Alfa Romeo Bimotore
The Alfa Romeo Bimotore was the most extreme idea Enzo Ferrari’s Scuderia had ever executed in an Alfa Romeo’s name — and arguably the most revealing. By 1935, the Silver Arrows of Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union had demonstrated a power superiority that Jano’s aging Alfa Romeo P3 and the transitional B-type could not realistically overcome. Rather than wait for the next purpose-designed Grand Prix car, Ferrari commissioned a radical solution: take two Alfa Romeo 8C engines, mount one ahead of the driver and one behind, connect both to the rear wheels through a shared transmission, and build a car that would match German horsepower through brute addition. Luigi Bazzi — Alfa’s master of practical solutions, who had helped Jano design the original 8C engine — executed the project at the Scuderia’s workshops in Modena. Two cars were built, each with twin engines enlarged to 3.165 litres, for a combined displacement of 6.33 litres and approximately 540 hp. The car that resulted was, in the words of one historian, “arguably the first Ferrari” — conceived by Ferrari, built by his engineers, bearing the prancing horse emblem on its flanks.
The Bimotore was exactly what the concept promised: extremely fast in a straight line and very nearly impossible to manage. Tazio Nuvolari tested the first car on the Brescia-Bergamo road and found it required “all of his incredible talent” to prevent it charging into the countryside. The fundamental problem was tyre consumption. The combined torque of two supercharged straight-eights transmitted through the rear axle destroyed rubber at a rate that no race strategy could accommodate. In the 1935 Tripoli Grand Prix — the Bimotore’s race debut — two cars were entered with Nuvolari and Louis Chiron. Nuvolari pitted for tyre changes every three to four laps; over the 40-lap race in Libyan heat, the best he could manage was fourth place, behind Caracciola’s Mercedes, Varzi’s Auto Union, and Fagioli’s Mercedes. Chiron finished fifth. The pattern repeated at the 1935 Mille Miglia, where the traction advantage on rough Italian roads briefly kept the Bimotore in contention, but tyre stops again neutralised any hope of victory.
The car’s one unambiguous achievement was a speed record that served Italian national prestige. On 16 June 1935, Nuvolari drove a specially prepared Bimotore — fitted with a Plexiglas windshield, solid disc wheels, and an extended head fairing — on the new Florence-to-Livorno motorway. He covered the measured flying kilometre at an average of 200.82 mph (323 km/h), setting a new Class B international speed record. The achievement denied the Silver Arrows one distinction: Germany could not claim the outright world speed record for wheeled vehicles. In terms of motorsport prestige, the record was worthwhile; it bought nothing on a racing circuit.
The Bimotore was retired after the 1935 season in favour of the Tipo C — a properly designed new car rather than an improvised engine doubling. But it left a direct technical legacy: the Bimotore was the first Alfa Romeo racing car to use Dubonnet independent trailing arm front suspension, and engineers noticed that this configuration gave the car an unusual traction advantage on rough ground. The subsequent Tipo C 3.8s incorporated an evolved version of this independent front end combined with a new independent rear suspension — a direct technical inheritance from the twin-engined experiment.
Connections
- Luigi Bazzi — chief engineer and builder; constructed in Scuderia Ferrari workshops, Modena, source: supercars.net
- Enzo Ferrari — initiated the project; Scuderia Ferrari’s desperate response to Silver Arrows power advantage, source: thetruthaboutcars.com
- Tazio Nuvolari — primary driver; set 1935 world speed record in Bimotore; best race result 4th Tripoli GP, source: thetruthaboutcars.com
- Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 — engine donor; two 8C units enlarged to 3.165L each for the Bimotore, source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Romeo P3 — contemporary GP car that Bimotore was intended to supplement/replace, source: a-e.li
- Scuderia Ferrari — organisational context; Ferrari-badged entry in Bimotore races, source: supercars.net
- German Grand Prix 1935 — same season as Bimotore’s debut; Silver Arrows era that motivated the twin-engine approach, source: wikipedia.org
Alfa Romeo Bimotore [relates] Enzo Ferrari Luigi Bazzi [relates] Alfa Romeo Bimotore Tazio Nuvolari [relates] Alfa Romeo Bimotore Alfa Romeo Bimotore [relates] Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Alfa Romeo Bimotore [opposes] German Grand Prix 1935