Alfa Romeo has written many of the most important chapters in the history of motoring. The leading players in this story are the cars, the designers, the races and the engines that were the stars of technological progress and motorsport events in the Twentieth Century. This is the common strand that links all Alfa models, a venerable gene pool of engineering features and motifs that are critically reappraised and reinterpreted whenever a new car is created. Now, as then, the Alfa Romeo designers and engineers are working to design and build good looking cars that are full of character, to achieve the elusive balance between reason and sentiment, between engineering culture and design creativity. The finest expression of the inimitable personality that makes a car bearing the Alfa Romeo shield stand out from all others on the roads. And the Alfa GT is no exception.

The new sports coupé is a quintessential example of Alfa's creative vitality and our exclusive understanding of cars. It is no mere means of transport but a car able to give its driver true sensations and break through the confines of necessity to the field of pure emotion: aesthetic taste, a passion for sophisticated engineering, the sheer pleasure of sitting behind the wheel and an expression of one's own personality.

The Alfa GT also succeeds in packing the results of Alfa's superlative engineering heritage into a shape inspired by a sense of style and flair that could only be Italian. The stylists were also able to call on a great Alfa Romeo tradition that has brought us models that, particularly within the GT category, remain benchmarks of their type: from the 1900 SS to the Giulietta Sprint, from the Alfetta to the Giulia Sprint GT.

For the aficionados amongst us, there follows a short summary of these historical cars. Each of these cars has lent a styling detail to the new Alfa GT but all have given it its character of stylish sportiness.

Firstly, the Giulia Sprint GT. Designed in 1963 by Nuccio Bertone and introduced firstly at Arese and then at the Frankfurt Motor Show, this extraordinary coupé is a stylistic development of the Giulietta Sprint. The car is more compact due to its slightly shorter wheelbase and features a penetrating shape hardly interrupted by a bumper outline, with light clusters embedded in the grille and tail end. The Giulia Sprint GT was equipped with a 103 bhp 1600 engine and could carry up to four people. It remained in production until 1966 and sold more than 22,600. The car's roomy passenger compartment, generous luggage compartment and top-quality interior made it a top-class saloon, but with an unsuspected sporty temperament. So much so that the UK magazine Car and Driver wrote: 'Driving this car is sheer enjoyment'. It was no mere chance the famous GTA logo was seen for the first time on a subsequent version of this model. Now we have reached 18 February 1965, the year when Autodelta presented the Giulia Sprint GTA coupé, where A stands for 'alleggerita' or lightened. The outer body was the same as that of the GT, but the interior trim was made out of Peraluman 25, a light alloy of aluminium, manganese, copper and zinc. The new car differed from its sister externally in the addition of front air intakes, handles and the triangular Autodelta badge.

The Alfa GT is truly the heir to this car of the early Sixties that met with such great commercial and sporting success. The same could be said of another two versions of the model: the Giulia saloon TI and the Giulia Super 1600. An advertising slogan of the day said that the TI was the car 'designed by the wind'. The shape was revolutionary: low front enclosed by four headlights, plunging bonnet, a windscreen as small as that of a fighter aircraft and, above all, a cut-off end. The engine was a 1570 cc unit capable of unleashing 92 bhp. Then came the Giulia Super 1600 of 1965, featuring padded, wraparound seats and a facia with a wooden dashboard. The car was also fitted with a chrome strip beneath the doors and stainless steel bumpers. All these trappings disguised considerable power and torque: 98 bhp and 13.3 Nm.

Like the Giulia Sprint GT before it, the new Alfa Romeo model harks back to another prestigious car: the Giulietta Sprint designed by Nuccio Bertone in 1954, the car that many consider to be the forerunner of present-day sporty Gran Turismo cars. A top speed of 165 km/h made it the fastest car in its category. One year later, at the 37th Turin Motor Show, came the turn of the saloon: 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 hundred thousandth Giulietta rolled off the Portello production line in February 1961 in the presence of its godmother, 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.

The third reference point for the new Alfa GT sports coupé was the Alfetta, with which it shares its original styling, whereby a compact external shape conceals optimum passenger room and a luggage compartment measuring more than half a cubic metre. The Alfetta saloon went on sale in 1972 and immediately became an icon of the decade. It owed its success to its excellent design, which combined an appealingly mettlesome style with a lively engine, sophisticated mechanical units and great production quality. The engine was a tried and tested 1.8 twin shaft four cylinder unit of 122 bhp capable of carrying this car, which weighed just over one thousand kg and measured 4.28 metres long, to 180 km/h.

In 1975, the model range was extended to include a version with a 109 bhp 1.6 engine (identifiable from the outside by its front end with just two headlights) while the 1.8 underwent a couple of changes. The Alfetta 2.0 that appeared two years later was something else entirely: the redesigned front end was ten centimetres longer; the headlights had become rectangular and other changes had been made to the grille, bumpers, tail-lights and - naturally - the interior. The facia was more linear (it was also walnut trimmed on the 2000 L from 1978) and the upholstery and door panels were in fine cloth. The steering wheel, seat profile and instruments and controls were also different. The bigger capacity made the car easier to handle and ensured the Alfetta was one of the best balanced cars in its category. After 1979, it also became the first turbodiesel saloon to feature a cylinder head divided into four parts, one per cylinder.

We will close this brief review of cars that inspired the new model with the 1900, in particular the two Sprint and Super Sprint coupé versions that reached a top speed of 190 km/h. Apart from anything else, when Alfa Romeo launched the 1900 in 1950, it invented the 'sports saloon' and the model became the first Alfa with a load-bearing body. The result was, according to a apt slogan of the day, 'the family car that wins races'. Above all, it introduced the idea of a new motoring concept: a high-performing saloon for everyday use. In some ways this four-doored saloon heralded the styling of the Giulietta. It was very roomy inside and could accommodate five people, plus a child on the front seat because the gear-lever was on the steering wheel. This was a family car, yet it came with an effervescent 1884 cc four cylinder in-line engine that offered the driver 90 bhp. This model took Alfa Romeo to success in sporting competitions: the Tour de France, the Targa Florio, the Stella Alpina and the Coupe des Alpes.