Words: John Mayhead
In October 1957, an extraordinary Alfa Romeo was unveiled at the Turin Motor Show. The Sprint Speciale was the creation of Franco Scaglione who had created the extraordinary B.A.T. (Berlinetta Aerodinamica Tecnica) Alfa Romeo aerodynamic concept cars over the previous few years, and the route between these and the new production car was unambiguous.
Like the B.A.T cars, the Alfa Romeo Sprint Speciale (SS) had been designed with air resistance, or as little as possible, in mind. Hours had been spent on the Milan-Turin autostrada with a chase car filming a prototype to which hundreds of wool strips were attached, allowing the body to be altered to make it as efficient as possible. The result was a sleek, smooth coupe, initially built in aluminium with plexiglass windows and with an elongated, shark-like nose. Other than its B.A.T. predecessors it looked like very little else on the road, and a combination of a kerb weight under 800kg and Alfa’s perky 1300 (1290cc) twin-cam engine under the bonnet made it extremely quick for the period. Competition use was even discussed, but the Zagato-bodied SZ filled that role so the Alfa Romeo Sprint Speciale was tamed further for road use: by the time the first cars were ready for delivery in mid-1959, the alloy panels had been replaced with steel, glass for plexiglass and the body had been redesigned, including the addition of a front bumper that ended the early ‘low nose’ run. In 1962, the car was updated to the new Giulia spec, in line with Alfa’s other cars. It gained the more powerful 1600 (1570cc) engine, now fed with twin Weber DCOE2s to replace the old DCO3 and various trim and styling tweeks plus, from 1960, disk brakes replaced the old drums. Production officially ended in 1966, but just a single car was built in that year.
The SS had a strange early life and probably should have been more popular than it was. An old employee of Alfa Romeo who had worked at their British headquarters in the 1960s once told me that they were very unpopular with the public as they were more expensive than a Jaguar E-Type and seen as flashy and a little vulgar, and that Alfa had resorted to giving them to their staff as company cars. Sales reflected this: 1366 Giulietta SS and 1400 Giulia SS were built worldwide with just 25 of the latter converted to right-hand drive by Ruddspeed. Time was kind to the SS, and by the early 2010s, values had risen so that top examples of both Giulietta and Giulia were often achieving over £100,000. Values tended to peak in about 2016 before falling but for the past 18 months have remained flat, although the earlier, slightly more elegant Giulietta is around 10 percent higher than the later model. UK Hagerty Price Guide values today for a ‘excellent’ car are £81,700 for the Giulietta SS and £73,900 for the Giulia; early ‘low nose’ cars demand a significant premium.
Personally, I think the SS offers excellent value for money. A very smart 1961 Giulietta SS complete with original toolkit and jack, and eligible for various events sold in early March this year at the Broad Arrows Amelia auction for $114,800 (£85,500) but personally, I’d go for a later car with the 1600 engine and disk brakes. They’re a competent and beautiful coupe, plus they share many of their mechanical parts with their standard Giulia counterparts so are relatively easy to maintain and upgrade. And, that twin-cam engine sounds wonderful. The outlook is fair: although I’m a fan, they may be a little overlooked by younger buyers and finding one for sale may prove to be difficult, especially one of the extremely rare right-hand drive models.
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