There’s a passage in the book The Immortal 2.9 that describes a drive in this very car back in the mid-1960s. A previous owner, Bill Summers, was on his way to hillclimb the now invaluable machine at Prescott, and running a little late…

‘I drove flat out down the A41 at Gailey – covering the remaining miles to the M50 in a little under 20 minutes, the needle steady at 120 most of the way… The handling was very exciting with a tendency to lose the back end although, if brave, one could startle the populace and put up unbelievable cross-country times.’
Funnily enough the author of The Immortal 2.9, Simon Moore, experienced a passenger ride in the same car only a couple of years later, this time with then-new owner Lord Doune, on the edge of the Scottish Highlands.

‘My lasting memory of the ride was going north on the Stirling to Doune Road, passing car after car at about 100mph. There was no need to sound the horn or flash the lights; the scream from the blowers at that speed could be heard three or four cars ahead.’

What a machine! These 8C 2900s were truly special, and driving them hard was exactly what they were designed for. Of the 40-ish built, many were raced, and 2900s won the Mille Miglia a record four times. It’s unlikely that any 2900 was treated gently; long-time Bristol Cars proprietor Tony Crook once famously claimed that his own 2900 had been timed at 132mph.

This particular 2900, chassis 412022, has had its fair share of action too. But, in the soft light of Pebble Beach this year – in the special 8C class, organised by Simon Moore – it looked serenely beautiful, a study in graceful, swooping lines. In the strangely rarefied atmosphere it would have been all too easy to view this
8C 2900B Spider as simply a particularly fine example of the pre-war coachbuilder’s art.

The famous Monterey fog isn’t even thinking about lifting when we first set eyes on this gorgeous machine, and the grass around it is glistening with early morning dew, while directly behind it the pale grey sea washes in and out, oblivious to the rapidly building excitement on the links. Set in a line of 8Cs, some so startingly red that they seem to glow in the damp air, 412022 looks almost apologetically subtle in its original grey with red leather interior – exactly how it looked when it was one of the stars of the 1938
London Motor Show at Olympia.

Owner William ‘Chip’ Connor is on hand. He’s not just a regular at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Ήlégance but a regular winner, and he’s even been here before with this lovely Alfa Romeo.

‘I’ve owned it for ten years now,’ he explains, ‘and I first entered it here at Pebble Beach in 2002. It won its class back then but I’ve driven it more than 4000 miles since – this car is made for driving.’

For us, the driving will come a few days later, when the hubbub of Pebble Beach has died down. For now, we’re happy just to look; to peer into the spotless interior, to admire every angle of the bodywork, and the chassis below it, and of course to stand in awe of that phenomenal engine.

It is genuinely a grand prix design, a straight-eight monster with twin superchargers, gear-driven double overhead camshafts and a pair of updraught Weber carburettors – the work of fΪted engineer Vittorio Jano, who had been persuaded to move from Fiat to Alfa Romeo by Enzo Ferrari, then a works driver with Alfa.
Jano’s first work for Alfa Romeo was the P2 grand prix car,

which won the World Championship in 1925. In 1930, having by then designed the 6C 1500 road car, Jano came up with his now-legendary straight-eight engine, the 8C 2300; more competition success followed and the quest to stay on top of the game saw this straight-eight enlarged for still more power. And so came the 8C 2900, with a power output of around 180bhp, and the capacity for further tuning to take it to 220bhp.

Linked to this was a strong four-speed non-synchromesh transaxle, a combined gearbox and differential unit mounted at the rear for best possible weight distribution; all this in a chassis that, in an era of channel sections and longitudinal leaf springs, is boxed for strength and independently sprung on coils at the front and a transverse leaf spring at the rear, with hydraulic and friction dampers keeping both ends in check.
There was no more technically advanced road car in the era  than the 8C 2900, and those elite few customers who were able to buy one naturally demanded the very best when it came to clothing their new machine.

The majority of 2900s were bodied by Carrozzeria Touring, helped along by its proximity in Milan to the Alfa factory, personal connections – Touring was formed when two lawyers, Felice Bianchi Anderloni and Gaetano Ponzoni, bought into Vittorio Ascari’s existing bodyshop, and Vittorio was the brother of Alfa works driver Alberto Ascari – and the company’s newly developed Superleggera construction, first demonstrated on an Alfa 8C 2300 in 1937, only a year before this 2900 was built.

Having initially licensed the Weymann system of construction, which reduced the usual creaking between the joints associated with wooden body frames, Touring then moved away from wood framing altogether. Instead, it produced a latticework of small-diameter steel tubing that combined to make a strong, lightweight and curiously beautiful support for the aluminium body panels. This was the famed – and patented – Superleggera method.

In fact, Touring ended up bodying 23 of the 8C 2900s in all, 17 of them Spiders. Chassis 412022 was the second Spider built on the long-wheelbase Lungo chassis, and as such it’s subtly different from the cars that followed, most obviously in the shorter gap between the doors and the rear wings.

The long swooping lines of Felice Bianchi Anderloni’s designs at Touring were developed with an eye on the early science of airflow, to the point that felt strips were attached to the bodywork and the car photographed in motion. It’s fair to assume that Anderloni’s neat treatment of the faired-in front grille, the swooping wings, the rear spats and the long tapering tail would have been influenced heavily by thoughts of streamlining.

But it’s in the detailing that this 2900 really shows its quality. Even the bumpers, so often tacked on as afterthoughts, are blended beautifully into the bodywork, and closer inspection shows them to be exquisitely formed panels that cover substantial tubing behind. Their aluminium facings match the aluminium of the long trim strips down the sides of the car, the running board finishers and the filler cap.

 The interior is even better, topped as it is by the beautifully cut screen and side glasses, and decorated by the most wonderfully sculpted Bakelite fittings – though the metal clasps atop the pockets in the doortrims take the honours for elegance.  

Over the years various extra instruments and fittings had found their way into this gorgeous interior, while the bodywork had been painted in the inevitable red, so how refreshing to see it in its original grey with red interior, just as it was delivered to UK dealer Thompson and Taylor Ltd to be displayed on its stand at the Motor Show. As what’s often gauchely referred to as ‘the first supercar’, any 8C 2900 would have made a serious impact at that show, but Britain had bigger things on its mind in late 1938 and 412022 remained unsold.

It was stashed away at Thompson and Taylor’s storage facilities at Brooklands and there it remained until the end of the war, when it was finally sold (for £3000). Over the following decade it passed through several owners, one of whom was Jack Bartlett, who removed rear spats, bumpers and spotlights, probably in a quest for improved performance when he entered 412022 into the Brighton Speed Trials.

Later the car passed to Nigel Mann, who explained to Simon Moore that ‘we chopped up the back to make it look like a short chassis...’ Photographs from the period show the newly stubby tail descending more vertically from at least halfway down the boot, so that the rear number plate sits almost upright and the wings lose the beauty of their teardrop shape. The lack of bumpers accentuates the problem; it’s not a happy look.