These oxygen reviving efforts were followed by somewhat of an anomaly. Elements within the recently acquired Alfa were looking to express that their performance heritage hadn't been complete subsumed beneath the Fiat Heraldic. The concept was to produce a competition car from the road going 75 sedan. Under the direction of Ermanno Cressoni of the Alfa Romeo Design Centro the 75 Evoluzione was developed. Targeted at the FIA Group A specs, it debuted with a 1.7 liter turbo. That great torsion bar front suspension and di Dion rear end chassis was widened and the strengthened. In 1988 the Turin Auto Club revived the Giro d'Italia automobilistico. For this multi day, nation covering event, guaranteed to provide immense Italian promotional benefits, the 75 was further evoluzione'd by Girogio Pianta. First appearing with 335hp, then 400hp. Without going too far up this secondary road here, let's just say it dominated the competition for two years running.
   To continue this impressive reestablishment of Alfa performance tradition, it was decided to develop a finely finished road version. The new Alfa showroom halo car. In a complex inter departmental operation between Centro Stile Alfa, Fiat and Zagato, was developed the SZ. Interestingly the design was not to come from Zagato, as tradition would imply, but from a sketch by Robert Orpon, and a finished design by Antonio Castellana at Centro Stile Fiat. The platform was the Alfa comp car, with a performance enhanced GTV6 engine. Zagato's part was to oversee and manage the limited production run of say, 400 units.  Zagato also reworked and produced the spyder RZ which followed.

Rather grainy frame from the video on the SZ.