The more stylish Alfa Romeo 1900 Super sedan in Europe

Born from the inspiration of a fashion designer, this car with such a particular design is not a one-off but is part of a limited series of which it is now considered the only one left

In the 1950s, before the Italian fashion industry had its exploit, the ladies of Milan dressed well by a designer named Jole Veneziani, a short, blond lady who always wore very flashy glasses, like to underline the rather severe visual defect that forced her to wear them. She had intercepted the American coloured tendency that was perceived at the time in car design and it was not difficult for her to persuade the managers of the Portello, given that she dated their wives, to develop a “fashion version” of the Alfa Romeo 1900 flagship.

**The 1900 Super sedan decorated by Jole Veneziani has a French name, like all the owner’s collection cars: it’s called Sophie**

**The new dashboard of the 1900 Super with three circular instruments**

The family car that wins races. With this slogan, Alfa Romeo in 1954 advertised the 1900 after the sedan had dominated the major competitions in the Turismo class. Hugely successful, the car, the first Alfa with a chassis integrated with the body body, was produced from 1950 to 1959 on the first assembly line built by the Milanese brand. Its strong point was the engine, no longer with 6 and 8 cylinders as in the previous models but with a 4-cylinder split always with light alloy head, two overhead camshafts and hemispherical combustion chambers. With the touch of the tailor from the Milanese salons, there were then a thousand examples set up with a vaguely “flamboyant” style that brings to mind the creations of Giovanni Michelotti for Vignale, especially those marked with the Cavallino.

**The cover of the Alfa Romeo brochure advertising the special series**

**A page of the brochure with a lobster and black Sedan as the example in this article. Below, a photograph from the 1950s with Jole Veneziani, bottom right, portrayed with her models**

Bold shades for a select few. The combinations were completely unusual: coral pink and black, bottle green and black, Prussian blue and white, and, finally, lobster and white, as can be seen on the cover of the car’s advertising brochure (see photos above). Alongside the 1900 Super (90 HP, maximum speed 190 km / h) of the “The Jole” branded series, as one would still say in Milan today, there are illustrious personalities of the time such as Arturo Toscanini and Mike Bongiorno. And there are also some photos with VIPs coming out of one of these glamorous Alfa Romeos in front of the Teatro alla Scala for the opening night of each year on 7 December. About 200 were produced with the coral and black livery, from May to June 1956. This model, which won the Best of Show at the Défilé Città di Legnago last summer, is the only one that came out of the factory with wheels ray.

The car of the president’s son. Of its four owners, one was the son of Alfa Romeo president Giuseppe Luraghi. And it was he, Dario, who took it out of the museum in France – at Le Circuit de Chatelet – where the car spent about thirty years after the first buyer, from Genoa, had sold it to you. The long stay in the spotlight saved the example from rust and the interior also kept very well: it is very fashion style as well, like the body paint, but with bright colors alternating with gray. “It has never been restored, only cleaned”, the current caretaker explains. For him it was a love match, because the colors and shapes of the car made him fall in love. “The car was in a book of the history of Alfa Romeo, I wanted to investigate and it turned out that with this livery, to say the least, ten survive. And mine is the only sedan in Europe in lobster and black. All the others are coupés”.

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