Alfa Romeo Spider Design

Published: 21st February 2007

Alfa Romeo Spider

Derived from Giorgetto Giugiaro’s multiple award-winning Alfa Brera design, the new Alfa Spider was developed by Pininfarina in collaboration with Alfa Romeo Centro Stile at Arese, Milan, and is assembled in Pininfarina’s San Giorgio Canavese plant in Turin. It was voted Cabrio of the Year by the Comite Cabriolet at the 2006 Geneva Motorshow.

Alfa Spider history

On Saturday 27 May last year, over 130 of the most beautiful open-topped Alfa Romeos ever built travelled from Villa San Carlo Borromeo, Senago, to the Piazza del Duomo in Milan, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of perhaps the most famous Alfa Spider of them all, the legendary Duetto.

This tribute to an alliance which combined the genius of Alfa Romeo engineering with Italy’s unparalleled coachbuilding pedigree, charted a near century-long success story, which began with the company’s first open-topped vehicle, the Alfa 24 HP, in 1910.

Early Alfa Romeos produced at Casa del Portello, such as the 40-60 HP, 20-30 ES and RL, became synonymous with motor racing at the Targa Florio, Brescia, Modena and Parma. And the impeccable 1500 and 1750 cc powerplants of engineers such as Merosi and Jano, allied to the coachbuilding artistry of Zagato and Touring, allowed Alfa Romeo to achieve rapid motor racing pre-eminence and iconic status amongst the motoring public throughout the world.

The English speaking world came to describe these streamlined, high-performance, open-topped cars as ‘speeders’, a name which quickly became ‘corrupted’ into ‘spiders’.

Throughout the 1930s, the cutting-edge engineering and styling of these cars underwent further refinement. The engines were upgraded to eight cylinders, their

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