PRETTY LITTLE THINGS

With their feisty twin-cam engines and elegant style, the Fiat 1500S and Alfa Giulia Spider brought La Dolce Vita romance to the mainstream

- MARTIN BUCKLEY

On a grey December day in England, an early '60s Italian sports car definitely lifts the mood. It doesn't need to be packing 12, eight or even six cylinders: four good ones will do, particularly when they have two chain-driven overhead camshafts to make them breathe freely, smoothly and deeply. Your day becomes even better when such sophistication comes attached to four or five well-spaced, slick-shifting ratios to make the best use of sweetly responsive torque and redlines of 6000rpm and above.

The beguiling Alfa Romeo Giulia Spider Veloce and Fiat 1500S Cabriolet - both cars styled and built by Pininfarina - summon up every cliché of the era of La Dolce Vita. I almost feel too lumpy and Anglo-Saxon to be quite at ease behind the wheel of either: they were designed to be driven by the slim, tanned and effortlessly good-looking people of the world of 1960s Italian brochures. These were attainable glamour machines, cars for gambolling along the sun-dappled roads of the Riviera or Lake Como that helped sell the dream of the modern Italian lifestyle to the world.

While the Fiat could be mistaken for a variety of pretty contemporary two-seaters, the 750/101-series Alfa Romeo Spider has a shape that encapsulates the essence of everything the marque is about, even today. People with no interest in old cars could identify this jewel-like two-seater as an Alfa Romeo.

With their wind-up windows, decent heaters and hoods that are the work of a moment to erect, both of these compact Italians seem much more civilised than their early '60s British equivalents. That said, it does not do to push such comparisons too far: at £1500 apiece in the UK in 1964, each of this suave duo was roughly double the price of an MGB or a TR4A.