The 1939 Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 was a high-performance, six-cylinder car known for its elegant design, featuring a 2.5-liter engine and aerodynamic coachwork. It was the last pre-war model and first post-war offering from Alfa Romeo.
The 150 ci engine made 95hp and redlined at 4,600 rpm.
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini gave an Alfa Romeo to his mistress Clara Petacci as a gift. The pair met at Lake Como and planned to seek asylum in Switzerland. A motorcade they were in, which included a retreating German anti-aircraft unit, was stopped at a roadblock near the town of Dongo on April 27, 1945. The fascist leader and his mistress were both identified before being shot dead and their bodies hung upside down at a petrol station. Petacci’s Alfa Romeo was confiscated and eventually acquired by an American Army Air Corps officer, Major Charles Pettit.
The vehicle was given a new life in 1970 when it was bought by Ron Keno for $300. He was eventually put in touch with Franz Spogler, a former Nazi whose job it had been to drive Petacci and Mussolini towards the end of the war. Letters between the pair convinced Keno that he had the historic car.
In late 1978 the partially restored Alfa Romeo was sold by Keno to collector Donnie Morton, of Connecticut, who ultimately passed it to the Imperial Palace Auto Collection. Staff restored and displayed it as part of their holdings of rare automobiles for the next two decades, until it was sold to another long-term owner in 1999.
A no-expenses-spared restoration followed. The work, which went so far as to recreate replicas of the original dashboard switchgear, took two years and cost a staggering €500k ($625k in 2004).
The 1939 Alfa Romeo 6C2500 achieved a high bid of €1.8 million ($2.1 million) in 2022, but failed to meet its reserve price.
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