by Ross Finlay (19 May 04)

For all the fine-looking cars that have been introduced since 1954, there are very few able to match the elegance of line of the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint. Given a budget for a 1.3-litre car in which to do a spot of historic rallying, I'd be hard put to choose between that and a Lancia Fulvia Coupé, but the Giulietta would win every time as the one to be seen around in, although I'd insist on a post-1957 model with a floor-mounted gear lever rather than one of the earlier cars with a column change.

The basic design was Alfa Romeo's own, but the final touches were applied by Bertone, which effectively hand-built the first 12 cars (the complete 1954 production) after the launch at the Turin Show. That was when Nuccio Bertone was operating out of a bodyshop rather than, as his firm does now, a proper factory, and there wasn't the remotest chance of keeping up with orders - Alfa Romeo took more than 700 during the show itself, which was rather a shock, since it originally intended the coupé to be nothing more than a show-goers' warm-up for the following year's Giulietta saloon.

Eventually, of course, the Sprint was built in considerable numbers for the European and (in a somewhat different form) American markets. By the time production officially ended in 1962, 24,084 Sprints had been built, plus 3058 examples of the Sprint Veloce, 1252 of the Sprint Speciale and a couple of hundred of other more rarefied versions. "Officially ended", because Alfa Romeo actually put the Sprint briefly back into production, without the Giulietta name, for a final run of 1800 in 1964 and 1965.

Apart from the charming bodywork, the Giulietta Sprint was quite a performer for its size and time. The original version had a 1290cc engine in lightweight aluminium (for the first time in a volume-produced car, the same material being used for the gearbox and diff casings) which turned out a power output of 65bhp and a top speed of 103mph, while the Series II introduced in 1959 offered 80bhp and 106mph.

The Giulietta name seems so suitable that it's curious Alfa Romeo folklore offers two quite different reasons for its use. One is that the name (Romeo's Juliet, for original-language Shakespeare buffs, of course) was suggested by the wife of an Italian poet. The other is that, during the Paris Show in 1950, seven Alfa Romeo directors plus their Grand Prix driver Jean-Pierre Wimille went to a nightclub, and were greeted by a Russian prince with the question, "You are eight Romeos without even one Giulietta?" The directors remembered the incident when it came to naming the 1954 car.

The Russian prince thing makes that by far the better story, no?

I once won a rally in a Giulietta Sprint, the only outright competition victory I know of for one of these cars in my neck of the woods, although there's something of the Russian prince angle about this story too.

The event was a daylight mixture of mild navigation and manoeuvring tests, organised by a one-make club which allowed other makes into its competitions, but arranged the classes so that even two-seater hardtops of the "home" make were lumped in with far less agile saloons in a closed-car category.

When my friend and I won outright, regardless of any class considerations - the club concerned, to make its identity clear, had Berkshire connections and favoured an octagonal badge - the fact that an Alfa Romeo had won didn't go down overwhelmingly well.

Over the years, I have mentioned this victory from time to time, saying that, of course, I owed it all to my friend in the left-hand seat. This gained me a reputation for being quite a sportsman - "How good of him to give the benefit to his navigator!"

I can't remember if I always pointed out that the Giulietta Sprint was available only with left-hand drive, so that he was driving and did all the real work, while I fiddled about with maps and watches.

Possibly not.

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