Category Archives: Modified cars

Market 148: Cobra-ized early 750 Spider

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Update 5/29/12: This car has reappeared in well-detailed glory on the Alfa BB. There are good photo’s, there are video’s and yet it still is what it is. Is it time yet for a car like this to lose it’s flares, get some chrome chromed and become the car it was made to be in ’58 and not be drastically underwater?  Maybe not yet, but the clock is ticking.  It’s interesting that these cars from early market reports are starting to come around -this one has been hiding for nearly 3 years!.

I say chrome the trim, lose the flares and get some Classicalfa UK Giulietta mags and this car will be something a lot of Alfa guys would love to buy -no guilt for doing the unoriginal, but all the fun of having the unoriginal.

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The sincerest form of flattery

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I wasn’t expecting this when Alex in Virginia sent me a link.  I look at kit cars occasionally on eBay to check out the latest in Porsche Laser 917′s and the like, but not often enough to catch all the weirdness that passes through -including this: an Alfa Giulietta Spider treatment kit on a Miata!  I’ve seen lots of Porsche 356 kits, Austin Healey 3000 kits and others, but never Giulietta kit -not that this looks a whole lot like a Giulietta, but you get my meaning.

The quality of the finish isn’t too bad for this sort of thing, and being a Miata, it probably performs admirably.  Knock-offs look like something from the SpyHunter video game.  Center grill looks like a genuine Alfa part.

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Market 358: Early Spider 00647, slightly modified

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Update 1/4/12:  Wow, $6,412!!

Giulietta Spider 750D 1495*00647.  This odd-ball home-brew special is on eBay right now out of Sacramento.  I am going to assume this is all reversible, and only the front end changes will present any challenge not part of routine rust repair.  Title of the auction says ‘Veloce’ but 00647 is not listed as such in d’Amico & Tabucchi.  If the engine is matching numbers to the body -and I believe it is based on the fuel line configuration- this is actually  a pretty good first step toward early Spider ownership in project form.  Me?  I’d vacuum out the leaves and roll as-is to Pebble Beach -you’d turn more heads in this than an 8C 2900.  If you had this car and the Market 216 car, you’d corner a dubious market.

Roof gutter definitely recalls the VW bug.  Too bad they didn’t have access to a Sprint roof to work with -might have been more successful.  Firewall is early Spider 750D leading me to believe more strongly that the vin is correct.  Headlight openings are likely 70′s Alfa Spider sections.  Engine looks remarkably complete and original.

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Modified Sprint Speciale’s 3: another Zat car??

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Elmar sent me this picture yesterday, describing it as ‘pimped’.  It reminded me that I’ve been owing the ‘Modified SS’s’ post series an update for a while.  This one is dedicated to the modern era super sports type  mod’s that probably started with the Zat SS (381238 was the basis) that eventually sold through RM in 2008 for just under $50K.  I can’t verify the auction description below -but it states that 4 Zat SS’s were made and two survive.

This car has been to the ‘Shelby Cobra 427′ school of design: very wide wheels, chunky bulbous corners and a big ol’ hood scoop.  Would be funny if it was stock Alfa powered.  I suspect it is an SS body on a tube frame. Continue reading →

Market 293: ’61 Spider Veloce Ex-Carrera Panamerica

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Giulietta Spider Veloce 10107*170380. This car is on eBay right now and has been featured on Bringatrailer.  Eduardo (seller) sent me a bunch of pictures you can see if you follow the vin link.  Engine is a later 2 liter and a lot of modifications have been done that make it ineligible for most vintage race series, but with a few creature comforts added this would make a great event car.  Email me of you can’t extract the sellers info from the above links.

Looks like it should for a rally/race car.  Hood is a later Giulia 1600 item, no doubt used to help clear the 2 liter.  The silver lines seen through the grills are the edges of a big radiator.

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Market 271: early SS racer in Italy

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Giulietta SS 10120*00215. This car is listed on Luzzago at the moment out of Italy.  It has been modified quite a bit for racing but looks as though the removal of some decals and moving toward a more stock interior might yield a fun street racer.

Headlight covers aren’t my thing and the grill is from who knows what, but under here is an SS.

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Market 230: “Juliet Spider Velosh”!

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Update 9/7/10: Well, this sad case has been reduced to an ending -no reserve met- total of $1136 after 3 bids.  On the bright side, the phrase ‘Tennessee Velosh!” has entered the Alfa Giulietta lexicon.

Update 8/23/10: This feller is back on eBay -some lucky motoring enthusiast can buy it now for $2700 and figure out what to do with it later.  Woot!

Update 7/10/10: Someone liked this enough to buy it now for $2500.  In one of the Q&A responses the seller says emphatically that this car can’t be returned to stock.  With these cars likely to be $100K by the end of the decade I’m sure some intrepid soul is hoping to prove the seller wrong.

Giulietta Spider Veloce 750F 1495*04640 (or 750F 03305), 1315*31655 (Not included). Tennessee is the home of this Spider that’s on eBay right now.  Vin on the title with the car is 03305, vin on the build plate is 04640 and the vin on the body is unknown -if I had to bet on which is accurate I’d put my money on the title.  It’s ironic/sad/frustrating that someone took a roller 58 Spider Veloce probably worth $10 – 15K of todays money, spent 6 years ruining it by altering it to fit a V8 and Toyota suspension and now are hoping to get $2500 out of it.  This is what you call a lose-lose situation -I bet they threw out the sheet metal they cut out of it too.

What do you do with something like this?  It’s probably unusable in its current form with all that weight over the front axle, way too much power for the rear end to grip and poor visibility with that scoop.

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Market 228: Unfortunate Sprint 101

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Update 7/1/10: This car was sold for $7100 after 21 bids were placed.  Not such a bad deal for what appears to be a very complete, original and solid project car with a bad nose job to fix.

Giulietta Sprint 10102 22315. This car is on eBay right now out of New York or possibly Montreal.  Other than some unfortunate modifications it’s a pretty original solid example.  Would be kind of fun to leave the modifications and use it as is for a few years to upset concours judges and the like.

Kind of has a Facel Vega feel or maybe something garish from Ghia on a 1900 platform -but interpreted by a drunk from a small picture in the back of a magazine.  That Bertone badge placement next to the passenger side headlamp is really horrible.

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Market 216: Modified Spider ‘track car’

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This Giulietta Spider based homebuilt roadster is available now on Craigslist out of Grand Blanc, Flint for $3900. If it’s got most of it’s parts that’s not a bad price.  If it’s not rusty it might be worth welding the correct nose and tail back on.

70′s Spider nose on a Giulietta?  Could be worse… somehow.  That rollbar/loop looks pretty thin. 

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Modified Sprint Speciale’s part two

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So many of you enjoyed the last rerun about modified SS’s that I thought I’d rerun this one.

Originally posted July 16, 2008: The last modified Sprint Speciale’s installment highlighted some fairly successful modifications, mostly done in the youth of the featured cars. This car glared at me from the same file directory I used to store the other pictures but I just couldn’t work it in. It would have been like accidentally finding reverse while speeding down the highway.

I know, you’re looking at the picture thinking ‘that’s an SS??… NO WAY’. Look closer, you know it’s true. My first impression was someone built an interpretation of something from Bubblegum Crisis or another cyberpunk Anime, but without the ability to fly.

Not an altogether unsightly proposition if it was based on a 70′s Spider -which is where the nose appears to have come from, but in my opinion an abberation as a Franken-SS unless based on a horribly smashed SS that would have been recycled if not for this.

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Modified Sprint Speciales

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A rerun since I’m tropically indisposed.  Enjoy.

Originally posted July 5th, 2008: While not considered competitive on the race track in retrospect, the Sprint Speciale must none the less have been a somewhat attractive option for wealthy amateurs when it was first sold. The combination of an aerodynamic shape and powerful engine must surely have seemed like a winner if some weight could be shed and current engine tuning tricks being used by Conrero, Bosato and others could further improve the engine. This is supported by period race photographs and entry lists which document the occasional SS among the field of SV’s, SVZ’s and SZ’s.

An early SS (00045) running the 1960 Targa Florio, 00029 and 00040 also ran. 00045 went on to run in ’61 – ’64. Anyone know where 00045 is now?

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Market 175: Sprint rebodied by Zagato in Belgium

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Update 1/2/10: I changed the location to Belgium as corrected by several readers. I knew making obvious mistakes would get some of you to comment!
Giulietta Sprint 750B 1493*04045. This Zagato rebodied Sprint is for sale in Belgium as an SVZ, no price is stated. I list it as a 750B because d’Amico and Tabucchi do not list 04045 as a Veloce and my SVZ book does not list this chassis as having been rebodied by Zagato ‘back in the day’. What does this mean? Not a lot actually. In the first place several period Zagato modified cars are not Veloce’s, in two cases not even Sprints, but rather Spiders. Second, if you spend 4 hours and read through the whole of the “complete SVZ file” on the Alfa BB you will see that (in addition to a lot of confusion) there are a lot of Zagato bodied Alfa’s in race photographs from the late 50′s that are not identified as any particular chassis number. This leads to the third point, if there are a bunch of unknown cars wearing Zagato bodies, couldn’t you just find a Sprint, rebody it in the style of an SVZ and pass it off? This question leads to the fourth point. Even if it was made yesterday it is not easy or cheap to fake an SVZ and if a legitimate coachbuilder today undertook the transformation of a car to the specification of an SVZ it would be very expensive. How expensive? I don’t really know. You tell me. The last point is: most of the original, known, accepted, documented and indisputable SVZ’s don’t wear their ‘back in the day’ body, so even if a somewhat modern recreation -how different would this car really be? Again, your thoughts please oh wise and comment prone reader.

When you look at a car like this you take in little details like the absence of side marker lights, the sliding windows, the shape of the rear quarter windows, the fit of the windshield etc and then go to your history book and try and figure out if any of the blurry black and whites are this car in action. Good times. Oh, and thanks Elmar for the heads up on this one.