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Alfa Romeo Spider
Alfa Romeo introduced the Spider in 1966. It was the Italian answer to the popularity of British roadsters. Eventually, it became globally popular and the Alfa Romeo model with the longest production run. They initially called it the Duetto. They built the Spider on Alfa’s 105 sedan-coupe base with a Pininfarina-designed body, all alloy twin cam engines and rear wheel drive.
During the late 60’s, the Spider became popular after the movie, The Graduate, where the famous actor, Dustin Hoffman, drove a red one. While the rest of the roadsters vanished from the American market, Alfa managed to sell Spiders all the way up to 1994. This just shows how popular this car was in the U.S. The engine choices ranged from 1.3 to 2.0-liter four-cylinder engines with 105 to 130 HP. Earlier cars had carburetors and later models had fuel injection systems.
Alfa made over 124,000 of those elegant Spiders, selling most of them in the states. The final model year is 1994, so there were four generations of this model. Although they kept the same mechanical layout, they updated the design details, bumpers and lights. For less than $20,000, you can pretend to be the young Dustin Hoffman, but pay attention to rust issues since those classic Alfa Spiders were rust-prone.