Alfa Romeo Guiletta Sprint Veloce 750E 2. Series by Bertone
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Automobilhersteller : |
Alfa Romeo |
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Modell: |
Guiletta Sprint Veloce 750E 2. Series by Bertone |
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Jahr: |
1958-1959 |
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Art: |
Coupe |
The 20th of April, 1954 the Sprint debuted at the ‘Salon de Torino’ car show. To generate interest a lottery was held where they were going to give away 50 cars (or was it 200?) to lucky winners. I don’t know that anyone ever received a ‘lottery’ Sprint but I have read that the winners were called but no cars were ready to give away. Public anticipation for the car is said to have been intense. Nuccio Bertone has been quoted as saying that if he had known how many Sprints Bertone would eventually have to build he would not have accepted the contract.
Identical to the Sprint in its general appearance, the Sprint Veloce sport coupe could be identified at a glance by its sliding side windows, intended to reduce weight also by dispending with their winding mechanism. Alfa Romeo had agreed to the appearance of the Bertone logo on the sides of the car, accompanied by the Giulietta Sprint in italics; the Giulietta Sprint Veloce was similarly branded to create a certain reference identity. The 600 lighted Giulietta Sprint Veloce built by April 1958 also had different body interiors in a further attempt to shed weight. During the same period, 200 Sprint Veloces with normal bodies and interiors were produced from the first batch of 6000 Sprints. Most of them had wind-up windows and were called Cprint Veloce “confortevoles”. Another 2095 Sprint Veloces were built after April 1958 before engine`s cubic capacity was increased to 1600cc.
For whatever reason, the lightweight Sprint Veloce was discontinued in 1957. It had to do with a lack of competitiveness against the Zagato Giulietta variants and the imminent launch of the Sprint Speciale among others. The manufacturing inefficiencies required of a special lightweight body separate from the Normales, along with its peculiar trim could be eliminated if they built the Veloce out of a lightly modified Normale body. This is just what they did and the Confortevole was born.
In mid-1959 the Sprint 750B ended its manufacturing run and was replaced by the 10102/10105 Sprint, 10105 was the US designation. The main difference between a 1959 750B and a 1959 10105 is the engine going to a full 101 specification, with the larger head and fuel pump driven off the oil pump/distributor shaft among other changes. Production of the 1300 Giulietta Sprint continued through 1965 but was a trickle through the last few years –probably continued for markets with licensing fee structures based on displacement.
