The beautiful Giulietta Sprint grew out of a programme by the Italian ‘state industries board’ to help revive the country’s troubled post-World War II economy with the development of a small and popular Alfa Romeo. This was a new market for the performance-minded Milan firm and the industry board helped finance the development of the new 1300cc Giulietta saloon by selling thousands of lottery tickets. Each of the 500 lucky winners was to receive one of the new cars. Embarrassingly, when the date of the prize draw came, none of the cars had yet been completed.
The solution was to find a specialized low-volume coachbuilder to make a special sports version of the car, appease the bond winners and save Alfa Romeo (and the government agency) from scandal. Initially the project went to the Ghia company in Turin and design chief Mario Boano sketched the car. Unfortunately, Ghia could not deliver on time, while Boano was also at loggerheads with his partner, Luigi Segre. Thus the job passed to Nuccio Bertone and the final form of the Giulietta Sprint was refined in plaster, it is said, by Boano, Bertone himself, and his new stylist, Franco Scaglione (1916–93).
The car became a fantastic success, partly because it was neat and lovely, but also because, being Alfa Romeo, the engine department designed a sporting engine – a beautiful aluminium twin-cam jewel that literally sang, giving 80 horsepower at 6,000rpm – a terrific performance for 1954. It remained the basis for Alfa’s smaller engines for decades to come.
The Giulietta Sprint made its debut at the 1954 Turin Motor Show and was a fantastic hit, selling 40,000 units and staying in production for 13 years. The success of this model alone virtually made the Bertone company, which developed a small-scale production line to build it. Bertone himself later remarked, ‘If Alfa Romeo had known that so many Giulietta Sprints were to be built, it certainly would not have commissioned me, but would have built them in its own works at Portello.’
A stopgap that proved a gem. The success of the Giulietta Sprint derived from the tremendous design and craft skills that were on tap in Turin.