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Alfa Romeo Spider Series 2

Overview

In 1970 Pininfarina squared off the Spider's long tapering tail, and Alfa Romeo owners have been arguing about it ever since. The Series 2, the coda tronca to Italians and the Kamm tail to everyone else, is the version that did the actual work. It ran thirteen model years and 51,811 cars, and it carried Alfa Romeo's road-going reputation through the decade when emissions rules were strangling everything interesting. Underneath the new back end nothing important changed: the all-alloy twin cam, five speeds when rivals still offered four, disc brakes at every corner, and a body built by Pininfarina rather than by Alfa. What did change kept arriving. The 1779cc car became a 1962cc car in 1971, a rear anti-roll bar took the understeer out, the bumpers grew rubber for America, and in 1980 the SPICA-injected US Spider quietly became the first production car in the world sold with variable valve timing. Series 1 has the shape people photograph. Series 2 is the one that kept the company in the roadster business, and the one almost everybody who has actually owned a Spider has owned.

Distinctions

The defining attributes and collector status that make this car garage-worthy.

Octane Files Select

Renowned for its history, engineering, or cultural weight.

Collectibility scorecard

Rated 1 to 10 on the traits that matter for owning, driving, and holding on to a car like this.

Desirability

6/10

Rarity

4/10

Driving thrill

6/10

Investment trajectory

5/10

Usability

7/10

Ease of restoration

6/10

Cultural impact

6/10

Electronic dependence

Fully analogHeavily electronic

Nothing on a Series 2 needs a computer. European cars run twin sidedraft carburettors, American cars from 1971 to 1981 run SPICA mechanical injection, which is a pump driven off the engine rather than anything electronic, and ignition is a contact-breaker distributor. The one electrical control on the car arrives in 1980, when US Spiders got Alfa's variator, the first variable valve timing fitted to a production car (US patent 4,231,330, developed by Giampaolo Garcea): engine oil pressure advances the inlet camshaft through helical splines, gated by a solenoid that switches in at low revs and out again near the top of the range. That is one rpm switch, not engine management. A European carburettor car of this generation is effectively a 1; the injected US cars and the 1980-on variator put the generation as a whole at 2. Bosch L-Jetronic and anything resembling real electronics arrive with Series 3.

Market data

Demand tier, price trend, and typical values by condition, based on recent sales data.

Demand tier

EntrySolidHighBlue-chip

A dependable market. Well-kept cars hold their value and find ready buyers.

Value trajectory

AppreciatingStableCooling

Values are holding steady. What you pay today is what it's worth tomorrow.

Price by condition

Driver

$10k

Excellent

$20k

Concours

$33k

Series 2 sits at the top of the affordable half of the Spider market and has been flat there for years, which is what makes it a good buy rather than a good investment. classic.com's running average for the series is around $17,600, and roughly four in five cars offered at auction sell, so the market is liquid rather than hot. Hagerty UK values a 1978 2000 Veloce at £13,600 in good condition and £20,900 in excellent, which lines up with what genuinely sorted cars ask in the States once currency is allowed for. The band here describes the volume 2000 Spider Veloce. The 1970 to 1973 Kamm-tail 1750 asks a premium over it, the Juniors sit under it, and the boat-tail Series 1 cars trade in a separate market above it entirely. Two outliers are worth knowing about and then ignoring: a 1972 car rebuilt by Alfaholics as a Spider-R made $175,000 in September 2025, and a 1971 project changed hands for $600. Neither tells you anything about what a real Spider costs.

Values as of August 2026.

Buyer's guide

What anyone seriously considering this car should know first.

Why it's worth it

The Kamm-tail Spider that carried Alfa Romeo through the 1970s, 51,811 cars over thirteen model years

Callout

The 1980 US Spider 2000 was the first production car in the world with variable valve timing

What to watch for

Rust decides it. A Spider is a monocoque, so the sills and floors are the structure rather than trim hanging off it. Lift the carpets first. Damp underlay or rust flakes under the mats means water is getting in past a tired hood, and the floors below have already started. Work outward from the driver's footwell, which usually goes first, then the rockers, the fender arches, the boot floor and the spare wheel well. Take a magnet to the nose. Doors and trim that will not line up mean a shunt somebody hid. Then work out which car you are looking at. The Kamm tail did not reach America until the 1971 model year, because US roundtail production ran on into 1970 and no 1970 model year Spider was sold there at all, so a US car titled 1970 needs explaining. US cars from 1971 to 1981 carry SPICA mechanical injection, excellent set up properly and expensive when it is not, because the people who understand the pump keep retiring. A car wearing Webers may have been fixed or may have been given up on, so ask which. From 1975 the American bumpers are big black rubber items, and 1975 and 1976 cars were 49-state only. Try second gear cold and expect a buzz.

The Story

Driving character

The engine is the whole personality and it is a good one to have. The all-alloy twin cam wants revs, sounds expensive taking them, and pulls with more enthusiasm than 130hp has any business producing, partly because the car weighs so little and partly because Alfa geared it to feel busy. Five speeds in 1970, when a TR6 gave you four. Discs at all four corners, when plenty of rivals still had drums somewhere. The gearbox has manners of its own. The lever is tall, the throw is graceful, and second gear wants an unhurried beat on the way in, a ritual you learn in a week and then perform without noticing you are doing it. Steering is unassisted, light once the car is rolling, and honest about what the front tires are up to. The rear anti-roll bar that arrived around 1971 is the change that matters most from behind the wheel, because it takes the early car's lazy understeer out and leaves the Spider turning in properly. None of it is fast and none of it was ever meant to be. The pleasure is in the working of the thing at legal speeds, elbow on the door, hood down, tachometer swinging.

Design

The Series 2 is the same car with an argument at the back of it. Pininfarina cut the long tapering osso di seppia tail off square, a Kamm tail in aerodynamic theory and a coda tronca in Italian, and the reasons were practical: a shorter car, a usable boot, and a rear end that behaved better at speed than a tail that faded away to nothing. Everything else from 1966 survived intact, the scalloped flanks, the low shield grille, the cockpit proportion that no later Spider improved on. The details are how you date one. The grille lost crossbars, eight becoming five. Door handles went semi-recessed and the wipers stopped interlocking. The screen came back a few degrees and the pedals were rehung from the top. Around 1972 the little pinch in the nose was smoothed away and the number plate lamp moved down into the valance, and the thin plastic steering wheel gave way to a wooden rim with Turbina alloys under the arches. From 1975 America got the big black rubber bumpers, which do the car no favours and which owners have been quietly unbolting ever since.

Motorsport pedigree

Alfa Romeo never raced the Spider itself. That job belonged to the closed 105-series cars, the Autodelta GTAs and GTAms that took European Touring Car titles in 1966, 1967, 1968 and 1970, and the Spider's mechanical pedigree is inherited from them rather than earned on its own bodywork. Worth saying plainly. What the Spider had instead was America. SCCA production-class racing took the model seriously for two decades, and the best known example is Paul Spruell's yellow number 3 car, which contested sixteen SCCA Runoffs and won three E Production national championships over a career running from a factory-backed Sebring debut in 1969 into the late 1980s. Club racing rather than works racing, but a real record and a long one. The Series 2 also owns the only direct Formula One connection in the Spider's history. The 1978 Niki Lauda edition, launched at the Long Beach Grand Prix with Lauda himself driving chassis 001 on the circuit, marked his move to the Brabham Alfa Romeo team and put a grand prix livery and a rear spoiler on a road-going Alfa for the first time.

In culture

The Series 2 inherited a fame it never appeared in. The Graduate came out in 1967 with a boat-tailed Duetto, three years before the tail was cut off, and yet it was the Kamm-tail car that spent the whole of the 1970s collecting the reflected glory. Alfa did nothing to correct the impression. It sold the Spider in the United States for the entire decade largely on the strength of a film that starred the previous body, then made the association official in 1985 by naming an entry trim the Graduate, by which point Series 2 was already finished. So the cultural weight here is not a movie car, it is the ordinary one. This is the Spider Americans actually bought, 22,059 US Iniezione 2000s alone, the small Italian convertible with the odd badge and the wonderful noise that turned up in suburban driveways while Detroit's own sports cars were being smothered by emissions plumbing. And in 1978 Alfa tried the other kind of glamour, painting 350 Spiders in Brabham grand prix colours and handing the first one to Niki Lauda at Long Beach. Neither story is the Duetto's, and both belong to this car.

Rivals

Cars from other manufacturers that competed for the same buyers when new.

Fiat 124 Sport Spider

We haven’t profiled this car yet. Request to add

Porsche 914 1st Gen

Germany·Sports·1969–1976

Triumph TR6

UK·Sports·1969–1976

Owning One

Why collectors want it

Series 2 is where the Spider stops being a design object and starts being a car you buy to drive. The market says so plainly: classic.com's running average for the series sits near $17,600, roughly a third of what a good boat-tail costs, for a car that is quicker, better sorted from 1971 on, and easier to live with. Inside the series there is a real hierarchy. The 1970 to 1973 Kamm-tail 1750 Veloce is the connoisseur's choice at 4,027 cars: chrome bumpers, the pinched nose, the early cabin, wrapped around the engine a lot of people think is the sweetest of the four. The 2000 Spider Veloce is the volume car at 38,379, and a sorted one is the sensible buy. Below both sit the 1300 and 1600 Juniors, lighter and more eager than their reputation and cheap because badge snobbery still applies. The argument for owning one is the argument Alfa made in 1970: a Pininfarina-bodied, twin-cam, five-speed Italian roadster for MGB money. Abundance keeps the price honest, and condition rather than tail shape decides what any given car is worth.

Which one to look for

Rank them by tail first and engine second. The 1750 Spider Veloce of 1970 to 1973 is the one to want: 4,027 cars, the new Kamm tail still wearing chrome bumpers and the pinched nose, the pre-crash-bumper cabin, and the 1779cc engine. It is the connoisseur's compromise, early purity with the stronger motor, and it is priced accordingly. The 2000 Spider Veloce is the one you will actually find: 38,379 built from 1971 to 1982, of which 22,059 went to America as SPICA Iniezione cars. More torque, the rear anti-roll bar that cured the understeer, every part in the catalogue. The Juniors are the underrated ones. 4,557 1300s from 1970 to 1977 and 4,848 1600s from 1972 to 1981, sold without headlamp fairings and with plainer trim, light and eager and cheap because they lack a badge rather than because they lack anything else. Then there is the 1978 Niki Lauda edition, 350 numbered cars in Brabham Formula One red, white and blue with a three-piece fiberglass rear spoiler, launched at the Long Beach Grand Prix with Lauda driving chassis 001 on the circuit.

1750 Spider Veloce · 1970–1973

The first Kamm-tail Spider and the connoisseur's pick of the series. Chrome bumpers, the pinched nose, the pre-crash-bumper cabin, and the 1779cc twin cam at 124 PS. US cars carried SPICA mechanical injection from model year 1971.

2000 Spider Veloce · 1971–1982

The volume Spider and the one most people mean. 1962cc twin cam at 132 PS, SPICA-injected for America as the Iniezione, with the rear anti-roll bar that cured the early car's understeer. From 1980 the US cars carried Alfa's variator, the first variable valve timing in a production car.

Niki Lauda Edition · 1978

Launched at the 1978 Long Beach Grand Prix to mark Lauda joining the Brabham Alfa Romeo Formula One team. Brabham red, white and blue, a three-piece fiberglass rear spoiler wrapping onto the rear quarters, special side badging and a numbered dashboard plaque, over standard 2000 Spider Veloce America mechanicals. Chassis 001 was driven on the circuit by Lauda himself.

Spider 1300 Junior · 1970–1977

The entry Series 2 Spider, 1290cc twin cam at 89 PS, sold without headlamp fairings and with simpler trim. Light, quick-witted and priced below its ability. Gained rear jump seats in 1974.

Spider 1600 Junior · 1972–1981

The 1570cc twin cam back in Junior specification after the Duetto era, at 110 PS, visually identical to the 1300 Junior. A European-market middle path and arguably the best-balanced engine in the range.

What owning one is like

What owners actually report is a car that starts on a Saturday morning for decades. The all-alloy twin cam weeps a little oil as a matter of temperament, and a warm 2.0 showing almost nothing on the oil pressure gauge at idle is normal, while a lit warning lamp is not. Second gear synchro buzzes on a hurried downshift and always has, on healthy gearboxes as well as tired ones, so owners learn to give that lever an unhurried beat inside the first week. Mayonnaise under the filler cap, coolant in the oil, or gear oil on the driveway are the ones that mean money. The SPICA pump has a worse reputation than it deserves. Set up properly it runs beautifully for years and pulls harder than the Weber conversions people fitted in a panic during the 1970s. What it needs is a specialist with the right test bench, and there are fewer of those every year. Electrics are the usual Italian theatre, warning lights flickering from lazy earths until somebody cleans them. Hoods wear, seat bolsters wear, and both are a weekend and a catalogue away. The only thing that costs real money is the thing you checked before you bought it.

Upkeep & parts

This is one of the cheapest Italian classics to keep on the road, and Series 2 is the best supported stretch of the run, because Alfa built 51,811 of them and the specialist trade never went away. Classic Alfa in the UK keeps 105-series parts on the shelf, Alfaholics covers the fast end and the restoration end, and Vick Autosports and the American 105 trade look after the SPICA cars. Mechanical parts, rubber, trim and full rust repair panels are all current production, and the twin cam is a simple, thoroughly documented engine any competent independent can service. Budget for the predictable: a clutch and an exhaust in time, a hood every decade or so, and a gearbox rebuild only if a previous owner was clumsy with second. On a US car the one expense worth planning for is a proper SPICA setup by somebody who knows the pump, which is money that buys back the whole character of the car. Rust repair is the open-ended one, so a dry car saves far more than a cheap purchase price does. The support layer is deep: AROC in the States, the AROC UK 105/115 register, the AlfaBB Spider forum, and the Alfa Spider FAQ, which answers most questions before you think to ask them.