Robert Opron passed away last month, tragically from complications due to Covid 19. His body of work would certainly warrant significantly more detailed coverage on his illustrious career than I can offer in this column, but I believe a most fitting tribute to his career can be summarized in the 1990 Alfa Romeo SZ, perhaps the most daring and ambitious of his car designs.
Photo: RM Sotheby’s
I’ll never forget the first time I saw an Alfa Romeo SZ in person. I had been working as a professional designer for three years, focusing mostly on automobile design, but also enjoying freelance work in toy and scale model car development. One of my projects was working on a series of Galoob Micro-Machine designs for classic cars. These cars were about 2-inch long and had a spunky squished character; a bit like the “Cars” movie franchise animated vehicles that would appear 20 years later. Having just completed a 300SL Gullwing, a Ferrari 250 GTO, and a Jaguar E-Type in this fashion, when I spotted the full-sized SZ, I thought immediately of the squat designs that I had playfully sculpted for Galoob. Only this was real. Powerful, angry, and proportioned like no other car I had ever seen before, the SZ was instantly memorable.
