Since the dawn of the automobile?or at the very least, the birth of the Curved Dash Oldsmobile in 1901?the industry has drifted toward non-rectilinear shapes. Even the phone-booth-upright Ford Model T featured as many round forms as Henry Ford deemed financially prudent. For those of us born in the 1970s, the angular machines we grew up with seemed normal and modern; anything curvaceous was obviously archaic. A Ferrari 330GTS may as well have been an MGA, which could?ve been a Cord, for all we cared. Only survivors like the Beetle, 911, Mini, and the Fiat 124/Pininfarina Azzurra definitively bucked the trend, and they were recognizably vehicles that had sallied forth from an earlier time, vehicles who somehow beat back all attempts at replacement. Looking back now, it?s easy to see that the straight-edge styling of the 1970s and 1980s was merely a blip, an aberration. But if that strange period has roots anywhere, they?re right here, in the form of the Alfa Romeo Carabo from 1968.
One might recall that Lamborghini?s Miura had been on the market for only two years when the Carabo went on display at the Paris auto show. One might be shocked to learn that they shared the same designer, young Marcello Gandini of Bertone. Underneath the Carabo’s fantastical shell sat the guts of a detuned racing car, in the form of Alfa?s 33 Stradale. While the workaday Stradale wore the era?s de rigueur curves, and wore them as well as anything from the Porsche 904 to the Ferrari 330 P...