PORTSMOUTH Gerard “Gary” Venable’s gray 1967 Alfa Romeo 1600 Spider “Duetto” is the real thing, an iconic classic that was famed designer Battista Pininfarina’s swansong.

Indeed, Pininfarina – best known for his work with Ferrari – died in 1966, the same year the Duetto was introduced at the Geneva Auto Show.

But the Spider continued to be produced for almost 30 years, with only minor aesthetic and mechanical modifications. Production ended in 1993.

Not that Venable considers the six-inch shortening of the car starting with the second series (1970-1983) a minor aesthetic modification. He admires the long round tail of the 1966-67 Duetto that inspired the nickname “Osso di Seppia,” or cuttlefish bone.

The original Duetto was produced from 1966 to 1967 and the name resulted from a contest sponsored by Alfa Romeo. Venable said the winner came up with Duetto because it “stood for duel overhead cams, dual carbs and two people in harmony.”

In North America, the Duetto was made famous through its role in the 1967 movie The Graduate starring Dustin Hoffman, who drove a red 1966 Duetto. Alfa Romeo subsequently marketed a North American version of the Series 3 Spider (1983-1989) as the Alfa Romeo Graduate.

Venable grew up in New York, graduated Iona Collge in New Rochelle, N.Y., and served as an enlisted man in the Naval reserves.

“The Navy brought me to Rhode Island,” he said, adding that he earned an MBA from Providence College, attending evening classes while working full time.

He originally purchased his Duetto in 1971 from a dealer near Boston. At the time, he said, he was hoping to buy an MGB, but “they were poorly painted.”

“What do you have for $2,000, tops,” he said he asked the dealer hopefully.

“I got an Alfra Romero for $1,395,” he said the dealer replied.

Venable said he took one look at the “Alfra Romero” and immediately figured it was a good deal. “I saw the dual Weber carbs and figured they were worth $400,” he said, adding the car only had 33,000 miles on the clock. “And there was only one dent, the size of a quarter.”

But to make sure, Venable, who has worked as an investment adviser for Merrill Lynch since 1973, said he called someone he knew at Newport Imports in Middletown and asked what secondhand cars they had on the books.

Newport Imports said they had a 1967 Duetto with 57,000 miles for $2,395.

So Venable went back to the original dealer and bought the “Alfra Romero.”

His car, which he discovered came off the factory floor on July 27, 1967, is a rare graphite gray (grigio graffite) with a black canvas top (which he has had replaced a couple of times) and burgundy high-quality skai imitation leather upholstery (which he has also had worked on).

On the side is the distinctive “f” badge denoting a Pininfarina design. (Giovanni Battista Farina was born in 1893 and nicknamed the Piedmontese diminutive “Pinin” because he was the youngest boy in a family of twelve. He legally adopted the name Battista Pininfarina in 1961.)

Venable said the Series I Spider is considered the only true Duetto because of Pininfarina’s long tail and because it was the last car Alfa produced with dual Weber carbs atop the aluminum engine.

The car was based on the Alfa Romeo Guilia 105 series chassis, and standard equipment also include a dual-overhead cam, five-speed, fully synchronized gearbox and 4-wheel disk brakes. Top speed is about 120 mph.

From the start, the Duetto Spider got top marks from the auto press. Car and Driver tested it against five other new sports cars in its September 1966 edition, and it was “unanimously chosen the best of the six.”

The other cars were, in the magazine’s descending order of quality, the MGB, the Fiat 1500, the Sunbeam Alpine, the Datsun 1600 and the Triumph TR4A.

Venable, a loquacious and youthful 61, said that, from the start, his Duetto was a working car. He was working in sales for Pitney Bowes, the business service company, at the time, driving over a territory that included much of eastern Massachusetts. He said he put some 30,000 miles on the car in the first year and continued to drive it for another five years.

Venable sold the car in 1977 with 108,000 miles on it when his first daughter was born – he and his wife Mimi have three grown-up daughters. But he bought it back three years later after seeing it for sale in The Providence Journal while on a trip to California with his wife.

“My wife says I pushed ahead of her when we got to the airport so I could make the phone call,” he said.

He said he still drives it most days, “so long as the roads are dry and there is no salt on them.”

“You’ve got to keep them running,” he said of old cars in general.

The car currently has 252,000 miles on the clock, but Venable estimates that it has at least 10,000 more miles because “three speedo cables have needed replacing over the time I’ve owned it.”

He said he did all the repairs himself in the beginning, but has developed a network of “honest people that I can depend on” over the years.

He said they include Roger Pelletier and his son Lee at Providence Automotive Engineering in Providence; Ray Tkacs at Tkacs Auto Upholstery in East Providence; and Joe Donato at East Coast Collision in Warwick.

He said the engine has had “three valve jobs,” but has never been rebuilt. “It’s 100 percent original,” he said. “No aftermarket stuff.”

Venable said he takes his Duetto to “one or two shows a year,” partly to find out what’s wrong with the car.

“(The judges) inspect everything,” he said. “And that’s a good thing, if they find my back-up light is not working, for example.”

“And doing a thorough cleaning for a concours event is a great way to do preventive maintenance,” he added.

At the same time, he said, the car has been very reliable over the years.

“It knows when to break down,” he said. “In the driveway, at the top of the street. Never 200 miles away.”

He said he belongs to Alfa Owners of New England, although he said he feels like a lapsed Catholic. “I belong but I rarely attend,” he said.

Venable also shows it regularly at the annual “Tutto Italiano” show at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline, Mass. (scheduled for Sunday, Aug. 3, this year) and has won a number of awards there.

And he said the car was the editors’ choice at the Hemmings Sports and Exotics Car Show at Lime Rock last May. And it finished first in class at the Alfa Romeo National Convention in Manchester, N.H., last August.

Will he ever sell it? Not a chance.

“My wife thinks I’m getting buried in it,” he said.

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pelsworth@projo.com