A life dedicated to Alfa Romeo: memories of Helmut Hähn

During his lifetime, Helmut Hähn was not only one of Germany’s oldest Alfa Romeo dealers still in business. Hähn witnessed all the ups and downs of the Milan-based company and was an honorary member of the board of the German Alfa dealer advisory council.

Gerd Schüler (who will soon turn 85) and Jochen Mass (who died on 4 May 2025) began their careers in the Alfa touring cars owned by this true Mannheim native; later, the unforgettable Harald Ertl (who died in a plane crash in 1982) also joined the Hähn team.

Hähn-Zögling Gerd Schüler: Abgeklärt und clever zur Vize-Bergmeisterschaft

Foto: Seufert

All three were part of that wild Mannheim clique of the 1960s, who turned the Eberbach hill climb and all the Hockenheim events organised by their local motorsport club, the MHSTC – practically on their doorstep – into their annual highlight.

Whether in an Alfa Giulia Super TI or an Alfa GTA – with the cars prepared at the Hähn garage, Schüler regularly drifted his way to class victories, looked after by Hähn’s mechanic Jochen Mass.

Mass, for his part, kept pestering his boss until he was finally allowed behind the wheel himself, and from then on delivered a colourful mix of wrecks and victories. Whenever Hähn thought back to his trio of drivers from back then, he would gush: “Schüler drove smoothly, calmly and cleverly; Mass drove wildly and took risks; and Ertl was simply a madman. With those three, I had the best time of my life in motor racing.”

Wilde Anfänge: Jochen Mass 1967 im Hähn-Alfa GTA beim Bergrennen Eberbach

Foto: Seufert

The Alfa team boss could look back on around 120 individual victories, plus a hillclimb title (Schüler/Giulia TI) and a runners-up finish in the championship (Reinhard Stenzel/Alfa GTA). The boss often enjoyed squeezing himself into the cockpits of his cars, but he was clearly better as a tuner and technician.

Hähn always treated racing as a sideline; he preferred to work on the cars after finishing work for the day. During the day, the ordinary customer was king. Hähn was always particularly proud of the fact that he had never had to go into debt and had always lived by the motto: “I can only afford what I can pay for straight away.”

Quite unexpectedly, Hähn reappeared on the racetracks in 2002. He’d been persuaded, after a break from racing of almost 30 years, to enter a car in the then-new Alfa 147 Diesel Cup.

But he strolled through the paddock like a stranger. “I suppose this isn’t really my world any more,” Helmut Hähn observed soberly, “everything is so serious, sometimes hard to understand, and also so hectic and impersonal.”

Only the Alfa Romeo guest marquee brought a smile to his face. “At least here you meet one or two old friends and get something decent to eat and drink as well.”

Following what was, for him, a rather frustrating comeback, he devoted himself solely to restoring all manner of Alfa models and, over time, built up an impressive collection of valuable vintage Alfas.

Incidentally, sport, fitness, holidays and illness were foreign concepts to Helmut Hähn throughout his life. Instead, the three capital A’s – his self-chosen life motto – accompanied Helmut Hähn right up until his death: “Alfa, cars, work.”