Half-and-Half Alfa Romeo Wins FIVA Award

The “Half-and-Half” Alfa Romeo Giulietta SZ Zagato of Corrado Lopresto won the FIVA preservation award at the 2016 Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este, held 20-22 May at the Grand Hotel Villa d’Este on Lake Como in Cernobbio, Italy. The pictures tell it all — half the car is cleaned but not restored, while the other is in as-found condition.

Corrado Lopresto treated the 1961 Alfa Romeo — the Coda Tronca prototype, jointly developed by Elio Zagato and Ercole Spada — as a work of art, saving as much as possible of the amazingly well-preserved original. But he also drew on archaeological techniques, in that he decided to clean only half the car, leaving the other half frozen in time. In the uncleaned half, Lopresto preserved everything (including the dust) under a thin layer of transparent matte lacquer.