CarBrandLogos archive · Alfa Romeo · 1954

Alfa RomeoGiulietta

The car that turned a maker of expensive exotics into a real manufacturer.

Photo: JOHN LLOYD · CC BY 2.0

The story

A defining chapter in Alfa Romeo history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Alfa Romeo Giulietta, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

1956 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider - Flickr - The Car Spy

Origins

Alfa Romeo entered the 1950s with a reputation far larger than its business. The 1900 had introduced mass production; the Giulietta, launched in 1954, made it pay.

1956 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider - Flickr - The Car Spy · The Car Spy · CC BY 2.0

Design and engineering

The order of events was odd. Alfa had run a lottery to raise money and owed cars to the winners, so the Bertone-built Sprint coupe - drawn by Franco Scaglione, low and beautifully resolved - reached the public first, in 1954, ahead of the four-door Berlina it was supposedly derived from. The Pinin Farina Spider followed in 1955, and later came the Sprint Speciale and the aluminium-bodied SZ from Zagato.

1956 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider - Flickr - The Car Spy · The Car Spy · CC BY 2.0

1960 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Berlina Normale f R

In production

The engineering underneath was the real achievement: a 1.3-litre twin-cam four with an aluminium block and hemispherical combustion chambers, an engine of a type normally reserved for competition, mounted in a light unitary body driving the rear wheels through a four-speed gearbox. It gave a small family saloon a specific output and an appetite for revs that nothing else near the price could approach, and the basic architecture of that engine stayed in production for decades afterwards.

1960 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Berlina Normale f R · Mr.choppers · CC BY-SA 3.0

Legacy

The Giulietta set the pattern Alfa Romeo would follow for thirty years - ordinary bodywork, extraordinary engine, and a chassis set up by people who clearly enjoyed driving - and it sold in numbers the company had never previously managed, with assembly reaching as far as South Africa. It also made Alfa Romeo a fixture of Italian life rather than a maker of cars for the rich.

Chapter 5

Production ran to 1965, when the Giulia took over with a larger version of the same engine in a body shaped in a wind tunnel. Sprints and Spiders are now expensive, but the Berlina remains the most instructive of the family: a modest four-door saloon that was engineered as though it mattered.

At a glance

The facts that define it.

Produced

1954–1965

Engine

1.3&nbsp

Body

4-door Sedan

Technical specification

The Giulietta, in detail.

Production: 1954–1965
Class: Family car
Body style: 4-door Sedan (car); Saloon; Roadster (automobile); Roadster (Spider); 2+2 (car body style); 2+2 coupé (Sprint); 2-seater coupé (SS, SZ)
Layout: Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive
Engine: 1.3 L Twin Cam I4 (petrol)
Transmission: 4-speed manual; 5-speed manual (SS and SZ)
Designer: Franco Scaglione at Gruppo Bertone; Bertone (Sprint, Sprint Speciale); Pinin Farina (Spider); Ercole Spada at Zagato (SZ)
Assembly: Italy: Portello (district of Milan); Portello, Milan (Berlina) ; Grugliasco (Sprint, Bertone) ; San Giorgio Canavese (Spider, Pinin Farina) ; South Africa: East London, Eastern Cape; East London (Car Distributors Assembl
Manufacturer: Alfa Romeo