Category Archives: Motoring Events & Shows

Abarth – Alfa – Colani 1000

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While off on a tangent (FIAT Record Monza/Abarth Zagato) I came across this car. From what I could find about it, mainly an Alfa Digest synopsis of a Dutch article I can’t seem to find, this car is the result of the unique vision of Luigi Colani and his lucky acquisition of one or possibly two Alfa Abarth 1000 prototypes that had been wrecked during testing. It is believed that at least three of the Abarth Alfa 1000′s were made and I will try and track down more about them later.

Colani’s designs are usually described as ‘organic’ and ‘visionary’, I would add ‘otherworldly’. This is the kind of car we were supposed to be driving in our Jet-age future. If you have some time to spend do some internet searching and check out some of the interesting stuff Colani has been doing, unexpected is a good word to describe his designs from furniture to cars and trucks.

retromobile2009_0900From this years retromobile, the Colani-Alfa-Abarth on display for auction. I don’t think it sold.

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ARA and Dick Gale’s One Lap of Marin

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I got up early and changed the fan belt in the Sprint for the 4th time, this time with the right belt, a 17281, and headed over to Sausalito to meet up for the annual ‘One Lap of Marin’ presented by The Alfa Romeo Association, an SF Bay Area Alfa club and Dick Gale. I am going to poach part of the Snowball Rally next weekend (have to go to the company premier party for Pixar’s ‘Up’ next Saturday night with the Mrs.) and thought this would be a great chance to see some old faces and put another 100+ shakedown miles on the Sprint.
The meet up spot is on the Sausalito waterfront just off the Marin City exit of 101. The majority of the cars are imports, mostly Italian, ranging from humble Fiats to stately Lancia’s to once-in-a-lifetime Ferrari’s, though the field was primarily Alfa Romeo’s.

old-alfa6C1750 Super Sport perhaps? Fantastic light covers! I admit my knowledge of earlier Alfa’s is limited. Mike’s SS and Karl’s 90′s Spider in foreground.

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Sprint Speciale as art? Absolutely!

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The Cincinnati Art Museum is displaying a 1964 Giulia SS belonging to Richard Grant of Dayton Ohio from February 10th to June 7th.  If you are in the area, stop by.  I sure would! 

“Supporting the Art Museum’s commitment to showcase art and design across multiple disciplines, classic and concept cars introduce visitors to industrial design and its place in the history of art. Starting this February, visitors can experience the curvaceous and futuristic form of the Alfa Romeo’s 1964 Giulia Sprint Speciale created by the famed Italian design studio, Bertone. A limited production car, its body panels were carefully formed and finished by hand. The styling of the Sprint Speciale, considered especially radical when first introduced, took its cues from the study of aerodynamics and the global fascination with space travel and supersonic flight prevalent during the 1950s and 1960s. ”

839_3A teaser from the Museum website.   Looks like a sublime specimen of the Sprint Speciale species. 

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Pedal Pushers Pull-over rally 2008 Wrap-up

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The Pedal Pushers Pull-Over Rally ran yesterday, November 15th and a lot of fun was had. The event started in an Oakland city parking lot behind Peet’s coffee on Fruitvale and made it’s way to the Warehouse in Port Costa, with 160 miles of scenic California back-roads in between. Focus of the rally is vintage sports and touring cars and a strong contingent of each was present, with some little French cars thrown in to keep everyone smiling.

On my Event Photo’s page is a full set from the drive. If you have a set of photos from the drive hosted somewhere I can link to let me know at sprints@giuliettas.com.

california-backroads-finestIf you are shivering in Minnesota right now wondering what the weather and scenery is like in Northern California here’s your glimpse. This picture was taken on the civilized northern stretch of Morgan Territory road where Giuliettas.com and Pedal Pusher Citation Bait’s 1972 Fiat 124 Sport sedan chased a string of cars including a ‘Conrero-ized’ Giulietta Spider, Porsche 356 and Colli Super Wagon among others.

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Event Notice: Pedal Pushers Pullover Rally 11/15/2008

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I thought it would be nice to pass along a press release from the Pedal Pushers website. They have put a lot of miles and effort into putting on an exciting fun event with great T-shirts. Show up in your classic car and bring $20 to buy a shirt, you’ll be glad you did. Supplies of the shirts will be very limited so arrive early! The following is all nearly verbatim from their website:

Don’t put your vintage ride into hibernation just yet…Come on out and join us for the Pullover Rally, a 150+ mile romp through the back roads and hills of the East Bay

The Pedal Pushers would like you to join us on Saturday, November 15 for some fall season driving fun. Our route will begin in the heart of Oakland, behind Peet’s coffee at 3401 Fruitvale Ave and we’ll make our way through remote two-lane roads and fields of windmills to reach our lunch stop, an Italian ristorante, where we’ll fuel up on pizza, panini, and cappuccinos before the second leg begins. After we zoom along beautiful scenic roads, we’ll race over the backside of nowhere to a watering hole in Port Costa, between Highways 80 and 4. Approximate driving time including lunch is 6 hours, ending the rally by 4 pm.

Giulietta and FluviaGiulietta Sprint belonging to giuliettas.com and Pedal Pusher Citation Bait sits beside Shaun and Candy Pond’s award winning Fulvia at the lunch stop on the last Pullover Rally.

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Best of France and Italy 2008

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The Best of France and Italy car show takes place annually in Woodley Park, a well shaded green strip of park in Van Nuys.  If pictures are to be believed, previous years turnouts were heavy among both spectators and exhibitors but a threat of rain seemed to keep many of each away this year.  Alfa Romeo participation was particularly strong at this show, probably making up half the field, but FIAT, Citroen, Renault, ISO and others were well represented.

Below are some photographs I took and many more can be found on my Events page.

Giulietta SS 589What can I say, I’m a sucker for an SS, especially when it’s a Giulietta and one of the nicest in existence.  That guy with the bushy blonde mustache from that TV show and his crew were all over this car when I showed up. 

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All Italian Day 2008

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As usual I had a good time at the All Italian day in Alameda at the Lincoln elementary school. Vehicles on display were diverse on many levels but united in their statement about Italian mastery of design, from the humble small bore Fiats to the majestic Alfa 8C, evidence of the hand of the master craftsman, the cleverness of the engineer and the eye of the artist can be seen. The exhibitors and spectators alike are a polite, if odd bunch and the discussions I overheard ranged from minutiae of restoration details to hairy-chested boasts about speed and agility ‘back then’.

This Fiat was one of my favorites. I’ve got a thing for stationwagons (especially goofy early 60′s ones), a thing for gray cars, a thing for original black plate cars and as I find myself checking out Fiats more and more while casually browsing eBay and Craigslist, I guess I’m developing a thing for fiats. And why not, you can get a lot of car for your money.

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ARA Alameda all Italian car day 2008 this Sunday

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ARA is hosting the Alameda All Italian Day car show this Sunday the 12th of October. If you like neat Italian cars and motorcycles (and even occasionally scooters and Italian designed French cars), a good spaghetti feed and an excuse to be out in the waning days of California sunshine before winter sets in, this show is for you. Admission has historically been $5 of which some charitable portion goes to the Special Olympics. If you bring an Italian vehicle whether a Ferrari 250 Lusso or an Alfa Romeo built Renault R4 to exhibit entry is free.

Elvis Costello shows Jack White his 1929 Maserati 24C5400. Sweet!! Actually none of that is correct except perhaps the Maserati part. Look for me and the Wife in the Fiat 124 Sedan Special with a 18″ crack in the windshield.

I added a modest photo set from the 2005 AAICD to the events page if you want to get an idea of what the event is like. I can tell you first hand that it is on a grassy ball field at a school in a quiet neighborhood. The setting is very casual and friendly. I can say without reservation that it is my favorite show of the year, not only for the interesting machinery on display , but for the crowd of local familiar faces inevitably encountered. See you there.

2008 Andrew Watry Berlina Tour

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Andrew Watry, keeper of the Giulietta Berlina, Giulia Sedan and Berlina registers, began putting together a Fall Berlina tour a few years back to encourage local Alfa Berlina owners to hit the backroads and exercise their often overlooked Alfa Sedans.  Well, with appreciation for Alfa sedans at an all time high (especially for the Giulia TI and Super) and Andrew welcoming all comers so long as they’re driving an appropriately interesting or old car, the event has grown.

Stopped for a photo op on Redwood road. 

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Guest blog entry: Concorso Italiano 2008

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Giuliettas.com couldn’t make it to the Concorso Italiano 2008, so we asked Hardtuned.com and Sports Car International Magazine’s Jeff Glenn for a full report.  Words and Photographs are his.  Thanks Jeff!

 

 

It was always a bit of a chore getting into the Concorso Italiano when it was at the Bayonet and Black Horse Golf Course on Fort Ord, and the organizers convincingly fixed that by moving the event to the Marina Airport. In the process, they lost a fair amount of cache. At past Concorso’s, I enjoyed sitting in the grass and people watching after checking out an overwhelming number of Italian cars and the club corrals in the outlying parking lots. Trees, fleeting glimpses of the ocean, and a rolling topography that gave you a sense of how many cars and people were there have been replaced by a flat, asphalt and concrete parking lot bordered by vendor tents, chain link fence, and port-o-potties. This year, when we couldn’t stand any longer, we collapsed on the concrete.

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Pixar’s 2008 Motorama

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Every Summer Pixar’s in-house car show Motorama takes place on the magnificent Pixar grounds.  Designed as an opportunity for Pixar employees to show off their rides and hang out, the show presents an interesting cross section, as is evidenced in the event photos. 

I really like the free-for-all, run-what-you-brung nature of this show.  Too often I find myself bored at a car show, wondering how many more Corvettes or new Ferrari’s I can look at before I am completely desensitized.  Highlights for me included a Pixar employee owned perfect VW split window camper bus, a Peugeot 402 articulated hard-top cabriolet on loan from Fantasy Junction, a Norton Manx engined Cooper and a gorgeous red and silver Lotus Elite.  Here are a few of my favorite pictures, the rest can be seen here.

BMW /2 in the Pixar atrium.

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Roadside repairs: Motherlode 400 fuel pump failure

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I purchased my Sprint Veloce March of this year (2008) .  The car had been gone through mechanically by a local vintage Alfa Ferrari Lancia mechanic who specializes in long involved rebuilds to a high standard.  While great care was taken in the set up of the SV, it had been about 4 years since its mechanical setting-up was completed and it didn’t receive more than a few hundred miles of break-in.  What it did receive is a lot of dis-assembly, rust repair, then reassembly.  No real teething drives were taken after this.  I put the car on the road after a thorough cleaning and reinstalling the interior pieces and spending about 20 hours stabilizing the wiring in the car to fix some little problems like 4 volts at the headlights, brake lights only when the headlights were on and no turn signals or horn or gauge lights… you get the idea. 

Woe is me to be laying in rough gravel under the car roadside in 80+ degree heat sleepy from a belly full of lunch getting grease and gasoline all over my arms.  Why is the fuel pump not in the trunk or under the hood?

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