Rare Rides: A 2019 Alfa Romeo Disco Volante Spyder, One of Seven
Today’s Rare Ride very likely a vehicle you’ll never see in real life. Extremely expensive and limited in production, just seven were ever made.
It’s pretty spectacular.
The sleek, flowing lines of the two-door seen here are based on an Alfa Romeo 8C, which Rare Rides covered last year. Disco Volante’s designer and builder, Carrozzeria Touring, wanted to create a modern homage to their historic 1952 Disco Volante. That car was an aerodynamic experimental racer, with a daring shape unlike anything else in the early Fifties.
The original Disco Volante was incredibly limited in its production, and between 1952 and 1953 just five cars were produced. Of those, four were spyders and one a coupe. Sixty years later Touring took a look at the recent 8C Competizione and Spyder and decided it was once again time for Disco. This time though, it would be a road-legal car.
Considered an experimental build, the Disco Volante used the same Maserati-Ferrari 4.7-liter V8 and six-speed auto-manual transmission from the 8C. Touring designed an all-new body for the 8C’s chassis, and completely altered the car’s appearance. Almost every piece from lighting and body panels, to the trim, door mirrors, and roofline were all completely changed.
Interiors for the Disco Volante were not as entirely reworked as the exterior but gained additional trim and Alcantara coated surfaces and other accents that were color-matched to the exterior. Touring also saw fit to replace the Alfa’s seats with a design of their own.
The 181 miles per hour Disco Volante was available in standard coupe and Spyder variants, and Touring’s builds were based on the 8C Competizione and Spyder respectively. Touring produced eight coupes in 2013, but it took them a while to develop the Spyder idea. The Spyder was first shown at Geneva in March of 2016, and production commenced afterward with a total run of seven cars.
Today’s Rare Ride is number four of seven, and is finished in Verde British Racing. It was first registered in 2019, so presumably sat unused for a while after it was built by Touring. Since then, it’s covered almost 10,000 miles. It’s priced by request, but brace yourself.
[Images: seller]
Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.
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7 or 8 cars isn't a "production run".
Beautiful car...I really like the original 50s car...but that would be even more unattainable.