Although Alfa Romeo had built Spiders before on the Giulietta and Giulia platform, the Duetto was the first of a line of cars on the new 105 series platform. The new platform was a direct descendent of the previous 101 series platform for the earlier Giulia Spider that it replaced and was shared with the other updated 4 cylinder Alfa Romeos, such as the Giulia Super and the GTV. The first few years of the Spider had a rounded tail and was nicknamed the Duetto after the name was chosen in a contest held in Italy, but could not be officially adopted due to a trademark conflict, leading to he car being officially called the Alfa Romeo Spider 1600. The all aluminum twin-cam Alfa Romeo engine was shared with the other 4 cylinder Alfa Romeos and was later upgraded to 1750cc and then 2 liters, receiving a fuel injection system in 1969 for the North American market in order to meet incoming emissions guidelines. The rounded tail gave way to a truncated Kamm tail in 1970 and the body style persisted to a 4th series until finally ending production in 1993. This Alfa Romeo Spider was originally a battleship grey colour but had been repainted silver by a previous owner; a colour I think suits it quite well. As with all Alfa Romeos of this era, it is a great handling car and the twin cam engine likes to rev freely, with power building into the higher end of the rev range. The manual steering isn’t overly heavy and suspension is superb with good weight balance and the car is very comfortable to drive. It does drive like a sports car and has good performance, especially given the 1.6 liter displacement of its engine. After buying the car, I had to have some minor repairs done to the paintwork where the owner before the last had rubbed the side of the car along the door of his garage and scratched the paint all down one side. Though I could have considered repainting the whole car back to the original colour, as still found in the engine bay, I decided to keep it silver. With a shape based on a aerodynamic study by Pininfarina in the early 1960s, the tail is deceptively long and tapers away from the driver so you have to take care when backing up, but otherwise it is perhaps the most pleasing looking version of the Spider, especially as the earlier cars don’t have bumpers that were required to meet 1970s crash safety standards allowing the lines to stay flowing and elegant.