It was supposed to go into production, but never came. We did get the Spider
You think 2021 is a bit of a sad year, but 1991 wasn’t that much better. We had Operation Desert Storm, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the death of Freddie Mercury. Pretty depressed. Still, there was a bright red glimmer of hope in the form of the Alfa Romeo Proteo, a concept car unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show.
The concept is based on Alfa’s venerable sedan, the 164, which appears to have been sawn off the center. In terms of styling, it has the daring wedge shape of the brutal SZ and its RZ roadster brother, but softer to make it a little more acceptable to the human eye. The Alfa Romeo Proteo features an elegantly ascending waistline, fronted by the SZ’s signature triple headlights, at the end of a subtly extended bonnet.
He does look like the Spider
Knowledgeable Alfa fans will no doubt see similarities with the Alfa Romeo Spider launched in 1995. The Alfa Romeo Proteo was designed by Walter de Silva, then head of Alfa’s Centro Stile, the company’s design center. The new style had already been introduced before De Silva started working at Alfa, but with the Proteo Walter left his mark on the new design language of the brand.
Then-Alfa boss Giovanni Battista Razelli told an excited press that the Proteo was production-ready, and that it would be made in a limited run of 2,000 cars. But in the end they didn’t get past three prototypes. So sad times.
How did it go with the Alfa Romeo Proteo?
Well, the Proteo doesn’t have many special details, except that it is an Alfa from the nineties. The hardtop roof that folds into the body was a novelty. That had already been shown before, but it was only in 1996 – with the Mercedes SLK – that it really became a trend.
Inside, the Alfa Romeo Proteo is the exact opposite of what you’d expect from a wacky concept car. It has a rather sober interior that can be called a bit boring, especially for a brand like Alfa. But yes, it was production ready, remember, and then concept cars often have a realistic interior. The instrument panel and dials are familiar to anyone who knows Alfas from the past 40 years. Includes a dashboard decorated with buttons as the basis for an ergonomic nightmare.
The engine of the Alfa Romeo Proteo
Under the hood is Alfa’s delightful, charismatic 3.0-litre V6 petrol engine. And the Proteo has four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering for extra grip and handling. The engine produces 256 hp and takes the car to a top speed of 250 km/h. All features that could have made this model a hit. A big hit even, just perhaps a bit expensive.
If you want to see an Alfa Romeo Proteo: one of the prototypes is in the Alfa Romeo museum in Milan. And if you’d like to have something similar to it yourself, you can always carve up your 1995 Spider a bit and spray paint it in Rosso Proteo. Meh, bad idea. Thanks for nothing, 1991.
