15.09.2004 As its 50th anniversary year starts to wind to an end, the iconic Giulietta will be proundly displayed on Alfa Romeo's stand next week in Paris

Alfa Romeo organised an International Gathering of Alfa Romeo collectors and aficionados to mark the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the Giulietta.

The event was held between 15 May and 30 June 2004 and involved more than 350,000 visitors.

Now as the car's 50th anniversary year starts to wind to an end, the iconic Giulietta will be displayed on Alfa Romeo's stand next week in Paris.

It fulfilled three main aims: celebrate Alfa's tradition, which is linked to an important period in the history of Italy, its manners and its rebirth, highlight its present great vitality and emphasise the wealth of new designs about to arrive in the imminent future.

By celebrating 50 years of the Giulietta, Alfa Romeo are, first and foremost, reclaiming the engineering and professional heritage that has helped to write so many memorable pages of motoring history. One of these is devoted to a car called 'Giulietta', a name suggested by Madame De Cousandier, wife to the poet Leonardo Sinisgalli.

The model, created under the general guidance of Francesco Quaroni and the industrial management of Rudolf Hruska, with the technical responsibility of Orazio Satta and Giuseppe Busso for engine aspects, soon won renown as a blend of high tech Alfa Romeo engineering packed into just 1300cc. It was May 1954, when the car, designed by Nuccio Bertone, was presented to the press at the historic headquarters of Portello before making its official début at the Turin Motor Show in a two-seater version called Sprint.

Alfa commissioned just one thousand units from the Turin body specialist, not dreaming that more than 700 orders would be taken during the Motor Show alone. This incredible success was to mark the future of both companies. From that moment on, Bertone made the leap from bodyshop to manufacturer while Alfa Romeo consolidated a trend that it would develop in the future: collaboration between in-house design centres and external body stylists.

In the Fifties, Alfa Romeo began to produce standard production models. It aimed to achieve a two-fold objective: introduce assembly line production and capitalise on its sporting triumphs by introducing a high performance product. It was a period of intense and happy creativity: production of the 6C 2500 cars was drawing to an end and the 1900 introduced the features requested by an ever more demanding market, while the 159 cars won the World Championship in 1950 and 1951.

At this point a car was needed that would guarantee a boost to Alfa production volumes: enter the Giulietta. In designing it the engineers managed to achieve a marriage of leading edge mechanicals with manufacturing economies, employing refined components like the light alloy twin shaft engine and a suspension system similar to that which had already conferred on the 1900 exceptional roadholding qualities.

Even now, 50 years later, the car's shape immediately suggests sportiness: determination, smooth tapering lines and Italian elegance. It is no mere chance that the Giulietta Sprint is considered the forerunner of all present-day Gran Turismo cars. Its success was confirmed by the sales: from 1954 to 1965, nearly 40,000 units of the Giulietta Sprint were manufactured with the 1290 cc engine and, in the Giulia Sprint version of 1963, with the 1570 cc unit.

In 1955, the turn of the saloon came at the 37th Turin Motor Show: 1290 cc cylinder capacity, 53 bhp and 140 km/h top speed (rising to 62 bhp and 145 km/h in 1962). Nothing could beat it in its market category at the time and motorists knew it. For about ten years, the Giulietta - in the form of the Sprint, Saloon and Spider - continued to exert the same appeal and increased Alfa Romeo sales from tens of thousands of units to hundreds of thousands.

The one hundred thousand and first Giulietta rolled off the Portello production line in February 1961 in the presence of its honorary godmother, the actress Giulietta Masina. Although its cylinder capacity and dimensions were small, the model deserves a place in the history of Alfa Romeo sports saloons for the way it was able to interpret the contemporary motoring zeitgeist: the uncluttered, appealing lines of a coupé, state-of-the-art mechanical units, power and roadholding.

It is worth remembering that - apart from Bertone's Giulietta Sprint and the Giulietta Saloon - the model developed in other directions such as the Giulietta Spider, a masterpiece by Pininfarina that won public acclaim for its mechanical attributes and for the understated elegance of its line. 1959 saw the advent of the Sprint Speciale by Bertone and the SZ by Zagato, both decidedly sporty cars. Suffice it to say that the Giulietta SS, produced on the short wheelbase floorpan made for the Spider version, was equipped with a 1290 cc power unit tuned to develop 100 bhp that powered the coupé to a top speed of 200 km/h.