The Alfa Romeo Eagle is a concept car built by

Pininfarina Pininfarina S.p.A. (short for Carrozzeria Pininfarina) is an Italian car design firm and coachbuilder, with headquarters in Cambiano, Turin, Italy. The company was founded by Battista "Pinin" Farina in 1930. On 14 December 2015, the Indian ...

. The car debuted at the

Turin Auto Show The Turin Motor Show ( it, Salone dell'Automobile di Torino) was an auto show held annually in Turin, Italy. The first official show took place between 21 and 24 April 1900, at the Castle of Valentino, becoming a permanent fixture in Turin from ...

in 1975.

Background

Three years after unveiling their Alfetta Spider prototype built using the chassis and drive-train of the Alfetta berlina, Pininfarina presented a new Alfa-based styling exercise. Like the Alfetta Spider, the Eagle had a

targa top Targa top, or targa for short, is a semi-convertible car body style with a removable roof section and a full width roll bar behind the seats. The term was first used on the 1966 Porsche 911 Targa, and it remains a registered trademark of Porsc ...

, but was built using the Alfetta GT as a base. The goal was to show that it was possible to design an open car with good passive safety.

The car

The Eagle's wedge-shaped body was designed by

Aldo Brovarone Aldo Brovarone (24 June 1926 – 12 October 2020) was an Italian automobile designer and the chief stylist with Carrozzeria Pininfarina (1974-1988) – widely known for a prominent range of work including the Dino 206 GT, Lancia Gamma Coupé ...

, who drew inspiration from the

sports prototype A sports prototype, sometimes referred to as simply a prototype, is a type of race car that is used in the highest-level categories of sports car racing. These purpose-built racing cars, unlike street-legal and production-based racing cars, are n ...

cars of the time and the Alfa Romeo 33/TT/12 in particular. The body was characterized by a prominent rearward-inclined or swept-back roll-over bar. The interior diverged strongly from the contemporary Alfa style, with soft matte plastic dashboard finishes, a mono-spoke steering wheel and fully digital instrumentation. With a 4-cylinder Twin Cam engine in standard GT tune, good aerodynamics and weighing just , the Eagle was rated at a maximum speed of while returning significantly better consumption than the model from which it was derived. As with Pininfarina's earlier Spider proposal, the Eagle did not go into production. Alfa Romeo's management instead opted to refresh the style of the Duetto.

References

Eagle Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, j ...

Pininfarina vehicles Cars introduced in 1975 {{Auto-stub