Author: hamilton.mm

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New member of the family: 1972 Berlina

I did a quick calculation and found that at my current usage, I would reach the end of the warranty on my daily driver at 100,000 miles 13 months before the term of the warranty is up in March or 2010.  Time to get a cheap commuter!

My commute is 30 miles each way and I travel both ways at the early edge of the 880 traffic, so unless there is an accident I get to do 35 – 60 mph the whole way. A beater pre-smog sedan with a 5 speed and an economical engine would be a perfect commuter for me.  I didn’t have much to spend initially so I had low expectations about what I would find, but I figured I could drive the 1959 Sprint until something turned up.

Last Saturday I went by a friends Alfa repair shop to buy some Sprint interior trim I needed for the Sprint Veloce and this car was parked on the street out front.  I asked what was going on with it and I was told the engine was coming out then it was going to the local Alfa pick-n-pull, unless of course I wanted it.  I asked how much and for the same price as the hand full of Sprint interior trim I bought it.

1972 Berlina 11500*3000189, California Blue plate 564 GQB.  Originally Silver with black interior.  Doesn’t look too bad.

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Pixar’s 2008 Motorama

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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Identification numbers part 3: Bertone body number

Manufacturing automobiles by hand is not a simple task. A large number of individual car specific parts have to find their way from sub-contractors and various corners of the shop to the car they were made to fit. To help make this happen Bertone assigned each car a number independent of the autotelaio number Alfa had earlier, or would later assign and all the parts requiring fettling to fit the individual car were marked with this number either by stamping or with grease pencil. It makes sense that this number would also be used for billing Alfa for bodies built so it’s likely that all the Bertone built Sprint prototypes had a Bertone body number.

Here it is, the first Bertone number I ever encountered *6510072* corresponding to Autotealio 20379. The font of the punches used to stamp the body numbers never changed. This car also has 072 written in grease pencil on the underside of the hood.

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Italian motorcycle police display

Once again I’m straying form the topic of Giuliettas here but I couldn’t resist this video. Only the Italians would decide this was a good idea. Perhaps someone knows what kind of bikes they would have been riding? I can’t think of an Italian big bike manufacturer from this period so I’m tempted to say they are BMW’s.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC9qgH14N_0]

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Giulietta Sprint Accessories part 2

Right after the last installment on Giulietta accessories these two black and white pictures were discovered. I have read that a Bertone technical booklet exists detailing all of the possible accessories but I don’t suppose I’ll ever see it.

The first picture is of a 750 series Sprint and shows several accessories and an anomaly I’ve never seen elsewhere. The most obvious accessory in this picture is the fog lamp kit. It differs from the 101 kit in that the grill opening surrounds are unmodified, just the grill bars were modified to mount the fog lights. The lights really look a lot like Hella 128 items in this picture. I wonder what sort of switch they used and where it was mounted.

This 750 Sprint wears a lot of the available accessories. I wonder if it is one of the early prototypes?

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1955 Motogiro footage

If you are a fan of Alfa Romeo Giulietta’s there is a pretty good chance you also have an appreciation for Italian motorcycles from the same era. The clip below fulfills both interests and gives a glimpse of road-race competition protocol in Italy in the 50’s. If you look closely there are several Romeo vans kitted as team transporters, a Giulietta Berlina at about 1:25 and best of all lots of footage of the trailing press car, a Lancia Aurelia Spider America, close cousin of the Pininfarina Giulietta Spider. Enjoy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7I-0mD38kU]

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Sprint Veloce Fuel pump almost final fix

I have this approach I’ve noticed when faced with a job I don’t necessarily want to do on one of my cars, it’s called procrastination, you might have heard of it.  As necessity is the mother of invention it is just as strongly the enemy of procrastination and I it took me having two unavoidable reasons and a little good luck to effect an almost final fix for this fuel pump issue.  The first good reason was the need to give Kip back his SU fuel pump that was given temporary duties on the SV (I was going to see him on Sunday at a shop warming party), the second is the requested attendance of this car at Pixar’s Motorama this Friday afternoon.  The little bit of good luck was a friend having a new Facet fuel pump kit bought specifically for a weber equipped Giulietta Spider that was no longer in his life.  With no good rationalization left to enable procrastinate, I went to my shop yesterday determined to mount, plumb and wire the new fuel pump.

Nice new Facet fuel pump hanging out with 50 years of scummy crud on the underside of the Sprint Veloce.  Note shock isolation mounts, like little motor mounts, and grounding wire.

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Market #32: Giulietta 750B half-off sale

Giulietta Sprint 750B 1493*01864. On eBay right now, starting bid is $1000. Vin on this seemingly very straight Sprint nose corresponds to early 1956. This would probably be ideal for the buyer of the smashed Confortevole or perhaps the basis of an interesting project for the right person. I know project?? Am I crazy? Well, if you know something about the origins of the Sprint Zagato you may have heard of the group of cars collectively known as Sprint Veloce Zagato’s.

I goes something like this: You go off the road, down an embankment into a ravine and end up upside down wedged between a tree and some rocks. You climb bruised and battered from your recently purchased and expensive Sprint Veloce. Two weeks later you deliver the car to carrozzeria Zagato to get it fixed. Elio looks it over and tells you it would be cheaper to cut most of the original crushed body work away and make a new body from aluminum than to restore it. Oh, and by the way he can make it lighter and more aerodynamic in the process, you’ve seen the ‘double-bubble’ roof right?

Only Sprint Veloce Zagato’s were not all Veloce’s or even Sprints for that matter. A modern SVZ recreation if sold as such is still a very sought after and expensive car.

Nice nose. No deep rot to be seen, lots of small parts that are hard to find still bolted and screwed into place etc.

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Giulietta Sprint Accessories

When I went shopping for a modern car last year I was surprised by the number of accessories available, the fact that cars came pre-optioned for the most part, and how expensive additional accessories were.  Accessories are nothing new when it comes to cars, windows and lights were accessories in the early days!  The Giuliettas were no exception and the picture below, from a 1958 brochure, reprinted in the Alfieri book shows some interesting accessories that could be missed by the casual observer.

“Fog lamps fittings. It can be ordered as a seperate unit complete with mounting brackets and hollow intake fairing, painted in the colour of the car. Please specify No. of chassis.”

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Giulietta Sprint with broken throttle video

When you take an old car out on a tour or rally far from civilization, you have to be prepared to either figure out a way to limp home, leave your car and go borrow a truck and trailer, or pay a big towing bill.  I’m not saying old cars are inherently unreliable, it’s just that, if like me, you do a lot of the work on your cars yourself, this preparedness is a simple admission that your skills have their limits.  

The guys in this video hopefully got the McGuyver trophy if they didn’t win. 

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=STB9E4pTyBE]

Broken throttle linkage?  No problem.  Enzo, get out there and use your hand, you’ll know when I’m going to shift.Â