Admiring his new Alfa

Ever bought a new car home and kept on stepping outside, just to admire it, to soak in its lines, get to know it a bit better? That's what this very lucky young man is doing, back in 1938, in Italy. He's admiring his beautiful new, sleek, black Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B, a 1938 model. He's not worried about the coming war, that idiot Mussolini or anything else that's troubling the rest of the world. He just likes cars (and girls, of course, one of whom he is hoping to impress that very evening). And so his wealthy aristocrat father has finally consented to letting him get the Alfa 8C. Here, it's parked in the driveway behind his Mum's Alfa 6C 2500 Sport.

The diecast models for this diorama are an IXO 1:43 scale model of the black Alfa, and a
Solido model of a red Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 Sport. And though he's a bit tiny in this shot, the
young man is actually Robert de Niro, in his role of the son of the aristocratic Italian family
in Bertolucci's great film, '1900', much of which was set in the 1930s.

I can't pretend to be any sort of expert on old Alfas of the 1930s, but you don't need to know
all that much to fall in love with the styling of this lovely car. I don't have many black cars
in my collection, as I just don't like that colour on small models – it often seems to hide
too many details – but give a black car enough chrome, and a wonderful shape to start
with, and that is all you need to say Wow!

More often than not, if I am choosing an Italian car it is also a red one. I'm a bit of an old-
fashioned 'national colours' traditionalist that way, not strictly so, and I do like red cars
anyway. This Solido model of the 6C isn't expensive but looks very nice for the price.