The Giulietta Sprint of 1954 marked Alfa Romeo’s entrance into medium sized car market and it made an ideal basis for a small displacement race car. By 1956, Alfa recognized this fact and released the Giulietta Sprint Veloce. The most potent of these was the Alleggerita version which was stripped down for events like the Mille Miglia and Targa Florio.
The underlining theme for the Giulietta Sprint Veloce was less weight which gave the car its Alleggerita name. The original production car was styled at Bertone who also stripped out the Veloce version for racing. Included were Plexiglas side and rear windows, lightweight bucket seats, rear seat delete, lack of sound deadening, aluminum doors and an aluminum hood.

With a stripped out interior and lightweight components, the car was ready for events like the Mille Miglia and Targa Florio. It also notched up successes in the Coupe des Alpes, the Daytona 3 Hours and the Sebring 12 Hours, collecting nearly 500 wins along the way.

Since the concept of the Alleggerita was quite simple, many cars were transformed by specialist design houses such as Zagato which was the premier coachbuilder for light weight racing cars. These models, known as Sprint Veloce Zagato (SVZ) were a precursor to the dedicated SV model launched in 1961.

It is estimated that Bertone produced from 100 to 200 lightweight Alleggerita models. All start with the serial number 77xxx. Afterwards, as extra supplies of the aluminum components were available, some standard Confortevole models were outfitted with competition parts. Since all these cars were handbuilt, they vary with regard to specification and weight.
Our feature car, finished in dark French blue, finished 11th overall at the 1956 Mille Miglia for Scuderia Ambrosiana. Like many of the cars, the 1300cc engine was tuned by Conrero to produce 130 bhp. This combined with a low weight made an ideal race car. This particular example was restored and debuted at the 2005 Pebble Beach Concours to coincide with the tribute to Alfa Romeo.
Story by Richard Owen for Supercars.net