For some of us of a certain age, at least in North America, our first exposure to Alfa Romeo was probably seeing one on the screen, likely The Graduate, the 1967 now-classic dramedy starring a young Dustin Hoffman and his character’s 1600 Duetto Spider. Personally, I was too busy immersing myself in the minutia that was Detroit’s wild and wonderful muscle car era to pay much attention to funky looking Italian sports cars — other than Ferraris, naturally.

It wasn’t until I began reading the works of Ken Purdy, one of the pre-eminent automotive writers of the 1950s and 1960s, that I began to develop an appreciation for the storied European marques, the great races — Monaco, Nürburgring, Le Mans, the Mille Miglia and the Targa Florio — and the dangerous, oftentimes deadly, world of motorsports.