Alfa Romeo TZ1 Tribute

Autodelta. Drop that word into a room full of Alfisti and you will see eyes light up and coffee go cold. Carlo Chiti and Ludovico Chizzola started something in 1963 that grew into the racing soul of Alfa Romeo. And the very first masterpiece to roll out of that workshop was the Giulia TZ, the Tubolare Zagato. A name that sounds like a line from an Italian opera libretto, and stirs up roughly the same amount of emotion.

That TZ was not a car you built to run errands in. It was a tubular frame wrapped in an aluminium Zagato suit, a coda tronca rear end that looked as though someone had taken a cheese slicer to the last ten centimetres, and a 1570 cc four-cylinder that sang like a choir in a cathedral. Less than 700 kilos on the scales. A hundred of these beasts were built for homologation, and they landed telling blows on cars that were twice as powerful on paper.

Targa Florio, Nürburgring, Le Mans: the TZ raced everywhere and came home everywhere with trophies. A car that proved weight is the real enemy, long before Colin Chapman turned that into a religion.

And then there is the myth around it. You do not simply buy an original Giulia TZ these days. For that you need a fortune somewhere between a London townhouse in Kensington and a small island in the Mediterranean. Most of them sit safely in climate-controlled rooms, taken out only by the light of a full moon by collectors who are afraid to sneeze anywhere near the bodywork. You practically never see one. And that is precisely why a tribute like this has every right to exist.

Right, back to the car in question. The Alfa Romeo TZ1 Tribute from 1963 offered here is a homage to that legendary Tubolare Zagato. A Rosso tribute, built as a coupé, manual gearbox as it should be, with two seats trimmed in leather and otherwise built entirely for the true enthusiast who can appreciate the shape and the spirit of the original.

Where the original wore an aluminium suit, this tribute opts for a body in composite, but the lines are all there: that coda tronca rear end, that unmistakable Zagato silhouette you would recognise among thousands, those compact, menacing proportions that made the TZ so special. You park this thing and a circle of people forms around it who understand none of it but feel all of it.

And let us be honest about what a tribute is and is not. This is not a matching-numbers original that needs museum security. This is something far more fun: a car you can actually use. A TZ shape you can roll out of the garage on a Sunday morning without first giving your insurance agent a heart attack. You get the look, the lines, the kinship with the original, and you have enough left over to actually drive it. In this world of unaffordable classics, that is an almost revolutionary thought.

Granted, the purists will grumble. Let them. Meanwhile you are threading through Druids corner at Brands Hatch in something that looks like a racing driver's dream from 1963, while they are at home polishing their original TZ that they never dare to start. I know who is having fun that day.

The Tubolare Zagato was once the car with which Autodelta showed the world that David really could beat Goliath a few times every weekend. This is your chance to claim a piece of that legend for your own driveway, without having to hand over a kidney for it.

An original you only ever see behind glass. This one you are allowed to start.

Special features

• Alfa Romeo TZ1 Tribute, homage to the legendary Giulia TZ Tubolare Zagato
• Year of manufacture 1963, first registration November 1963
• Finished in Rosso, solid
• Coupé with coda tronca silhouette in Zagato style
• Bodywork executed in composite
• Manual gearbox, just as it was meant to be
• Two seats, trimmed in leather
• Petrol
• Fitted with an Irish registration
• Chassis number AVLN93001
• Margin scheme car
• Compact, lightweight sports-classic shape for the true enthusiast

With an espresso and an Autodelta poster above the desk

Nick Slinger

Copywriter · HooG Selections