Who built the Giulias?

[JHertzman@domain.elided]

In AD7-1094 Andrew Watry asks, of Giulia sedans, "But who built the bodies?  
Did Alfa have a production line to weld Giulias together, or did they 
contract the work out to Bertone, Pininfarina, or someone else?
"And I assume that, because Bertone did the restyle on the 1750/2000 Berlina,
they actually built those bodies.  Is that true too?"

The Giulia sedans and the 1750/2000 Berlinas were built entirely by Alfa 
Romeo, as were the Giulietta sedans. Some modification work was farmed-out- 
the Colli wagons being the best known. The only Alfa sedans that I know of 
which were entirely farmed-out were the 2600 De Luxe tipo 106.16, which was 
built in quite small numbers (about fifty cars) by O.S.I. (Officina Stampaggi 
Industriali, in Turin) on the floorpan of the standard 2600 sedan. 

The new plant at Arese came on-line in 1963, and I believe the Giulia GT was 
the first Alfa model built entirely at Arese. The first Giulia sedans were 
apparently built at Portello; about seven thousand were built in 1962, 
against 27,000 in 1963, which were probably mostly built at Arese. I cannot 
speak with certainty about the 2000 and 2600 sedans; their production started 
during the Portello era and ended in the Arese era, and the numbers were not 
large- about 4400 cars, of which about 950 were built after 1962 and thus 
possibly at Arese. The 1900, Giulietta Berlina, Dauphines (tipo AR 1090) and 
R-4s were built at Portello, again with the limited-production variants (the 
Primavera by Boano, Giulietta Promiscua, the Giulietta Limousine) farmed out. 

Pininfarina was the only one of the traditional artisan coachbuilders to 
survive the transformation to a complete industrial production/assembly 
operation; Bertone came closer to making it than Touring did, but the late 
Sprints and Montreals, like the steel-bodied Touring Spiders and the Junior 
Zagatos must have depended heavily on outside pressworks and outside 
assemblers, as many moderate-production cars still do. (Photos of Bertone's 
assembly line in the Grugliasco plant show a mix of Sprints, Sprint Speciales 
and 2600 Sprints, but no Montreals.) Alfa's main business, from the 1900 on, 
was building sedans and near-sedan coupes, and it would have made no sense 
for them to have contracted-out the building of the sedan bodies.

John H.
Raleigh, N.C.

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