A herd of GTA

GTA wagging its wheel in the air

A racing start

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Alfa Romeo Giulia GTA

The Alfa Romeo Giulia GTA is one of the legendary Alfa Romeo’s, THE image of late 60’s racing is a GTA hurtling round a corner wagging its front wheel in the air. The GTA however came in a number of forms, there were officially 500 1600 cc cars and 447 1300 cc cars made of which 50 of the 1600 cc cars were right hand drive. However it is not clear how many 1600cc corsa cars were made, while it is known that they made 10 supercharged GTA-SA and 40 of the 1750/2000 GT Am’s, bringing total production to around, say, 1050 cars (some commentators say there may be as many as 1500 cars) most of which were destined to go on the road.

When the GTA was released in 1965 it cost more than an E type Jaguar by a considerable amount and it was nearly £1000 pounds more expensive than a standard Sprint GT so what did you get for your money, well the answer is you got a lot less weight, the A in GTA stands for Alleggrita or lightened and they managed to shave two hundred and five kg off the 1600 to take it down to 745 kg. The major savings in weight were made by changing all the glass except the windscreen to plexiglass, while all the panels except the inner frame, the floor pan and the sills were made of aluminium, but the weight saving did not stop there the wheels were 14 inch Campagnolo alloys, the bell housing, cam cover, crank case cover and the rear gearbox plate were made from magnesium rather than aluminium and a few early Autodelta cars even had a plastic dash!

In the engine department the GTA’s had a twin spark head this was necessary in order to fit larger valves without increasing the period of time it took for the mixture to burn and the distributer was also pretty trick in order to fire two sets of plugs at the same time. In the road cars power was only increased by a marginal 6 bhp but the tune-ability of the engine was huge with the racing cars producing around 170 bhp. The cylinder head also had a narrower valve angle for better breathing, the two cams were brought together and the angle between the valves was reduced from 90º down to 80º on all cars except the 1750/2000 GTAm where it was 45º. The exhaust was also modified and a tubular header was fitted together with a larger bore system, while the gear box ratio’s were changed so that you had a close ratio gear box.

Related Links: Alfa Romeo Giulia GT/GTV Review | Alfa Romeo Giulia GT/GTV Review | Alfa Romeo Giulia GTC Review from the Alfa workshop | Alfa Romeo Giulia GTA SA