Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint, “la fidanzata d’Italia” (‘Italy's girlfriend’) that never gets old

• Unveiled in its Sprint version at the Turin Motor Show on April 21, 1954, the legendary Alfa Romeo Giulietta is now 70 years old. A line that still remains bang up to date, for the palates of true connoisseurs of classic cars
• The Giulietta was a forerunner of the economic boom of the 1960s, Italy’s everlasting “girlfriend” and, above all, the first mass production car at Alfa Romeo’s historic Portello plants in Milan
• The Giulietta ended its highly honored career in 1965, after 11 years studded with sporting triumphs and great commercial performances, including overseas: over 177,000 units produced in total

TURIN, April 22, 2024 – Turning 70 this year, the legendary Alfa Romeo Giulietta – “la fidanzata d’Italia” (‘Italy's girlfriend’) par excellence – is a model that has made automotive history and remains to this day a benchmark for fans of four wheels from all over the world.

In the early 1950s, having recently won two consecutive F1 championships with the Alfetta driven first by Farina then by Fangio in 1950 and 1951, the Milan-based brand wanted to produce a model that could sustain production volumes and appeal to a wider, less elitist audience, without betraying the main features that had already made Alfa Romeo such a success: style, performance, and reliability.

The Alfa Romeo Centro Stile set to work and there was no lack of proposals. Anyway, the winning candidate was developed at Bertone by the unsurpassable Franco Scaglione, the same designer as the almost-contemporary “2000 Sportiva,” the later “Giulietta Sprint Speciale,” and the wonderful 1967 “33 Stradale.”
The upshot was a low-slung car with extremely simple and clean sides, while the rear – with its heavily inclined wraparound rear window – featured two side ‘fins’ that brought dynamism to the whole: even when stationary, the Giulietta seemed to be on the move. Alfa Romeo staff  fell in love with the new  car right away, and two weeks ahead of its launch, a preview was organized in the courtyard at Portello for insiders and authorities: two actors jumped out of a helicopter dressed as Shakespeare’s Romeo and… Juliet.

It was officially unveiled to the public on April 21, 1954 at the Turin Motor Show, in the coupé version only, an unusual occurrence at the time, when the sedan version always came first. The Giulietta Sprint immediately struck a chord, and in the first few days of the Motor Show, around 2,000 orders were collected, a huge number for that time.

Alfa Romeo thus entered a new competitive arena, of high-performance compact coupés, and would set new technical and performance standards that put it leagues ahead of its competitors. The Giulietta’s engine was a 1.3-liter twin-cam four-cylinder (a solution borrowed from racing) made entirely of aluminum based on aeronautics, a field in which Alfa Romeo had long been a benchmark of excellence. It drove the car to a top speed of approximately 170 km/h, a very high speed at that time. In its “Veloce” version, the Sprint also won its class at the 1956 1000 Miglia, as well as countless victories on tracks and roads all over the world.

The Sprint became “Italy's girlfriend,” as one of the first cars to take a woman's name, having quickly won over a public, especially the middle and upper-middle classes who saw it as a symbol of what came to be known as Italy's ‘economic boom.’ When the 100,001st Giulietta sedan rolled off the production lines at the Portello plant, Giulietta Masina (Federico Fellini’s muse) celebrated this major manufacturing milestone in person; it was the first model from the Milan-based automaker to achieve a six-figure volume.
The Sprint was soon joined by several other versions such as the sedan, the legendary Spider that became so successful in the U.S., and the Giulietta SZ with its ‘truncated tail’: from 1954 to 1965, 177,690 Giuliettas were produced in all its variations, testifying to a success and appeal that shows no signs of diminishing despite the passage of time.