1958 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider, 1958 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint, 1962 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint Speciale. It’s an age-old story. Man sees car, man falls in love with car. I’m sure if Shakespeare had been around in the motoring age it would have been the subject of at least one play — perhaps Alfa Romeo and GiuliettaYou don’t get to be a highly sought-after, award-winning architect if you don’t have an eye for form — and clearly Queenstown resident Michael Wyatt has it. What he also has is a fabulous trio of Alfa Romeo Giuliettas, all of them beautiful to behold and excellent examples of automotive form.
There’s a fabulous little Giulietta Spider — the main subject of the photo shoot on these pages — a superb Giulietta Sprint coupe from the same year, and an eye-catching 1962 Giulietta Sprint Speciale currently undergoing restoration.
Michael has owned the Spider for nearly 14 years now, and it certainly hasn’t always been in the pristine condition it is today.
All the body restoration work on the Spider was carried out by Queenstown craftsman Barney Tansley, whose handiwork has featured a number of times in the pages of NZ Classic Car.
The Spider came from the San Diego area in the early ’90s and, according to Barney, “¦it’d had more hits than Elvis Presley.”
Detective work
Tin worm had taken hold in the lower reaches, requiring new inner and outer sills, while the boot also needed to be re-skinned. Other items, such as the doors, weren’t too bad and didn’t need to be replaced. “The body is made up of a whole lot of machine-pressed panels that are then butt-welded together,” Barney explains. “They used a mixture of larger scale manufacturing and hand building.”
There was the usual detective work required to find some of the body trim, including the chromed bronze trims below the doors which were eventually tracked down in the States.Once Barney had prepped the body it was sent off to Queenstown Collision Centre, which applied the brilliant Dodge Viper red, giving real presence to what is a small car.
The mechanical work was put in the hands of Queenstown engine guru Eric Swinbourne — a man who knows Alfas inside out, quite literally, having owned a good number of them himself.
Veloce
At some stage someone has fitted a 1600cc engine in this particular Spider and, while that remains, everything else has been kept as it should be for the car’s original 1300cc specification. Lift the bonnet and the 1600cc twin-cam engine looks right at home — only a real Alfa enthusiast would be able to spot the difference.
“It has been set up to Veloce specifications with twin side-draft Webers,” Eric Swinbourne says. “It produces about 115bhp [86kW].”
Although a little taller, the 1600cc engine only needed to be lowered about 12mm to fit under the bonnet, and it’s canted slightly to allow the twin carbs to clear the chassis rails. The sump is cast to compensate for this, so the bottom sits flat in relation to the rest of the car.
He is also keen to point out all the other nice Alfa mechanical touches, such as the widespread use of alloy suspension parts to keep the weight down and a finned aluminium sump for the diff. Finned brake drums provide more than adequate stopping power. Inside, everything looks as it should, with that usual Italian flair for making something simple look good.
The seats are finished in a thick, stiff black vinyl that was the style of the day, all set off by contrasting red beading. This theme is continued on the floor with red carpet and black rubber mats, which are still available. There’s a simple cluster of three dials with the tachometer top centre; where it should be. The symmetry is maintained by a dial divided into three vectors carrying the oil temperature, water temperature and fuel gauges.
Sure footed
You don’t have to go far to realise just what a lively combination Alfa’s gorgeous little twin-cam engine and a 840kg sports car body make. There is plenty of urge off the line, the engine revs freely, and once you are quickly up to the speed limit the car cruises easily at a little over 3000rpm.
Handling is nimble and sure-footed, and you can imagine whipping along the winding coastal roads of Italy or the French Riviera and tearing over the mountain roads of Sardinia, easily leaving lesser mortals in your wake.
1958 Giulietta Sprint & 1962 Giulietta Sprint Speciale (SS)
You don’t have to dig very far into the history of Michael’s red 1958 Giulietta Sprint to find a well-known name amongst the previous owners — none other than AJ Roycroft, father of motor sport, great and died-in-the-wool Alfa man, Ron Roycroft.
The car was bought new in Naples in 1958 before being imported to New Zealand in 1963.
Eric Swinbourne’s father bought the car from Roycroft Snr in 1967 before it went through a number of owners, and ended up in a very sad state of repair. Fortunately, Eric tracked it down and began the task of rounding up all the parts required for restoration before selling it. The car passed through a number of hands before the restoration work was eventually completed about five years ago by Stephen Grellet, who then sold it to Michael.
At some stage in its life it’d had a 2.0-litre motor wedged into it, but it is now back to its original 1300cc engine. While the family resemblance is unmistakable, with the distinctive, upright Alfa Romeo grille and its little moustache-like vents to each side, when you put them together the differences become much more obvious.
The Spider is not just a roofless Sprint. Bertone designed the coupe, which was released in 1954, while Pininfarina penned the Spider, which was released four years later.
Probably the key difference is the much higher waist-line of the Sprint, done no doubt to provide room, but also to keep a nice sleek, low roofline in a car that is a mere 3980mm long.
Sprint Speciale
Michael’s 1962 Sprint Speciale also shares the mechanical heritage and suspension of its two older siblings.
Michael has owned the car since 1994 and has given it plenty of use over the years, but decided it was time to put it in Barney Tansley’s careful hands.
“I really enjoy driving it — it’s a lot faster than the standard Sprint,” Michael explains. “It produces 100bhp [74.5kW], is fitted with a five-speed ’box and has a more aerodynamic body.”
By way of comparison the standard Sprint has only 60kW (80bhp) and a four-speed ’box.
Michael says the handling is similar in all three of his Giuliettas, although he feels most confident in the SS.
“I always feel I can push it harder. You feel quite confident in it at quite high speed.”
One of the keys to that confidence is the powerful front brakes. Although they are drums they use a three leading shoe arrangement, with wider drums and shoes than either the Sprint or the Spider.
From the outside all three cars do appear roll a bit under hard cornering, but Michael says it doesn’t feel that way on the inside.
“I think they opted to keep the ride supple and comfortable. They are a very civilised car to travel in, and I find I can travel to Christchurch just as quickly and easily as I can in my Alfa 164 or 156.”
A car for the times?
If Italy needed a car to give its post-war psyche a bit of a gee-up, then the Alfa Romeo Giulietta was just the car to do it.
Although it was only a small car by most standards, the unveiling of the Giulietta Sprint at the 1954 Turin Motor Show made a substantial impact. Alfa’s 1900 had already created the expectation of performance and handling, but the Giulietta delivered those qualities in a smaller, more affordable package.
Its sleek styling by Carozzeria Bertone was a modern expression of the automotive form, rather than the simple facelift of a pre-war model. This was no skin-deep makeover either. There was the brand-new 1290cc 48kW (65bhp) twin-cam engine designed by Giuseppe Busso, who had trained as an aviation engine designer. Busso made good use of his training to keep the weight down, with extensive use of aluminium to provide excellent power-to-weight characteristics for the time. Even the gearbox and differential casings were made from aluminium to keep weight down.
Wishbone independent front suspension and coils in the rear endowed the little car with excellent handling to make the best of the brilliant engine and beautiful body — a package capable of 160kph. More than 700 orders were taken during the Turin Motor Show alone — it seemed Alfa had found the right car to capture the imagination of a country about to go fast forward into its first modern economic boom.
Upping the ante
In 1956 Alfa introduced a Veloce model which produced 60kW (80bhp) and a top speed of 170kph — thanks partly to changes to the compression and valve gear with the addition of two Weber carbs.
Use of aluminium body parts and perspex windows contributed to a weight reduction exercise that saw 72kg trimmed from its already diminutive frame, and its kerb weight lowered to just 780kg — a weight saving of about 8.5 per cent. It was built for performance and perform it did, with buyers readily racing the little coupes in events such as the Mille Miglia, Targa Florio and Sestriere Rally. Further power upgrades followed —with 72kW (96bhp) in the 1959 Series II — and in its last form the Sprint Veloce was producing 74.5kW (100bhp), and featured the added benefit of a five-speed ’box.
From two-door to four
Alfa’s four-door version of the Giulietta didn’t break cover until well after the launch of the Sprint. Apparently the main reason for this was that Nuccio Bertone was able to get his workshop’s hand-built coupe bodies into production faster than the Alfa factory could get all the presses and dyes it needed to start producing the four-door.
It’s also worth noting that the unexpected level of demand for the Sprint was the making of Bertone. Having initially built a dozen or so of the two-doors it became clear the company would never meet demand, forcing it to gear-up production, and go from being a moderate-sized company to a world-renowned designer and coachbuilder.
Whatever the reason for the timing of the saloon’s 1955 release, it meant families could have a small, practical car but with that famous Alfa verve. It probably worked out well for Alfa in the publicity stakes, anyway, with the Sprint making much more of a splash than a four-door saloon was likely to make, preparing a now expectant public for the models to come.
Enter the Spider
October 1955, and it was time for the sensuous shape of the Spider to break cover. Affectionately termed ‘the signorina’ by Gian Battista Farina, it used the same floorpan, suspension, engine and transmission as the Sprint, but with a slightly shorter wheelbase.
The little sports car quickly became a star both with the Italian public and car aficionados the world over.
In a new age of Italian glamour, fashion and film making, the Giulietta Spider had a face that fitted perfectly, appearing on the silver screen and as a prop in many television and glossy magazine adverts. It was another huge success for Alfa, with an unexpected level of demand. The Spider did for Pininfarina what the Sprint had done for Bertone, lifting the company into a whole new sphere, and setting it firmly on the path to becoming one of the world’s great styling houses.
The Giulietta Sprint Speciale (SS) and other models
Wind tunnels weren’t in the Alfa Romeo vocabulary at the time Bertone penned the head-turning shape of the Giulietta Sprint Speciale — but it’s hard to see how one could have improved on what was unveiled in 1957. Besides, who needs a wind tunnel when you’ve got the Milan-Turin motorway? Alfa’s solution was to stick dozens of woollen strands all over the car, then photograph and film it as it is driven at speed.
By watching the movement of the tufts in the wind the stylists were able to achieve the car’s wind cheating shape which, coupled with a 74.5kW engine and five-speed ’box, gave the shapely little coupe a 189kph top speed. There was also some re-styling on the way in 1958 for the Giulietta Sprint at the pen of the then Bertone-based Giorgetto Giugiaro that gave the car a timely freshen up.
By this stage most of the famous Italian designers had had their turn with the Giulietta, so it’s not surprising that Elio Zagato got in on the act — initially re-bodying a race-wrecked Sprint Veloce. Alfa Romeo liked what it saw, and 217 Giulietta SZ models and variations were produced.
Even Ferrari body worker Sergio Scaglietti and the Michelotti body shop made one-off racing versions of the Giulietta.
Giulietta grows into Giulia
When Alfa Romeo chose the Monza race track to launch the Giulia Sprint in June 1962, it effectively ended the Giulietta’s eight year run. There was a new 1570cc version of the proven twin cam engine developing 69kW (92bhp), able to push the Sprint to 172kph, as well a range of interior and exterior changes to complete the picture.
It was something of a natural progression in an Italy that was now finding its feet as a modern industrialised nation, and in a world where post-war austerity had been replaced by prosperity, people wanted more. It was time for Giulietta to grow up.
