THE NEW COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF THE ALFA BADGE Paul Buckley

(Paul Buckley wrote the following article about the Alfa badge for the Italian-cars e-mail list. He asked the members on the list to send him any and all versions of the 'real' story behind the unique Alfa badge and this is what what came out...... Bruce Giller)

Subject: WARNING: Contents fictitious. Use with caution.

Thank you for all of your responses about the Alfa badge. I've synthesized your responses into a succinct history of the badge which I believe both accurately documents the facts and meaningfully interprets their significance. What follows is THE NEW COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF THE ALFA BADGE.

THE NEW COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF THE ALFA BADGE

The Alfa Badge is an adaptation of the arms of the ancient and colorful Italian city of Milano, which is named after a delicious Pepperidge Farm cookie. The badge is divided into two fields. One depicts a serpent chewing on a small red person. The other is a red cross on a white field. These images have their origins in ancient and colorful European history.

The red cross was used as the flag of England during the period before the Crusades, about 5 million BC. Shortly after 5 million BC., probably around the time of the Crusades, England made a union with itself by combining the postal codes of Wessex with those of Northern Ireland, whereupon Saint George decided to name the cross after himself, probably to confuse Biblical scholars who thought that the cross had something to do with the New Testament. The "Cross of Saint George," as it is now known, was later adopted by medical institutions, because it made them think of X-rays.

After the invention of the Crusades by people known as "Crusaders," the Milanese ruling families held a caucus to determine whether they would participate. Membership in the "Crusaders" was only granted to those families who adopted "badges" to identify themselves so that other "Crusaders" wouldn't mistake them for Saracens and feed them to snakes. The Archbishop of Milano maintained a library of diagrams, copied by monks from original service manuals, illustrating proper methods of feeding Saracens to snakes, and based on the logic that such a diagram would be the last thing a Saracen would wear into battle, one of Milano's two ruling families decided to use the biggest diagram they could convince the Archbishop to give them as their badge.

The other ruling family, having already rejected the idea of using a three-pointed star and a horse prancing atop a bow tie, was faced with the obstacle of not having a "badge" at all until an apprentice noticed an abandoned Crusader's shield, bearing Saint George's Cross, at a tram stop. As it turned out, the shield had belonged to one of the millions of English Crusaders who were forced to forfeit the First Round of Crusading because of the Bubonic Plague. The apprentice convinced Crusade officials to disqualify the remaining, healthy English from further participation, on the grounds that they might mistake the serpent on the first ruling family's crest for a mere snake and catapult rocks at them. Thus, the Cross of Saint George was made available for Milano's second ruling family to use.

Shortly after the Crusades, in a period known as The Period Following The Crusades, the Crusades ended. To celebrate, the two ruling families of Milano decided to give Italy to the Austrians, on the condition that Austria would take over the cost of repairing and maintaining Italy. After the Austrians realized that Venice was in Italy, and that it's roads were more than "a little damp," as the Italians had represented, they exclaimed, "Jesus Christ! These repair bills are eating us alive!" and contrived a way of returning Italy to the control of the Italians without seeming ungrateful. They told the Milanese ruling families that they could call themselves "The Powerful Visconti Dukes" if they would just take back their unquestionably elegant but prohibitively costly to maintain nation. The two Milanese ruling families liked the sound of "The Powerful Visconti Dukes" better than "The Family With The Big Snake On Its Castle And The Family With The Red Cross On Its Castle That Causes People To Mistake The Castle For A Hospital," and they accepted the Austrians' terms.

To commemorate the severing of ties with Italy, the Austrians built the Alps, which soon became a popular tourist attraction for the "nouveau riche" nobility of Milano, but only after "The Powerful Visconti Dukes" discovered that the two emblems of their constituent families, when fastened together, made an excellent toboggan. "The Powerful Visconti Dukes" decided to call their special toboggan a "Sforza" because of the sound it made when it hit a rock.

During the War of 1812, which pitted the Milanese against the Venetians, "The Powerful Visconti Dukes" formed the "Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili," whose primary duty, in spite of its name, was to build submarines. ALFA was given the badge of the "Sforza" toboggan surrounded by the "submariners' knot," a knot formed by shaping a piece of rope into a wavy line. Unfortunately, the Venetians were far more advanced than the Milanese in the area of maritime combat. The Milanese had counted on their ALFA submersibles to give them a distinct advantage in the watery battlefields of Venice, but they were surprised to discover that the Venetians, in anticipation of a submarine attack, had cleverly equipped their entire city to sink below the surface of the water, where it could meet the enemy directly. The Milanese disadvantage was compounded by the discovery that the "submariners' knot" was frustratingly ineffective, in spite of a mammoth research and development budget. The Venetians immediately sank the entire fleet of ALFA submarines, but in an ironic twist of fate, they were forced to surrender to the Milanese anyway, because they couldn't get their city out of the water.

Scientists still aren't sure when the ALFA submarines first began crawling back out of the canals to evolve into air-breathing, land- dwelling ALFAs, but fossil evidence suggests that it predates the emergence of land-dwelling Acuras by nearly a century. In keeping with the tradition of "The Powerful Visconti Dukes," these new ALFAs were entered in Alpine Toboggan races, resulting in a championship in 1910 that inspired the addition of the Alpine Trumpet to the ALFA badge. It wasn't until 1920 -- when a decorated W.W.I flying ace named Nicola Romeo pointed out the functional seeming wheels and generally automobile-like shape of the ALFAs -- that they were recognized as cars and disqualified from further Alpine competition. ALFA was forced to remove the Alpine Trumpet from their badge, but they replaced it, in a brilliant gesture of defiance that is impossible to translate, with an ashtray over the serpent's head.

During W.W.II, shortages and rationing forced "The Powerful Visconti Dukes" to discontinue their use of scarce adhesives to affix their badges to their ALFAs, and they resorted to tying them on with laurel wreaths. The small, stylized wreath in use on the badge today is supposed to function as a back-up badge affixing system should the adhesive, which has been in abundant supply since the end of the war, fail. The effectiveness of this system has never been accurately tested.

The badge has remained relatively unchanged since about 1950, but its size has "yo-yo-ed" up and down in order to retain favorable weight distribution of the various cars to which it has been affixed.

Currently, an arbitration panel is reviewing the Toboggan Championship of 1910 to determine whether the Alpine Trumpet should be restored to the badge, although purists have argued that the Trumpet never made sense anyway, because no serpent has ever been observed playing an Alpine Trumpet without first dropping the Saracen in its mouth.

It is important that we recognize the long, rich heritage of this most treasured of emblems, keeping it sacred in our hearts, and, above all, insuring that the true history is not forgotten.

Paul Buckley Los Angeles

Capital page

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1996