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The Biography of Elvira Ruocco
(by Elvira Ruocco)
Chapter 3
MS. RUOCCO STRUGGLING WITH PHOTOCOPIES
(IT'S PORTELLO TIME)
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Two years of an unforgettable experience
I was no longer alone in the morning on that train which brought me to the Bullona; I got friendly with three colleagues from Saronno working at the Servicing Management: Renata, Angela and Ennio, a very nice boy who raised the spirits by just looking at him. Always cheerful, he was an expert in funny stories and he could tell jokes as few people can. Hence, the compartment where we sat down got full of students who joined us just to hear him and laugh fit to burst. On the way from the Bullona to Gattamelata Street, we used to talk about our experiences and stopped to have a coffee. At the office everything was thriving both from the professional and from the human point of view. During the breaks I used to take a turn in the School shed where the Alfasud and Alfetta engines were revving on the dyno bench and where one could breathe an enthusiastic air for the new saloon car that was officially presented in Trieste in the month of May, 1972, meeting soon a universal admiration. The School could be defined as a small scale factory because all the departments were represented there, there were even a small painting bay. All this was charming me, I was impressed by the industriousness of the insiders and by the atmosphere of great serenity and professionalism that flourished there.
I remember that I followed curious the fitting out of an Alfetta which was prepared for the Cape to Cape Challenge and which I saw again in some photographic pictures which illustrated the various preparation phases thereof, when, almost ten years later, I was given the task of re-organizing the Alfa Romeo's Historic Documentation Centre. Another touching memory is when, during a prize-giving luncheon, I saw some racing car drivers close to, amidst whom were Andrea De Adamich and Teodoro Zeccoli. I can assert unafraid of being contradicted that I was one of the first women to set foot in the Balocco track. On such occasion, I succeeded in feeling the thrill of high speed aboard a 2000 GT Veloce driven by Sir Messaggi, head of the Reception Office.
At the end of 1973, the big oil crisis broke out with sky-high fuel prices and pleas for conservation to drivers, with the prohibition from using cars on Sundays and the introduction of alternate license plate day circulation. Those were dramatic years also for Alfa Romeo due to the loss of important personalities and to the exacerbation of social unrests. Giuseppe Luraghi, the Alfa President since 1961 ("the man who invented the Giulietta"), left Alfa Romeo and was replaced by Ermanno Guani, whose running was defined "a bathing governance", since he also was in turn replaced by Gaetano Cortesi at the end of 1974. In the same year, on the 23rd of March precisely, Orazio Satta Puliga passed away, the design engineer bound for a long time to the most beautiful cars which made the Alfa Romeo great. After his decease, other design engineers left the company at the height of the oil crisis: the great motor engineer Giuseppe Busso, the design engineers Gianpaolo Garcea and Livio Nicolis and the technical manager Eng. Ponte di Pino. For me too a desired, quite unavoidable change was approaching, for family reasons: I sought an interview from the Personnel Direction to be transferred to Arese.
...stay tuned!
Elvira Ruocco
MS. RUOCCO WITH THE RACING DRIVER GIACOMELLI DURING A DINNER WITH ALFISTI IN SWITZERLAND, 2003
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All the multimedia materials and the texts present in this page cannot be reproduced in any way
without the explicit permit of authors and/or owners of the contents. In particular, this applies
with reference to texts and pictures of Ms. Elvira Ruocco
and of the Alfa Romeo Historic Archive
who explicitly authorized the AlfaSport Club for publication.
Translation by Fabio Grandi
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