1966 Alfa Romeo Duetto Spider

The Alfa Romeo 1600 Spider is known as the Duetto but was never officially named the Duetto by Alfa Romeo.  Find this 1966 Alfa Romeo Duetto Spider for sale in Culver City, CA for $46,000 via craigslist. This post is part of DT’s 2016 Birthday Celebration of 100 cars; enjoy the ride!

The story goes like this:  When it came time to name the 1600 Spider, Alfa held a contest and Guidobaldi Trionfi from Brescia was picked as the winner from over 140,000 entries.  Other entries included Gina Lollobrigida, Bardot, Piranha, Acapulco, Shakespeare, Al Capone, Pizza, Stalin, Sputnik, Edelweiss, Gin, Strip, Goal and Hitler (even before the internet).  Sig. Trionfi won a new car for his effort.  Duetto was meant to evoke twin cams, two seats, etc.  Speaking of twin cams, the Duetto is powered by Alfa’s venerable all-aluminum twin cam in its 1600 cc guise fed by twin webers.

It was all set until Volvo got wind of the Duetto name and reminded Alfa that it sold a car called Duet which was always getting mistaken for a two seat sports car.  Or, if that is too logical, there was a cookie manufacturer that had a Duetto cookie and they let Alfa know they held the trademark for Duetto.  I don’t know about you, but I sure get cookies and sports cars mixed up all the time.

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Gianni is Daily Turismo’s Pacific Northwest correspondent.