For those stylish sports car enthusiasts that are in the know most of Alfa Romeo postwar success can be traced to their stylish Bertone and Zagato coupes. Powered by fast, zippy twin-cam high performance engines they were highly fast as well as attractive.

The last of the Giulia GTV coupes left the production line in 1976, marking the end of a pretty direct line after 20 years, true testimony to the high quality of the original design.

The first Giulietta coupe had been introduced in very limited numbers during 1954 and the range really made its debut at the 1955 Turin Auto Show. Giulettas were small cars designed chiefly to be popular and affordable but also to be versatile enough to be built as practical, indeed dowdy saloons, elegant coupes and even efficient race winners.

At the heart of the Giulietta was a twin engine cam engine essentially that was still in production way into the 1980′s. It marked a return to pre-war Alfa practice in some way, being built in alloy with wet cylinder liners (although with shimmed rather than threaded tappets). It’s slightly under square dimensions of 74 mm x 75 mm resulted in a displacement of a mere 1290 cc from which no less than 80 bhp was extracted at 6300 rpm. Read the rest of this entry »