by James Kraus

It would be hard to name a car more quintessentially European or essentially Italian than the Alfa Giulietta in all its permutations.
Alfa Romeo developed an enviable reputation in the 1920’s and 1930’s in the art of designing and manufacturing high performance vehicles of first class quality. Their P2 Grand Prix car won the inaugural World Championship in 1925. The Alfa 158, campaigned for Alfa Romeo by Scuderia Ferrari, won thirty-one of the thirty-five events entered.
This experience was put to good use in the development of the Giulietta. The first model to debut in 1954 was the coupé version, the Sprint. To raise funds in order to tool up to produce the new range, Alfa held a lottery whereby winners would receive new Giulietta Berlinas. Unfortunately, development lagged the projected timeline and when the lottery results were announced, production was still far off. As a stopgap, Alfa arranged with Bertone to build what was meant to be a fairly small run of coupés. Being coachbuilt, these could be brought to market much quicker. The resulting Sprint was first shown at the Turin show in the spring of 1954. It won rave reviews and became a permanent member of the family. In 1955, the Berlina finally arrived and in 1956 the Spider, designed by Pininfarina.
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