Romeo's Sweet Giulia

Deep down, even the most Milquetoast driver occasionally imagines himself a Juan Fangio or Jimmy Clark, shifting down for the Curva Grande at Monza or roaring onto the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans. Few automakers play on this fancy so successfully as Milan's Alfa-Romeo. An ad for the sporty Giulia GT model, for instance, shows a father strapping on a crash helmet while his wife and child prepare to climb in. "The family car that wins races," proclaims the ad. Thanks to its fast cars and fanciful advertising, Alfa-Romeo is pulling ahead in the Italian auto market. The company, while a distant second to mass-producing Fiat, last year turned out 60,262 cars, an 8% increase over 1964. Sales were up 10% to $200 million.

Wind Design. To enlarge its market, Alfa-Romeo last month began producing a light Giulia 1300 TI (for Turismo Internazionale). Priced in Italy at $2,270, the four-passenger car is not quite the cheapest Alfa-Romeo. For several years, the company has had a plainer, less well-padded Giulia 1300 on the market at $2,080. The new 1300 TI model, with a more powerful engine and stylish interior, is calculated to appeal to customers who want comfort and speed at a moderate price.

This latest Giulia joins a line of 14 other models, many of which can be described by one poetic company slogan: "The Wind Designed Them." Under the wind-blown look are engines that can leave most other cars far behind.* The expensive 2600 SZ model (price $6,695) speeds up to 131 m.p.h. Most other Alfa-Romeos easily top 100 m.p.h.; the somewhat sedate Ghilias are modestly rated at "over 96 m.p.h."

Alfa-Romeo's performance delights the Italian government, which owns 90% of the company's 45 million shares through Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale, the government holding company which also controls the jets of Alitalia, the luxury ships of the Italian Line and the nation's telephone and radio-TV networks. After suffering from indifferent sales early in the 1960s Alfa-Romeo has been revived largely by President Giuseppe Luraghi, 60. A onetime IRI executive, Luraghi was put in the driver's seat to balance speed and wind designing with cost accounting, marketing and long-range planning. Like many of his competitors in the U.S. and Europe, he sees world automaking as a pyramid, with expensive Rolls-Royces and Ferraris at the top, and U.S. and European mass-produced cars at the bottom. In between there is a growing and superbly profitable specialty market for flashy family sports cars like Ford's Thunderbird, Britain's Jaguar--and his own Alfa-Romeo.

Bigger Overseas. Luraghi also argues that the future of European automaking depends on exports. Alfa-Romeo last year exported 23% of its cars but sent only 1,500 to the U.S. To increase those totals, the company has invested $90 million to build a modern factory at Arese, just outside Milan. Luraghi expects to double output in seven years by turning out cars that appeal to the everyday driver whose Fangio instincts are stirred by a six-speed manual gearshift and easy acceleration to 100 m.p.h.

* One Alfa-Romeo that failed to do the job: the car in which Benito Mussolini and his mistress tried, unsuccessfully, to escape Italian partisans in 1945.

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