User:Cloverleaf II/Alfa Romeo Tipo 103

The Alfa Romeo Tipo 103 is a prototype small 4-door saloon car by Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo, completed in 1962 but never put into production. Its noteworthy as the only front-wheel drive project by "Alfa Nord" (i.e. designed by Alfa Romeo's Milanese technical centre, rather than by Alfasud) to ever reach the stage of prototype road testing.

with a transverse engine placement.

History
The 103 gestation was extremely long and convolute. First talk of the car began in 1962, while the running prototypes were completed in 1962.

The story of the car beagn at the 1954 Turin Motor Show, where Rudolf Hruska informed Luigi Busso of the management's inetention of producing a "minicar". In 1955 Fiat unveiled the 600, and projected specification for the new small Alfa Romeo was defined to be above the new Fiat: 110|km/h top speed, kerb weight under 600 kilograms, and a price of 620 thousand lire. During 1957 a layout similar to the future Alfasud, with a longitudinal flat-four engine (though air cooled) was considered, but later discarded because of longitudinal in favaour of a trasverse mounted, water cooled double overhead cam four-cylinder. The first drawing close to the definitive prototype were dated January 1958. In 1958 Mangano, new managing director of Alfa Romeo, confirmed an 850 cc displacement for the small car project—now named project V.

But the 103 project was already dead: in January 1962 the Alfa Romeo management had changed its mind, considering the 103 too small. Studies for the 103.01, front-wheel-drive powered by a 1.3 litre engine, were started but lead to nothing. The 103's engine began its tests on 28 February 1962, while the complete car began testing on 18 August of the same year.

In the end the "Milanese" Alfa Romeo technical centre under Orazio Satta Puliga never saw any of its front-wheel-drive designs come to life. The first Alfa Romeo front wheel-drive car, to be produced in southern Italy, would be designed by newly opened SICA in Naples, under the direction of Rudolf Hruska, which began working in 1967. It was the Alfasud.

Today one 103 prototype is part of the Museo Storico Alfa Romeo collection. On display before its closing for rnovation work in 2012, it has been removed from the new exhibit inaugurated in May 2015.