Alfa Romeo 145 (1994). How does the design of a new Alfa Romeo come about? You quickly think of a tortured artist, who spends nights fighting with a white sheet of paper. And then, surrounded by empty whiskey bottles, he lets a masterpiece flow from his drawing pen. As if it were the hand of God himself, suddenly intervening. Unfortunately, the practice is a lot less prosaic.
Alfa Romeo has often been in a dip, but never was that dip so tangible as with the Alfa 145, which appears on the scene in 1994. The 145 is definitely a true Alfa Romeo, with a 164-inspired wedge shape, narrow taillights and the distinctive groove that runs from the logo on the nose around the car.
Only on the front doors something strange happens: halfway the waistline suddenly jumps a few centimeters. As if between two glasses of whiskey the designer had lost control of his pencil. The ‘dip’ has no function: the door line could just as well have walked straight ahead, nothing to worry about. Could it really not have been any other way? The answer is no.
Fiat pulls the strings at Centro Stile Alfa Romeo
Alfa has been part of the Fiat group since 1986. The Centro Stile Alfa Romeo initially remains autonomous, but Fiat does pull the strings behind the scenes. The still young Chris Bangle remembers sketching the 145 in the late 1980s as a five-door successor to the Lancia Delta. “One day, Mario Maioli, Fiat group design boss, saw my clay model. I told them it was a design for the new Delta. Without listening he said ‘it looks like an Alpha!’. Before I knew it, it had Alfa logos on it and the model left for the Centro Stile Alfa Romeo in Arese.”
Dip too expensive for a small Fiat
But that doesn’t end the matter. A few studios away is a new little Fiat under development, the Cinquecento. A striking feature of that model is the waistline, which suddenly drops a few centimeters halfway through the door. This ‘dip’ turns out to be too expensive for the cheap Fiat and does not make it to production. Maioli, however, does not want to give way: that waistline must and will come. In the end, he decides Chris Bangle should add this detail to the design of the 145. And so Maioli gets his way – and the Alfa Romeo 145 gets its signature dip.
This story was previously published in AutoWeek Classics 11 2019
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl