I am touched to see so many nice comments on recent posts! Life has gotten interesting (and very busy) for me – whether it’s gaining the perspective that comes from being a father, blowing through 45 and rapidly approaching 46, or wrestling with the whole “what do I want to do with my life” question, which seems like it ought to have been settled by now, and maybe is, but I don’t recognize it. In any case, the weird thing is, I can go to giuliettas dot com, and see that I did something once, something creative, something funny and meaningful to a few people, and then I realize, it is not over, I am just in the midst of a rather lengthy pause to catch my breath and think of something else to say.
My family in a tree in Costanoa Ca. Sometimes you get lucky and take a decent picture.
Continue reading “10 years of Giuliettas dot com”
Market 555: Giulietta Spider 10104 09074
Giulietta Spider 10104 1495*09074.  I look at this project car on eBay and it makes me realize I have changed. I used to see a project like this and it made me think “Wow, cool, it would be great fun to dig in and fix it up”, but now I see a bunch of disappointingly beyond repair pieces and chances to scrape my knuckles. Assuming the areas where the liners go into the block are not corroded, and that the inner rockers are “good enough” and that the seat pans are not all rusted to heck, and that the brake drums wont be destroyed by trying to get them off, and the gas tank is salvageable, and the steering wheel isn’t all bent and warped from trying to move this around the yard, and… you get the idea.
I may have changed in the direction of becoming more realistic about just how challenging a project like this is, but I still look at it and think it would be funny to get it running and driving and not do anything to the cosmetics. Actually, yeah, that would be fun for about 10 minutes. Continue reading “Market 555: Giulietta Spider 10104 09074”
Long time no post!
Hey all! It’s been a while since I posted anything here, and looking at the traffic, it appears that some of you occasionally stop by anyway. I did a little work on my Sprint two weeks ago, replacing a lower radiator hose that was cut by a poorly positioned steering joint cotter pin leg, and installed a new plug wire set after a rodent made a nest in my engine compartment and ate two of the wires. Fortunately, I caught the nest a few days into construction, so no real harm was done, but I did lose a little sleep thinking about how it would have gone had I not popped the hood on a whim. Would have been two months worth of nest which would have been ugly!
This is in the barn at the house I bought with a partner in Calaveras County near Murphys California. One of you lives up there – I saw a white Giulietta Spider on the road a couple of months ago while in town.
I’m going to Italy next month – maybe I’ll see a few of you on the road!
Video Report: 1956 Spider. Neat!
Jerome sent me a link to this video he made. Â Makes me want to head to Europe and drive around in a Giulietta!
Touring Spider Iron block 2 liter engine Tipo 00204 for sale in SF Bay Area
A reader has this engine for sale. Â 00204 00249 out of an iron block 2 liter Touring Spider. Â Could be used in place of a 1900 engine with a little effort I think, or go in a 2 liter iron block Bertone Sprint – the 2600 body style cars – yeah, they did in fact make them in 2 liter form based on the 1900 engine for a few minutes on a late January day in 1959. Â Comes as pictured. Â $8500. Â Comment below if you want me to connect you with the seller. Â My email address for this site is locked for some reason.
Seems like a heck of a deal – I’ve seen just short blocks of these for over $6000.
I think these used a split case transmission like a Giulietta with a different bell housing. Â Pretty darn complete!
Looks to have never been apart.
Convenient distributor location!
Market #6: Crushed Sprint Veloce 750*E Confortevole
SOLD! Ebay auction ended tonight, 5/8/08, for $9500! If all parts are present as the seller states this is not a bad deal, though I was thinking about $7000 was where this would end. I think proper representation with a thoroughly researched and presented parts inventory would have added at least $1000 to the final price. As with any eBay auction, we’ll have to see if the sale is final.
Sprint Veloce ‘Confortevole’ 1493E*06476, engine 1315*30853.
Wow is what the seller begins his ebay description with and I have to agree. The production total of the Confortevole (comfortable) variant of the Sprint Veloce (SVC) is 199, the first 50 having aluminum framed windows. An SVC seems to be an SV which falls between the SVAlleggerita (SVA) and the 101 body based SV which began production in early 1958 and upon which 101 mechanical components were gradually phased in until the 750 bits were all used up, sometime in 1960. Alfa factory documentation ends the run of SVC’s at car 06600, but recent pictures of 06611 indicate it is an SVC as well. There is a lot of speculation as to exactly what Confortevole means to the Giulietta Sprint line but I will go with Greig Smiths assertion from a discussion on the Alfa BB that a Bertone body starting with ’65’ and ending with an ‘*A’ is a Confortevole. Any other differences are circumstantial. One thing is certain, the frequently held misconception that a Confortevole is simply a Sprint with a back seat is false.
Seller has had the car 30 years and says it was in bad, non-running shape when they got it and despite being stored indoors all those years, which no doubt arrested the spread of the rust, a snow-laden barn did manage to collapse on it. It’s a shame they didn’t start on it sooner when the Veloce specific mechanical parts were cheaper.
Not the most encouraging start for your project. At least the collapsing barn spared the windshield trim. An original Bluette car?
Continue reading “Market #6: Crushed Sprint Veloce 750*E Confortevole”
D&S #4: One piece at a time
I have been gathering parts and trying to work on the SS, an hour a day 5 days a week since I got it 4 months ago. The surprise addition of a well-bought 1958 Giulietta Sprint Veloce in the middle of February rendered any significant expenditure on the SS impossible for at least 6 months and tied up most of my hobby time for a few weeks while I made it roadworthy for the Snowball rally. In early January I had decided that professional help was required and was planning to take the SS body to the media blasters once the weather cleared then to have the rust repaired. In the meantime I rolled the body into a corner and began what I have been calling my ‘one part at a time’ strategy. Everyday I picked part after part from the pile of crusty bits and processed them.
An assortment of finished and partially finished parts. If you keep at it it doesn’t take long to build an impressive pile.
Market #5: Giulietta SS Low-nose 00014
Giulietta Sprint Speciale 10120-00014, Engine 00120-00024. Available from Heinbrand for 54,000 Euros, about $75,000 when written. This car has 750SS on its build plaque, I’m not sure yet what that means but looking carefully at the engine compartment picture a 750 series Veloce head can clearly be seen along with the separate water-pipe style intake manifold and the headers don’t appear to be the standard SS tubular style. In the picture showing the build plaque a Weber 40DCO3 is barely visible. I’m not sure if the bodywork is supposed to be aluminum but it is described as ‘der ursprünglichsten Version’ in the brief ad copy, which I think means it is a lightweight version, perhaps having aluminum hood, trunk, doors and maybe other parts. Alfa was never one to worry about standardization among its special cars such as the Veloce’s and Speciale’s, so it’s no surprise to me that despite reading claims that all SS’s are based on 101 components here sits essentially a 750 Sprint Veloce Speciale.
Note the driving lamp bar mounting holes in the nose and black stripe. There also seem to be holes in the roof above the windshield.
Market #4: Giulietta SS Low-nose 00001
An early low-nose SS doesn’t come on the market often and I get to feature two in quick succession. In the world of hand-made aluminum bodied Italian cars of the 1950’s there are many whose performance and reliability don’t live up to the promise of the sleek, beautiful body. Not so the SS. The argument could probably be made that without their comparatively plentiful ancestors, the steel bodied Giulietta and Giulia SS’s that regularly change hands, these early cars would be as expensive or more-so than their cousins the SZ and TZ. If Ferrari made a twin cam 4 cylinder car in the 1950’s and it looked and performed like this, it would be half a million dollars or more. What does all this speculation mean for these cars? Undervaluation? Real world use? Who knows for sure, but if the surge in pricing of SS’s over the last few years is any indication, now is the time to buy one of these jewels if you can.
Giulietta Sprint Speciale 10120-00001, Engine 00120-00003. Owned more than 20 years by a ‘prominent collector’ in Southern California, this car is the top of the market. Only an SS with serious race provenance might be worth more, but there are only perhaps 3 such cars and none has changed hands that I’ve heard about. Seller claims this car was retained by Alfa Romeo for several years after being built, finally sold to a private individual in 1960. If this car is in ‘as-built’ condition, any flaws are irrelevant, but no indication is made in the ad copy to this effect. I suspect it has seen some ‘up-grading’ over the years.
Not so otherworldly as the later cars with their prominent edges and busy bright-work, the SS above, number one of a line that stretched 8 years and about 2500 examples, is understated and elegant while purposefully aerodynamic and lightweight.
Market #3: Giulietta SS vent window option car
Giulietta Sprint Speciale 10120-177061, engine 00120-01476. Available for 44,500 Euro’s (close to $70K at date of writing) from www.marreyt-classics.com in January 2008, but now listed as sold. Intrigued by the vent windows on the car, and wanting to see the condition it took to ask this kind of money for an SS, I sent them an inquiry. They replied with a group of low-to-medium resolution pictures stating the car was restored in Belgium by a restoration shop owner for his son. The car has seen little use other than as store-front eye-candy since it was completed. Greig Smith, multiple Giulietta owner, Alfa historian and all around nice guy from South Africa assures me the vent windows were an option available on special order from the factory. The small driving lights busy up the front a bit, but in a good way in my opinion, though I doubt this car will ever be driven in the kind of weather that requires extra lighting.
Continue reading “Market #3: Giulietta SS vent window option car”