It's synonymous to Alfa Romeo's racing team.


 

The Quadrifoglio is the Italian name for a four-leaf clover and further proof that almost any Italian word sounds like a fast, exclusive sports car one can't afford. It has been used by Alfa since 1923. The first person to put a Quadrifolio shamrock on an Alfa was works race driver Ugo Sivocci.

Sivocci was a talented driver, but always seemed to come in second and never quite caught the breaks he needed to push him that little bit extra. His problem wasn't with his cars or his skill, it had more to do with getting the shaft from:

that eternal asshole, Chance!

And the only way to get on the good side of chance is with a little bit of luck. Which is where the clover comes in. Sivocci, knowing the long-established luck-granting properties of four-leaf clovers (among the highest of all the plants in the leguminous family Fabaceae), decided to paint a white square with a four-leaf clover on the grille of his car for the Targa Florio race.

That painted foliage paid off: Sivocci came in first, and that clover became Alfa's new racing team symbol because, hey, it works. And in a kid's-campout-ghost-story twist, the symbol proved its power in a macabre way a few months later when Sivocci was killed practicing for the Italian GP at Monza in an Alfa P1. Due to time constraints, Sivocci didn't get to paint the clover on the car, and the tragedy cemented Alfa's superstitious commitment to the clover.

I had an Alfa Romeo GTV and one day the wipers failed, just froze mid-screen and would not budge. As I live in Ireland and we are famous for our rain this was a problem. I went to an Alfa Romeo main dealer and the soulless entity behind the counter started typing away on his keyboard. “Sounds like your wiper motor is gone. That motor cannot be had as a single item; it comes as a unit with motor, control unit and lever mechanism all combined". I braced myself against the counter, clenched every cheek in my body and nervously asked “how much?" Without batting an eyelid or any sense of embarrassment he said €950 not including VAT (sales tax @15%)… He then continued that labor was difficult to quantify as it could take between two and six hours, “you're probably looking at around R1500 give or take." I walked out of the shop barely containing the contents of my bladder: R1500 for fixing the wipers! Now I'm not foreign to a set of tools and bruised knuckles so I set about removing the whole assembly which took only 45 minutes. The control box was a sealed non-serviceable black plastic box. With nothing to lose I cut it open and looked into the field that was the motherboard. One of the terminals had a hole where a spike should be: a dry soldered joint is the technical term. I purchased a soldering set for R5 at a local store, pushed the pin back into the hole and re-soldered, and duct taped the box back together. Worked perfectly for the life of the car. Nobody tries to fix things anymore, they just replace an entire assembly.

PS… I forgot to mention R2 for the tape. Total cost of repair R7. Total time spent about two and a half hours including the trip to the shops. A likely saving of R1493.