Alfa Romeo Spider Convertible Review
There have been several different Alfa Romeo Spiders over the years, but the longest running design was the beautiful star of the 1967 film, The Graduate, (also staring Dustin Hofman, Anne Bancroft and Katharine Ross) The original 1966 car was called the "Duetto" Spider and had a 1600cc engine, but the name Duetto was dropped due to Alfa Romeo being sued by a food manufacturer who made a biscuit of the same name.
The Alfa Romeo Spider was designed and manufactured by Pininfarina in Grugliasco Italy from 1966 to 1993 and its longevity was due to the combination the classic design and its association with the equally classic film; some later cars for the US market were even called "The Graduate".
The 2000 Veloce was the highest performance of the spiders with a top-speed of 125 mph and 0-60mph in less than 9.0 seconds, but all of them had the beautiful, punchy four-cylinder twin camshaft alloy engine, which sounded like it was going far faster.
The Spider was in production, with very few major changes, for longer than almost any other car (with obvious classic exceptions such as the Beetle), with a production run of over 25 years. The Porsche 911 has been produced for much longer and is still going strong, but back in the early 1970 had similar power and specifications to the Spider, whereas now the 911 has several times as much power. At the end of its run, the Alfa was little changed, apart from cosmetically, from the original.
There are a few variants. The original Duetto quickly became known just as the Spider, meaning convertible sports car. The name Spider comes from sporty Italian horse-drawn carriages, on which the young boy-racers of the day installed tall thin wheels, so they would ride higher and avoid getting splashed with mud; from a distance, these looked like spiders.
A cheaper variant came out later, with a 1300cc engine, called the Junior, and the engine of the Spider grew to 1750cc then 2000cc. Early cars had carburetors, later replaced with fuel injection and less power, to meet the US emissions laws. The early Series One cars had what is now called a "boat-tail" which was long and elegant, but prone to accident damage and rust so later Series 2 cars including all of the 2000cc cars, had a cut-off, shorter tail, which is more practical. Other variations were the replacement of the beautiful chrome bumpers with plastic, covering the chrome grill. Later the bumpers were restyled for the series 3 cars and a plastic spoiler attached to the boot (trunk) This later model is also called the Aerodinamica or "Duck Tail Spider" was made from 1982 until 1989 and while the plastic bumpers did detract from the original classic shape did allow this very special car to continue in production until the restyled Series 4 came out for the last few years until 1993. These rather unattractive add-ons were replaced with modern painted plastic bumpers and the spoiler removed.
I have owned two of these wonderful convertibles: a1975 Series 2 Alfa Romeo Spider with chrome bumpers and a short "Kamm" tail and a1985 Series 3 "Graduate" Spider with plastic bumpers and a spoiler on the boot. These cars show their age, when compared to similar modern sports cars, with performance and handling that may have been considered very good in 1966, but seems somewhat poor by modern standards, but the fact that this design lasted so long is a testament to how ahead of it’s time it was and the beautiful classic character from the 1960’s shines through even on the less attractive variants of the car.
