The story
History
A.L.C.A., the Anonima Lombarda Cabotaggio Aereo, was based in Milan, with a branch in Rome. Its name means the Lombard Air Cabotage Company, and in the war it had made nacelles for aero engines, which puts it among the aircraft makers who turned to small cars.source 4source 5source 1 The Weiner museum’s label names a different maker, Aero Caproni of Trento, but the other accounts agree on ALCA.source 2source 4source 5source 1 Its peacetime product was to be a two-seat convertible offered as an alternative to the Fiat 500 Topolino, and even smaller.source 2source 4
Its engineering is credited to Gioachino Colombo, designer of the Alfa Romeo 158 and of the early Ferrari engines, and once a pupil of Vittorio Jano. Three accounts say so, but no biography of Colombo or document of ALCA’s has been found to confirm it.source 4source 5source 1 Damiano Landi, in an article on futurism in Piacenza, also gives the body to Flaminio Bertoni; no other source found makes that claim.source 5
The car was pretty, with flowing lines and a tall, narrow grille in the manner of the post-war Alfa Romeos.source 4 Its body was in three parts: the battery and a little luggage space at the front, the two seats, the dashboard and the spare wheel in the middle, and the fuel tank and engine at the back. The engine was to be a 124 cc two-stroke twin.source 3source 4
The fox breaks cover
The Volpe was presented to the press in Rome in March 1947.source 4source 1 RM’s catalogue says it made its debut in a Rome theatre on 30 March, with the Turin comic actor Erminio Macario, and that it brought initial enthusiasm and orders.source 4 The Italian press welcomed it warmly, and orders and deposits poured in.source 2source 4 ALCA’s advertising had the fox spring from its hiding place.
dalla macchia ove nel gran segreto è stata concepita è guizzata fuori
ALCA sold its rights abroad too. In 1947 Gemicar Internacional Auto S.L. of Madrid announced that it would build the car in Spain as the Hispano-Volpe, for sale in Portugal, Tangier, Morocco, the Spanish and Portuguese colonies and Latin America.source 3source 1 Toni Solans, who transcribed its brochure for grupo7, points out that the photograph of the works has the Gemicar sign crudely pasted over what is probably the Italian factory. Nothing was built.source 3source 1 Spain’s real small cars of the period are on the Spanish microcars page.
Six cars in the Mille Miglia
The same brochure showed six Volpes said to have run in the Mille Miglia: three touring cars and three of a supercharged racing model.source 3 Landi describes five entered in that form, with no hood, an aerodynamic tail and a headrest built into the body, and found no trace of any of them in the race of 1947 or in any later one.source 5 The Volpe’s Mille Miglia belongs among the myths of microcar racing and rallying.
Deposits, and no engines
The cars never followed. The Weiner museum says that trouble with suppliers became trouble with customers, and that the engines fitted to the pre-production cars were apparently only for display.source 2 RM goes further: probably no engines were ever delivered and no running car was ever built, and legal disputes over the missing deposits followed.source 4 About ten pre-production cars were made, perhaps a dozen.source 2source 4source 1
In 1948 ALCA was charged with fraudulent bankruptcy, having taken money for orders, some of it from its foreign partners, without starting production.source 5source 1 Its managers had vanished with the deposits, reportedly about 300 million lire.source 1 Who they were, and what the courts made of the case, has not been found.
The fox had a brief afterlife. A running Volpe reported in the United States in 1951 was, the Weiner museum thinks, probably an unfinished car that someone had fitted with an engine of their own; and in the same year a near-identical car, the Parvus Fox, appeared for a short while.source 2 Italy’s other small cars of those years, the Volugrafo Bimbo among them, are on the Italian post-war minicars page.
