The Fiat 124 Spider has spent most of its existence in the shadow of cars that were more expensive, more powerful, or more famous, and has spent the last two decades quietly becoming one of the more sensible investments in the Italian classic market. Rally number 26, a sage green Series 2 example photographed on the same Sicilian road as the Giulietta Spider that preceded it by a few car lengths, represents the argument for taking the 124 seriously on its own terms.

There is a category of car that does not need to be anywhere other than where it already is. The Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider — Pininfarina’s body on Alfa’s twin-cam four, produced between 1955 and 1962 — belongs unambiguously to that category, and the blue example photographed on a Sicilian road as rally number 33 makes the case without any assistance. It is on an Italian island. It is Italian. The argument is closed.

The Alfa Romeo Spider Series 1 — universally known as the Duetto, though Alfa Romeo used that name only briefly before a trademark dispute ended it — was Pininfarina’s last personal design project before Battista Pininfarina’s death in 1966, and the body he signed off on is one of the few in automotive history that can be described as definitive without overstatement. The round boat tail, the low beltline, the long hood, the simple windscreen — these were not design choices that admitted of alternatives. Rally number 5, a red example photographed on the same Sicilian corner that has already hosted a Giulietta Spider, a Fiat 124, and a Beauford replica, is the car that makes all of those other open two-seaters look like they were working toward something.

The Alfa Romeo Spider ran for twenty-eight years across four distinct series, which is long enough to accumulate both a devoted following and a complicated critical record. The Series 4, produced from 1990 to 1993, was the final version and has historically been the least celebrated — a product of Alfa Romeo’s difficult late-Fiat-ownership period, fitted with revised front and rear styling that divided opinion at launch and has not entirely reconciled it since. The silver example photographed on a Sicilian coastal road, the Ionian Sea visible in the background, is a Series 4, identifiable immediately by those distinctive multi-hole alloy wheels that became the car’s most-discussed visual element.