Alfa Romeo Spider

The shape took a decade to arrive. Aldo Brovarone's Superflow concepts, the first shown in 1956 on the chassis of a retired 6C 3000 CM racer, tried the rounded nose and scalloped flanks first; the open Super Sport of 1959 added the rounded tail; and the 1966 production car distilled all of it under Battista Pininfarina's personal eye, with Franco Martinengo directing the studio. Italians called the result osso di seppia, the cuttlefish bone, for the long tapering tail. That tail lasted only until 1969. The Kamm-tail Series 2 of 1970 cut it square for luggage space and aerodynamic fashion, and the design then aged in public: rubber bumpers arrived for America in the mid-seventies, the 1983 Aerodinamica cars added a black rubber nose, sills and a ducktail spoiler, and the 1990 Series 4 stripped the add-ons away again with body-color bumpers and a cleaner face. Collectors argue the series endlessly, but the fundamentals under every one, the scalloped sides, the low shield grille, the perfect cockpit proportion, are pure 1966. Few designs have survived 27 years of updates with their identity so intact.

The Spider was never Alfa Romeo's race car; that work belonged to its closed 105-series sibling, the GTA, which Autodelta developed into the dominant touring car of its era and which took European Touring Car Championship titles in 1966, 1967 and 1968. The Spider's pedigree is inherited rather than earned on its own bodywork, and it is worth being honest about that. What it inherited, though, is the whole toolkit: the same twin cam engine architecture, the same all-synchro five-speed, the same suspension thinking that made the coupes so effective. That shared hardware is why Spiders have spent decades as approachable club racers and vintage rally entries; the parts are proven, the limits are friendly, and the engine takes tuning the way the GTA's did. Anyone who wants championship glory in the family album should buy the coupe. Anyone who wants the same mechanical education with the sky overhead buys the Spider.

Few cars owe as much to a single film. In The Graduate of 1967, Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin Braddock frets his way up and down California in a red boat-tail Duetto to a Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack, and the Spider became shorthand for restless, sun-struck youth in the American imagination. Alfa never let the association go; when it needed an entry-level US trim in 1985 it simply called the car the Graduate, and sold it that way until 1990. The car was born famous anyway. More than 100,000 people entered Alfa's naming contest, a Brescian named Guidobaldo Trionfi won with Duetto, and a court handed the name to a Pavesi chocolate snack that had registered it first, giving the Spider the rare distinction of a nickname it was legally forbidden to wear. For the American launch, Alfa shipped three Spiders in the red, white and green of the Italian flag across the Atlantic aboard the liner Raffaello, with the European jet set along for the cruise. The car has been playing the charming Italian abroad ever since.

The hierarchy starts at the tail. The 1966–1967 boat-tail Spider 1600, the Duetto proper, is the grail at 6,324 cars, and the roundtail 1750 Veloce that followed is quicker and rarer still, with 2,500 European and 2,000 American cars in the factory accounting. The Kamm-tail 1750 of 1970–1973 is the connoisseur's compromise, 4,027 built, early purity with the stronger engine. The 2000 Spider Veloce is the volume car, 38,379 across 1971–1982, and the sensible buy. The 1300 and 1600 Juniors are the light, sweet, underrated ones. Series 3 brought the Quadrifoglio Verde, 2,598 cars with skirts and spoilers, and the US-only Graduate, an entry trim with steel wheels and vinyl seats named for the movie. The 1978 Niki Lauda edition, a run specialist literature puts at 350, marks Lauda joining the Brabham Alfa Romeo F1 effort. Series 4 closes the line as the cleanest modern car, and the 190 numbered 1994 Commemorative Editions are the full stop. Buy the tail shape you love; below the boat tails, condition matters far more than badge.

A Spider's problems are the honest kind that show up on inspection rather than by ambush. The body is the money: these are monocoque cars, so corrosion in the floors, rockers, arches and spare tire well is structural business, and keeping the car dry is the single most valuable thing an owner does. The drivetrain is famously robust by comparison. The alloy twin cam seeps a little oil as a matter of personality, second gear synchros buzz on hurried shifts and always have, and neither habit signals trouble. SPICA injection has a reputation it does not quite deserve; set up by a competent specialist it runs beautifully for years, and the real issue is that such specialists keep retiring. Later cars trade that for occasional electrical theatre, warning lights flickering from lazy ground connections until someone cleans them. Soft tops wear, seat bolsters wear, and both are replaceable without drama. What owners actually report is a car that starts, drives and charms on a weekly basis for decades, provided the tin worm was dealt with before they arrived.