ROME – Every now and then there are drafts of good news, to which one wants to cling as if to the lifeboat. The cheering news is that Alfa Romeo has decided to return to the USA, a market it abandoned in 1995 due to the costs to be incurred in adapting to its strict regulations.
It has therefore been 27 years since love for the Milanese brand has been held high only by collectors of historic cars and by their rallies and participation in prestigious events where it is not uncommon for them to be awarded as Best of Show and we hope that the Tonale, chosen for the gran rentrée in its plug-in hybrid version, revives the glories of the Biscione as we all expect.
On the other hand, the fame of the sports brand in the United States comes from afar and one cannot fail to mention the famous joke by Henry Ford:
“When I see an Alfa Romeo go by I take my hat off”.
The film that celebrates the union between America and Alfa Romeo has long since become a legend. It is about The bachelor (The Graduate, 1966) by Mike Nichols, interpreted by the almost debutants, Dustin Hoffmann and Katharine Ross and by the disturbing Anne Bancroft and enlivened by the music of Dave Grusin and Paul Simon interpreted by the duo Simon & Garfunkel (raise your hand if you have never tried to replicate it on his guitar!). Even Richard Dreyfuss is in a boarding schoolboy role, so in his infancy that he’s not even credited in the credits. Film that earned him the Oscar for best director and launched Dustin Hoffmann and the beautiful red Duet into the firmament.
The prototypes of the little Alfa
The love for Alfa Romeos was fueled in the USA by the importer Max Hoffmann, of Viennese origin but naturalized American, so important that he could ask for a model made specifically for that market, as he had already done with other manufacturers such as Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, Austin Healey. Thus was born the Giulietta Spider, a jewel that would never have seen the light of day without the order of the importer.
The prototypes of the small open Alfa were commissioned from various coachbuilders and in the end the choice was reduced between Bertone, who already had the contract for the extremely successful Sprint berlinetta, and Pininfarina. It was the latter who in the end convinced with the model that we all know and the enthusiasm was such as to push Alfa to see it in Europe too where it conquered everyone, Italians in the lead.
Pininfarina had designed an agile and agile sports car, in which the sinuous line of the Lancia Aurelia B24 echoed in more compact dimensions. He was going to challenge the English sports cars that dominated the category, delicious cars like MG, Triumph, Sunbeam, Singer, however old-fashioned with their rigid frames and robust engines but designed before the war. The Giulietta outclassed them all in terms of performance and in terms of beauty there was little to compete with that Italian glamor that oozed sweet life from everyone
i pori.
The adventurous story of the Giulietta lasted about a decade until, in 1962, the baton was taken over by a completely different car: the Giulia. Except for the engine, which was the same light alloy double cam, everything else had changed: chassis, suspension, brakes, 5-speed gearbox. So successful as to outperform the competitors in speed, pick-up, braking, handling and road holding.
The very young Giugiaro, hired by Bertone, was given the task of designing the coupé version, a compact and feline 2+2 that made its debut in 1963 and would arrive through various reincarnations until 1975. For the spider, it was initially thought to get away with cutting the pavilion and retaining the body and interior of Giugiaro’s GT.
Pininfarina’s intuition
The operation, entrusted to the glorious but agonizing Touring coachbuilder, was unsuccessful and production was limited to around a thousand specimens (now highly sought after).
Something new was needed that didn’t seem like a lazy recycling of what was in the house but a novelty worthy of the impact that the Giulia sedan and GT had aroused. The order was entrusted to Pininfarina who was inspired by the very sporty Superflows already presented as dream-cars in various Salons from 1956 to 1960. Those prototypes already had the characteristic so-called “cuttlebone” line that will be typical of the first series of the new Alfa spider even if it will be abandoned from 1969 onwards for a truncated tail model that will accompany it throughout its long career which ended in 1994, after 28 years of uninterrupted service.
Debut at the Geneva Motor Show
It was presented on 10 March 1966 at the 36th Geneva Motor Show and it was a triumph not only for Alfa, but also for Giovanni Battista Pininfarina who had supervised its processing so much that he personally retouched the mask like one of his workers. He would die three weeks later in Lausanne, on April 3, leaving an immense void in the world of cars and industrial design.
The name “Duetto” came out of a prize competition. The Brescian Guidobaldo Trionfi was extracted who was able to collect his white spider at the Portello headquarters from the hands of the president Giuseppe Luraghi on 17 June 1966. This name will almost immediately be banned because the Court of Milan will agree with the confectionery company that has the right ‘exclusive for a snack. Whether abusive or lawful, the name Duetto will remain stuck to her until the end of her career.
The role of Nichols’ Graduate
The worldwide success of Il Laureato helped the sales of the Duetto becoming a sort of status symbol. As Mrs. Braddok (Elizabeth Wilson), mother of Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman), says in the film: «His father bought him an Alfa Romeo. You know what is!?” (His father bought him an Alfa Romeo, do you understand what it is?). The graduate of the title is awarded one of the most desirable objects by 70s kids, but he’s not happy, he almost seems ashamed of it. Maybe he thinks he doesn’t deserve it. Perhaps his antennas perceive the creaks of the world of his parents, the values and bourgeois ambitions on the verge of being swallowed up by the storm of ’68, which began in California where the film is set. However, for Benjamin and the kids of that generation the Alfa Duetto will remain an object of declared desire, a dream that not even the energy crisis of the early 70s will be able to dissolve.
Elia Kazan’s other film
The almost contemporary film in which an Alfa Duetto races is Il Compromesso (The Arrangement, 1969) directed by Elia Kazan, starring Kirk Douglas, Faye Dunaway and Deborah Kerr. Inspired by the director’s novel of the same name, a film that disappointed expectations and contributed to the eclipse of this controversial, award-winning and admired author for his great qualities but little loved because of his behavior during the McCarthy period. He had in fact testified before the commission by spilling the names of colleagues with communist sympathies and had gotten them into such trouble that many lost their jobs.
Orson Welles, who had blatantly despised the denunciation, nonetheless considered him to be a great film and theater director.
In Il Compromesso, Kirk Douglas drives a dazzling white Duetto and decides to solve his excruciating existential crisis by throwing himself in front of a truck. Kirk ends up in the hospital, Duetto in shambles. The alfisti will also have to reproach him for this.