Alfasud

In 1967, Alfa Romeo's President Giuseppe Luraghi had come up with a plan on behalf of IRI, the postwar state-run Industrial Reconstruction Institute: it envisioned the creation of a new factory in Pomigliano d'Arco as a means of generating more jobs in the south of the country, where the industrial structures were weak. When Alfa Romeo President Giuseppe Luraghi made Rudolf Hruska responsible for the Alfasud project, discovering a lack of resources in Arese, the engineer found himself looking for an outsourced party to manage almost the entire order.

Hruska decided to place a number of orders relating to the concept and planning of the future factory in Pomigliano with Giugiaro's young Turin-based company, which was expected to coordinate its work with an Alfa Romeo office opened in the same city. These orders mainly concerned manufacturing methods, value analysis, and the construction of prototypes, but styling, model planning, and model making were also needed. The whole project was directly supervised by Hruska.

For the new compact front-wheel-drive car, Hruska had already finalized the overall dimensions, mechanical elements, luggage space, weight, and production costs, and these parameters could no longer be changed. Hruska's enthusiasm for motor racing was well known, and not surprisingly he kept a close eye on the aerodynamics of the new "berlinetta." It was not until much later that the Alfasud's anticipation of many future design trends became evident. The aerodynamics were convincing, as was the extremely generous interior space and the surprising boot luggage capacity.

Giugiaro is still very fond of Alfasud today: it's the first car he followed from A to Z; so it wasn't just a styling exercise like the ones he had created up until then, but rather a car to be invented and transformed, on his own, and accompanied to the assembly line.

With two- and four-door body styles, the Alfasud was first exhibited in Naples and then at the 1971 Turin Motor Show. The TI version followed in 1973 and the Alfasud Giardinetta (a station wagon) in 1975. The Alfasud Sprint Coupe was launched at the Paris show in 1976. The Spider, however, a highly interesting Giugiaro design, never reached series production. 900,000 cars in this model line were built between 1972 and 1984.