Author: hamilton.mm

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Market 113: Spider 10103*171443. Nice!

Update 5/13/09: $31,100 with 18 bidders was the result of the auction.  I told you this was a nice car.  Hopefully it finds a caring new home.

Giulietta Spider 10103*171443, 00102*28914 (now 00536*21681). This Spider is available now on eBay out of North Carolina. This is the rare Spider that has been allowed to be a nice old car. Sure there is an alluring shine on the red-because-I-was-made-that-way rather than resale-red paint. Admitted, the fog and headlights are wide of the mark and probably more was spent than an honest stone-chipped set of correct Carellos would have cost, but the overall feel of the car is that of a car appreciated and enjoyed by an owner who knows how special what they have is and took good care of it.

Spider 171443 noseLooking pretty good. There is an admirable shine on the hood, the trim is present and well fitted. Fog lights do look good in this position. Do all Spiders have windshield wipers that park in this position?

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Happy Birthday to Giuliettas.com!

It’s been a year since I started giuliettas dot com and while I’ve entertained a few milestones along the way (100 posts, 200 posts etc) , I think  this one is pretty big for me.  If you told me I was going to accomplish the things I’ve accomplished over the last year I probably wouldn’t have believed you, so I’ll start with the numbers.

  • This is my 224th post meaning I’ve posted on average 4.25 times per week.
  • My posts average 1000 words, so I’ve written about 224,000 words; 1/3 of ‘War and Peace’ or a little more than the New Testament.
  • 112 Market reports have been written covering 115 cars, not counting repeat sales or attempts at sales.
  • On March 24th, I had 605 page views, my most ever and about double my 2009 average of 308.  2008 average was 197, not bad for starting from zero!
  • If you are reading this on 4/30/09 you are a page view between 85,500 and 86,000 total.
  • I have identified 97 Sprint Speciales as existing, 4 as scrapped (but who knows what the future holds).
  • My register has grown to include 512 cars, not including reference cars. 

truck-close-upI wanted to see what my Sprint would look like with the Zagato Lownose treatment.

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Market 112: 2 Spider projects a Veloce project in Italy and a Normale project in Australia

Update 5/13/09: No bids either car.  Oh well…

Giulietta Spider 750F 1495*07515, 1315*31998. This car is available right now on Italian eBay with an opening bid of €14,000 ($18,300 at time of writing). The Telaio number dates it as a 1959 so the vent windows are most likely correct and it may be a short wheel base car (passo corto). I’m still trying to work out when the vent windows came into production. I think they were always available as an accessory.

This car is rough looking but fairly straight and comes with a lot of the hard to find parts. Amazing that these cars keep turning up!

bqycswcgkkgrhgoh-cwejlllghbj65gho4g_1Doesn’t look much better or worse than my Spider but has the magic ‘F’ of the Veloce stamped on it and a Veloce Series engine.

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Weekend fun: Pixar’s ‘ Up ‘ movie premier, Snowball rally and California Mille send-offs

To help meet the requirement that I take 5 days off work this quarter I took Friday off which allowed me to run some weekday errands. As it was my weekend was planned with the precision of the gold heist in ‘The Italian Job’, so this extra day was welcome. Datebook entries for the weekend included The Snowball Rally send off, a Saturday class (part of a Masters Program I am going through), the Pixar Company premier of ‘UP’ at the Broadway Theatre in Oakland with an after party at the newly renovated FOX theatre and then Sunday morning a visit to The Fairmont in San Francisco to have a look at this years California Mille entries.

I started out early Friday to meet up with Larry to rummage his crates of 750/101 series Alfa parts for bits I needed for the SS and Spider and to pick up what might be the most difficult to find 101 Veloce part: the tapered top tube 00120/00106 type DCOE intake manifold. More on the parts run later in the week.

mrs-and-spidersThe Mrs. poses with Spider’s Veloce in front of the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill. I saw 4 black, 2 red, one silver and one white Giulietta Spider, not to mention a Sprint Veloce Confortevole and a Sprint 750B.

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Market #91: Early Spider Veloce project

Update 5/2: This car ended at $22,224 with an amazing 42 bids.  This seems a little low for such an original and complete running early  Spider Veloce, but times are still tight.  Reserve was not met, so barring an off-eBay sale look for it to be back on the market.

Update 4/27: This car is back up for sale, this time on eBay. I’m not sure if it’s a spiff-up and resell or something more along the lines of what happens to me when I buy a good deal and then two months later realize I shouldn’t have spent the money, good deal or no and I have to resell.

86a8_3Car looks a little better here with both grills and everything shined up a bit.

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Market 111: Black 750D in Germany.

Giulietta Spider 750D 1495*06320, 1315*45263. Available now on Anamera, this Spider is one of the nicest (or at least best photographed) I’ve had the opportunity to write about. It appears to have been detailed to the smallest detail and looks amazing. 39,500 Euro’s ($52,000 at press time) is absolute top money for a standard passo corto (swb) Spider so I don’t know that this car will find a taker, but it’s nice to look at and use as reference when I get to work on my pile.

06320 spider frontIs it any wonder it’s this nice if it’s found its way to Anamera? Looks good all the way around.

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Setting the standard, pushing product 3.

You’ve all seen these, or at least most of them, I know I have, but I had a special request recently that included some examples.  The premise of the request is seemingly that, well, obviously the Italians invented the use of sex to sell cars, I mean, who else??  {Insert carefully researched claim that in fact, the Greeks invented the use of sex to sell chariots -oh, wait no, it was the Chinese and Rickshaws…}. Nowadays you see a good looking young woman with perfect semi-curly hair and green eyes in a drug company bus stop poster making you think herpes might not be so bad.   Next thing you know they will be using sex to sell celibacy.  Ahh, but I degress.  Here are a group of advertising pictures featuring the perfect woman lending her allure to the, in this case, alluring enough product.  Enjoy.

alfaromeojuniorzagatoadvertisement05Very nice.  Perfect composition in this one.  Proof that sexy only needs to be hinted at to be effective. 

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Market #12: Craigslist basket case 1963 Sprint

Update 5/1/09: 12 bidders chimed in and the result was $1525, reserve not met.  A little lower than I would have thought, but getting all the bits together is going to cost.  I have a lot of what it needs, I wonder what it would take to buy it?

Update 4/21/09: Giulia Sprint 385940 is now on eBay after either having all it’s trim, lights and other bits stripped and sold, or applied to another car the seller may have. I told you a bunch of Sprints would follow that $18.7K car.

I shouldn’t assume the current seller is the previous seller, but for convenience I will.

giulia sprint frontWasn’t long ago this guy had his grills and lights and bumpers, hopefully someone is going to buy him and get him a fresh set… maybe.

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Exploring the Spider’s potential

Alas, I should be tearing into the Fiat’s bottom end, or fixing up the cooling system on the Sprint so I know when I’m overheating but I can’t leave the new car alone.
Digging through the glove-box, trunk and interior didn’t reveal any serious jewels, but did turn up a lot of the little stuff that can be a real pain to track down.

Concours original Giulietta Spider paint.As usual, a teaser first. This is the original paint. Not easy to expose, but doable. I think I have mentioned many times that this is my favorite Alfa color.

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Market 110: One of the last 1300 Giulietta Spiders

Giulietta Spider 10103*370645. This car was available last week on Sacramento Craigslist, listed as a parts car to make an offer on. Seller stated the car was complete but rusty after having been sitting for years in various indoor and outdoor locations. The owner was the sellers father who finally admitted he was never going to get around to it.

giulietta spider AT LAST!!!If cars could talk, tell the story, relate the lonely years spent 15 feet from the open road, home to litters of kittens, mice and who knows what else while piled with boxes of ephemera waiting for either rebirth in the recycled form of Bob the singing big mouth bass on a Walgreen’s shelf or per chance another shot at the open road. Spider 370645 sees daylight for the first time in years, note it still has shackles on its chin.

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