1999 Alfa Romeo Bella and 1938 Phantom Corsair

Rust Heinz's Phantom Corsair of 1938 has fascinated me for many years. I've posted about it here (click on its name on the right sidebar for these), and I'm doing it again in the present post.

The reason is that, while skimming through a book I bought dealing with Alfa Romeo models over the years, a photo that caught my eye was of a 1999 show car from Bertone called the Bella -- Italian for Beautiful or in more of a street-talk vein, "Sweetheart." Its Wikipedia entry is here.

My eye was caught because the Bella somehow reminded me of the Corsair.  That might be odd, because the references on the Web to the Bella that I came across only mentioned its design heritage in terms of previous Bertone creations.

True, the cars are 60 years apart and based on the technologies of their times.  Moreover, the details that caused me to make my connection are not identical -- they're only evocatively similar, or so I think.  Still, look at the images below so that you can form your own opinion.

Gallery

The Bella.  Note the designs of the front and the side windows, as these are the key details.

View of the Phantom Corsair when it was fairly new.

The Alfa shield-shaped grille and the Corsair's convergent grill louvers have a similar feeling.  But those louver shapes are strongly echoed by the shapes Bertone used for the Bella's grille-flanking cut-outs both above and below the bumper zone.

Rear ends differ because the Corsair was designed with pre-Kammback automobile aerodynamic concepts in mind.  But the aft part of the side window sharply tapers, as does that of the Bella.