During the ​Summer of Love​ , Alfa was arguably making the best cars mass-produced cars in their history up to that time, and their sporting coupe flagship was the 1750 Grand Tourismo Veloce.
This was the latest in a long line of small GT coupe’s starting with the 1954 Giulietta Sprint, sharing its 1300cc engine, unitary platform and suspension with Alfa’s new saloon known as the “ti”. Designed and hand-built by the coachbuilder Bertone, these cars made their mark with class wins in races all over Italy and in the prestigious Mille Miglia.
By 1964, a new coupe emerged using the updated Giulia platform with a 1600 engine. The design came once again from Bertone, with particular input from a young stylist Gigiaro who eventually went on to design the first VW Golf. This car was badged as the ​Giulia Sprint GT ​and with a tweaked engine as the ​GT Veloce.​ These cars are now referred to by enthusiasts as the “step=nose” or Scalino in Italian, because of the little step in the front where the bonnet pivots to open.
In order to be competitive on the race track, Alfa produced the iconic GTA, a lightweight car with an aluminium body and a special cylinder head with bigger valves featuring two spark plugs per cylinder. These cars were phenomenal giant killers in touring-car competitions and are hugely valuable today.
So where did Alfa go from here? With the commercial failure of their large six-cylinder ​2600 Sprint​, it made sense to move the ​Giulia Sprint​ upmarket and increase the engine capacity.
Despite the increase to nearly 1800cc, the new engine was known as the 1750 in recognition of a legendary Alfa from the 1930s. The styling was also facelifted for a more modern look, incorporating the “double headlight” frontal aspect of its discontinued Big brother.
This introduced what’s known as the “flat-nose” series of Bertone Coupes, although in Typical Alfa fashion the ​1300 Junior​ continued with the “step nose” for a few more years.
So here is a car from the second year of production, which happens to be 1969. It’s a concourse correct car in the original shade of silver; no actually it’s in Alfa speak “​Grigio Chiaro Metallico​” or light grey metallic.
Let’s take a walk around the iconic Alfa Romeo 1750 GTV 1969.