Alfa Romeo and Pininfarina

Back in the 1930s, the new Pininfarina company was offered an opportunity to create a Cabriolet type 6C 1750 Gran Sport for Alfa Romeo. This was followed by the Spider Sport Aerodinamico in 1935. For the new post-war Alfa Romeos, Pininfarina began small production runs of special versions. It was very slow at first, just 88 of the Cabriolet type 1900 C Sprint. The real milestone of the 1950s was the worldwide success of the Giulietta Spider, which was designed originally to be exported to the West coast of the United States and then sold all over Europe. It was the legendary success of this model, of which 17,000 were built in the Giulietta version and almost 10,000 in the Giulia version, that changed the future of Pininfarina and indicated its future industrial vocation. This success was matched only by that of the Duetto spider. In its original configuration, the Duetto – made famous by the film “The Graduate” with Dustin Hoffman – was presented at the 1966 Geneva Motor Show: radically revamped and with different names, it continued to be built by Pininfarina until 1993. The Alfa Romeo GTV and Spider, designed by Pininfarina, made their debuts at the 1994 Paris Motor Show; Pininfarina was also responsible for manufacturing from September 2000. In 2003 new versions of both the Spider and the GTV appeared, also designed by Pininfarina. Maintaining the tradition of “open” Alfas designed by Pininfarina, 2006 was the year of the new Alfa Spider (winner of the "Cabrio of the year 2006" title), which is still on the market in its 2008 Model Year version.