names galore -

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

In AD8-0098 Willem Roos asks "Does anyone know the meaning of the
meanings/origins of the names "Guilietta", "Guilia", etc. Also, where does the
acronym GTV come from (Gran Turismo Veloce, Gran Turismo V6?). I'm also
interested to know the origin/meaning of other model acronyms that most car
makers use (GTI, GL, CSL etc)."

 Dean Cains has given an excellent answer, and many others have added. I will
throw in what I had already started -

 If I wanted to be snippy (which I don't really) I would say that the origins
of the names "Guilietta", "Guilia", etc., lie in careless reading and/or
typewriting. Giulia (with an 'iu', not a 'ui') is simply the Italian spelling
of the English Julia, which is the feminine form of Julius or Julio, which was
a familiar given name in the Latin language; cf Julius Caesar (Gaius Julius
Caesar, who established the Julian calendar, essentially the one we use with
modifications today, and after whom the month July is named). The diminutive
of Julia is, in English, Juliet, who in Shakespeare's well-know
romantic/tragic play fell in love with a young man named Romeo. Romeo was also
the surname of an Italian industrialist who bought the Anonima Lombarda
Fabbrica Automobili (A.L.F.A., or ALFA) during the First World War. Most (but
not quite all) of the cars that Nicola Romeo's company built were called Alfa
Romeos; (their first GP car was the GPR, Gran Premio Romeo) but some of the
other machinery, including air compressors and trucks, were called Romeos, and
the truck (or van) which Alfa Romeo started building in the early fifties was
called a Romeo, probably named after the prewar trucks. That truck, a
front-engined front wheel drive vehicle slightly larger than a Volkswagen van,
was the first product powered by a new DOHC alloy-block engine which Alfa
Romeo was planning on also using in a new small car. There are various
accounts of a joking conversation in which somebody suggested that since the
truck was called Romeo the car could be called Juliet, which in Italian is
Giulietta, and the name stuck. The only other part of the truck which was used
on the car is the cheap stamped steel grill which was used on the early
Giulietta Sprint coupes. Since Juliet (or Giulietta) is simply the diminutive
of Julia (or Giulia) it was logical that the enlarged Giulietta should be
called a Giulia.

 Russ Neely's suggestion (in 8-100) that "Giulietta was the name of one of
Nicola Romeo's daughters.  It translates as 'little jewel.'  Giulia is jewel
or Julie in english" is one I had not heard before. Nicola Romeo and his wife
Donna Angelina did have seven children, four boys and three girls, one of whom
was indeed named Giulietta, but the operation of his companies was taken away
from him in 1925 and his formal ties with the company were broken in 1928; it
was a very bitter parting, and he never rode in his Alfa Romeo, a G1, after
1925, and died in 1938. It was not until nearly fifty years after his death
that the rift between his family and the company was broken. The connection of
the model name with his family seems doubtful, and the connection of Giulietta
with the Italian word for jewel, gioia, seems equally doubtful.

 On the GTV/GTV-6 question "Gran Turismo Veloce" is certainly correct but the
suggestion that there is a reference to the V-6 engine layout is not; the
double meaning may have been appreciated but the V-6 engine appeared first in
a sedan which was simply called the Alfa 6 (commonly referred to as the Alfa
Sei, but Alfa called it the Alfa 6, not the Alfa V-6), and the GTV remained in
production with the four alongside the GTV 6; and Alfa usually, if not always,
left a space but not a hyphen (GTV 6, not GTV6 or GTV-6).

 On the other model names, in the early days of motoring it was common to
designate models by numbers, usually related to nominal (or taxable)
horsepower, which usually had more to do with engine dimensions than power
developed, or by letters, sometimes spelled out; Lancia built an Alfa (the
name of the Italian letter 'A') before Alfa did, but early Alfas included the
ES (the 'S' standing for Sport), the G1 and G2, and the RL and RM, with the
'R' in both cases referring to Romeo. With the RL the company started naming
sub-types, the RL, RL Normale, RL Turismo, RL Sport, RL Super Sport and the RL
Targa Florio which is commonly called the RL-TF. The G.P.R. (Gran Premio
Romeo) was also called the P1 (perhaps following the L and the M) leading to
the P2 and P3; there was a Tipo A GP car following the P2, which led to the P3
also being called the Tipo B, followed then by the Tipo C. The naming systems
were somewhat extemporaneous, seldom rigidly constrained by what had gone
before.

 With Jano's cars the basic model designation became cylinders and
displacement, 6C 1500, 6C 1750, 6C 2300, etc, followed by subtype names-
Normale, Sport, Super Sport, Gran Sport, Turismo, and in 1930 Gran Turismo,
sometimes amplified with chassis length as Corto or Lungo, then occasionally
by the name of an event, as the 6C 2300 Gran Turismo "Pescara" or the 6C 2300
B "Mille Miglia", Coachbuilders gave further names to their bodies, which Alfa
did with a factory-built body, the Freccia d'Oro, on the 6C 2500 Sport in
1946, but that was the only such non-descriptive name prior to the Giulietta.

 Much of the model naming by initials in the postwar period follows from the
regulations which evolved for, and from, the Mille Miglia. Originally in the
Mille Miglia cars were classed simply by displacement, then adding a class for
utility cars in 1930 and classes for unsupercharged cars and closed cars in
1931, eventually winding up with nineteen classes in five major groups so that
there were class victories by an Isetta, a Citroen 2CV, and a Renault 4CV. The
1935 race was infamous for having two monoposto Grand Prix cars running with
fenders, headlights, and very thin drivers and codrivers sharing a crowded
cockpit, and after that regulations evolved centering mainly on Sports cars (=
almost anything goes), touring cars (production road cars with limited
modifications) and grand touring cars (again, mainly production cars with less
tight limits on space and numbers produced and modifications allowed) and many
variants of these categories were used in club events in the fifties- turismo,
turismo normale, turismo de serie, turismo preparato, turismo speciale - but a
consensus standard evolved which was adopted internationally for production
car racing in Europe, both for sedans and for GTs. In 1953 Alfa prepared over
five hundred (the minimum number to qualify) of the new 1900 Berlinas to make
the most of the defined category "Turismo Internazionale" (two sidedraft carbs
instead of a single downdraft, raised compression, more valve overlap, less
restrictive exhaust) and sold them to competition-minded amateurs as the 1900
T.I. From there the TI initials, upper case and lower case, with and without
periods, were applied both to such limited-production racing sedans and to
higher-performance versions of production sedans with no specific competition
objectives. There had been 598 1900 T.I.s, 485 1900 T.I. Supers, 504 Giulia
T.I. Supers, and over ninety-two thousand of the two Alfasud ti models, as
well as 144,000 Giulia 1300 T.I.s. From there manufacturers took their license
to assemble initials to mean anything they wished

 On the fresh sub-controversy about the meaning of GTZ, all I have to go on
are Fusi, d'Amico & Tabucchi, and Marcelo Minerbi. Minerbi, who wrote a very
thorough book on the SZ and TZ, never calls it a GTZ and never says anything
which would support the "Gran Turismo Zagato" suggestion. D' Amico & Tabucchi
list the car as the Giulia TZ but say "Originally baptized as the G.T.Z. (Gran
Turismo Zagato) this model soon became known as the TZ (Tubolare Zagato)", the
first and only time I have read the Gran Turismo Zagato name in print. Fusi
calls it "The Giulia TZ (Tubolare Zagato)".  If (big IF) there is solid
evidence that it was originally called the "Gran Turismo Zagato", so be it,
but it is not more of a Gran Turisimo than the 1900 SZ, SVZ, SZ, and 2600 SZ
were, so I don't see why it might have been called that. In any case, d'Amico
& Tabucchi say it soon became known as what Fusi calls it, the Tubolare Zagato
or TZ, and that is good enough for me.

 Finally, thanks to Maurice Alain Jean de Lambert for setting me straight so
graciously; some of what I had written about class distinctions was
presumptuous if not downright rude, and it is useful to occasionally be
whacked down.

 Cheers, all

 John H.

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