This 1991 Alfa concept is the high-tech roadster you never knew you wanted

Mamma mia, this is the Alfa Romeo Proteo concept, which was revealed at the Geneva motor show way back in 1991. A high point in a miserable year notable for Operation Desert Storm, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the death of Freddie Mercury.

This is a good question – the concept itself was based on Alfa’s 164 saloon, with a bit chopped out of the middle. Styling-wise, it appears to take the wedge-tastic shapes of the SZ and its roadster sibling and make them a smidge more acceptable for the human eye. The Proteo is curvier, has an elegant rising beltline and squirrels the SZ’s square triple lights up front behind an extended bonnet. 

Keen-eyed Alfa fans will no doubt have spotted the further similarities between the Proteo and the Alfa Romeo GTV and its Spider spin-off, which arrived on the scene in the mid Nineties. Funnily enough, work had already started on that car before the Proteo was put together, so you could see this concept car as laying the groundwork for Alfa’s new look. 

The Proteo was designed by Walter de Silva, who was head of the company’s ‘Centro Stile’ at the time. That’s their design centre, by the way, they didn’t just take a punt on the guy who ran the factory canteen. De Silva later went to Seat and infused that company’s cars with Iberian passion, before bringing some emotion to Audi’s design language in the early Noughties. Clearly an expressive fellow. The joy was then sucked out of him as the Volkswagen Group’s head of design between 2007 and 2015. He’s now 70 and designs women’s shoes, so there.

There’s nothing particularly wacky about the Proteo, other than the fact it’s an early Nineties Alfa Romeo, although the disappearing hardtop roof was a particular novelty back in 1991. A few cranks had tried out the mechanism in the brief history of the car, but it wasn’t until 1996’s Mercedes SLK that the modern craze for coupe-cabriolets started – the Proteo was clearly onto something, even if Alfa never managed to make it work. 

The Proteo was the very opposite of the crazy concept car inside – you might even call it a touch sober for an Alfa Romeo. The instrument panel looks familiar, and the dials on the central part of the dashboard remain a familiar trope at the firm.

The rest of the dash is liberally festooned with buttons, a marvellously Italian layout that would render it almost impossible to use anything safely on the move. 

The Proteo got Alfa’s delightfully charismatic 3.0-litre V6 petrol unit nicked from the oddball SZ coupe, the engine a production version of a powerplant the company took racing in the Alfa-6 during the Eighties.

The front-engine, four-wheel-drive set-up was also of note – a cabriolet you could drive through winter, how useful. The car also featured four-wheel steering (before it was cool) for added agility. The engine produced 256bhp and took the car to a top speed of 155mph, which no doubt you would have needed the roof up for. 

This is a very good question, because Alfa boss Giovanni Battista Razelli said at the time that the concept car was production ready, announcing that it would go into a limited production run of 2,000 cars. But they only managed three prototypes. Was the tech too complex? Did they decide that the simpler, cheaper to build Spider would do the trick instead? Seems like we all missed out.

One of the three prototype cars is at the Alfa Romeo museum in Arese, Milan. The other two? Who knows. Of course, if you fancied the look of the Proteo, without y’know, being able to drive the Proteo, then Alfa offered the same shed of red as the concept as an option for a number of years afterward – look out for ‘Rosso Proteo’.