It is another example of a race car made road legal, only a precious 18 were made back in the late 60s and by all accounts, only 7 are left on the road today.

It was equipped with a 2-liter V8 that could rev all the way up to 10,000 rpm and along with the Lamborghini Miura is widely considered to be one of the first real supercars. Its rarity only adds fuel to the fire, making it so very exclusive has made them worth incredible sums of money today where there seems to be an insatiable appetite for rare Italian supercars.

Magnesium Alloy Chassis

Stradale
Via: Alfa Romeo

As a race car, the 33 was an enormously powerful, lightweight sports car. As a road car, it has become something of a legend, seen by few, driven by even fewer.

It all started with the chassis, like any good racing car, it needed to be rigid and as light as possible. It was those simple factors that led them to use a magnesium alloy for the H-shaped frame with aluminum body panels keeping the weight down. It was also unusually short, making it agile and with the engine, right behind the driver, it retained its balance. The Stradale’s wheelbase got stretched a bit but by modern standards is still tiny for a supercar, with a shorter wheelbase than the modern 4C (considered one of the smallest modern sports cars).

Franco Scaglione Design

Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale
Via Wsupercars

All of the Stradale’s are hand-built, all of them come standard with minor imperfections and unique differences.

Penned by Franco Scaglione, one of the most famous automotive designers in history the car lacked nothing when it came to emotion. Everything that has become the norm for all Alfa Romeo’s is all there. It has beautiful smooth flowing lines that seem to never end coupled with an aggressive rake that makes the car look fast standing still and the flip-up doors add almost unnecessary flair, the proverbial cherry on top if you will. It is stunning, arguably the best-looking car ever built by anyone, and the fact that there are no two alike makes it that much more special. It also gets a top-spec leather interior, unlike some of the rawer track cars out there, this was meant for the road too.

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Screaming Little V8

Alfa Romeo Tipo Stradale 33
DriveMag

Its hand-built nature is not only limited to the outside, the engine, also built by hand has its own glorious uniqueness too.

It was a work of automotive art on the inside too, advanced for the time fuel-injected twin spark quad coil/quad-cam design all incorporated into a small 2-liter V8 package. It screamed, capable of revving over 10000 rpm, there was no mistaking this for a regular road car. With all the engines being hand-built, it is hard to get a real performance figure but the claimed horsepower was 227 in a car that weighed just over 1500 pounds. This equated to a sub-six-second 0-60 time and a top end of 160 mph, which could both easily be bettered if you were to return the car to race tune in which it could produce 270 horsepower.

Related: 10 Best-Sounding Sports Cars You Can Buy For Under $15,000

Summary

Alfa-Romeo-33-Stradale
via silodrome.com

It is now an icon, with so few examples left it is pretty hard to imagine just how much one of these cars is worth today.

One thing we can appreciate is just how much technology was incorporated in an era where most cars didn’t have disc brakes or seat belts, stunning from every angle we can only hope to see a couple of kit cars in the future to give us but a glimpse of its glory.

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