Update 12/10/11: Car Has been found!!
Giulia Spider AR375897. This car was Stolen recently. I don’t have any details of the theft, just the vin and description. Paint is dark gray -shiny but older repaint. Interior is red. Was stolen in Berkeley California.
Nostalgia and classic cars
We had been going back and forth for 6 weeks about selling the Fiat 124 sedan and finally let it go on Sunday. A charming young woman is the new owner and she couldn’t be happier. I thought long and hard about the reason we had such a hard time letting it go. Lots of good times were had in it and it represents a physical link to bygone days -albeit in this case not so long ago, having only been in our care for 5 years. It got me thinking about the cars we’ve had over the years and the good times had in each -and in the big sense, how people everywhere experience similar nostalgic feelings around their old cars.
The take away here is the big smile. She is in love with this car and excited to own, drive, care for and create good times in it.
Continue reading “Nostalgia and classic cars”
Evan Wilson's Giulietta Book
Evan Wilson’s ‘Alfa Romeo Giulietta: 750 and 101 series Giuliettas and Giulias, 1954-1965’, originally published in 1983 is regarded by many as among the finest books about these cars, and even now, prices reflect this. It’s no wonder really, Evan’s narration is crisp, insightful and funny. This year a revised and updated hardcover version of this book was released and is available through Lulu for $34.95. (or on aBay if you care to spend about $55!).
The ‘collector car market’ tracking mentioned in the above description comes from giuliettas.com
Among the revisions and updates is a section about Yours Truly: Giuliettas dot com. Evan interviewed me about 18 months ago, spent some time with the site and produced a flattering bit of work. Also included is a series of tables culled from my market pieces, a matrix of conditions, locations and values. If you dig Giulietta’s (and Giuliettas) then you should get yourself a copy of this book.
Pledge Drive
Update 4/8/11: I am humbled by the out-pouring of appreciation for this site and the generosity of you all. THANK YOU. The bills are paid. Back to the regularly scheduled program.
Originally posted 4/6/11: It works for NPR so maybe it will work for me. My Giuliettas.com hosting, domain mapping etc bills are due in a few weeks and I thought I’d reach out to you all, my readers and see if you felt like helping me get current. If you’ve found my site helpful or entertaining why not support it? Just click on the ‘Support Giuliettas’ tab above and then the Paypal ‘Donate’ button, you don’t need a Paypal account to donate. I’d appreciate it a lot!
Hello SS in the dust.
Market 300: Spider racer project in Florida
Giulietta Spider 10103*171108. This car is on eBay right now out of Florida. Car would originally have had an 00102 series 1300 engine but auction includes a 00121 1600 Sprint Speciale/Spider Veloce engine and an unnumbered 1600 replacement block. Price is $23,500 to start and seller expects local pick up only -good luck with that.
Car looks pretty cool. Door and hood fit is excellent. I wonder what provenance this has as a racer.
Continue reading “Market 300: Spider racer project in Florida”
Market 246: Exceptional(er), more expensive Sprint in Germany
Giulietta Sprint 10102*350073. This Sprint is also available from Movendi for the price of 47,900 Euro’s or about $63,200 (!!!) at the time of writing. This is not much than a 750E lightweight sold for last year… have times changed or is this car really that good? They list the car as a 1959 but the number is for a 1962.
I’ve never seen the grills blacked out in this way before -very cool looking. These guys know how to prep and photograph a car for sale. No cluttered background, no excuses detailing and just a sense of caring about the cars.
Continue reading “Market 246: Exceptional(er), more expensive Sprint in Germany”
Market 212: 1 and 1/2 Spider Veloce’s
Update 4/26/10: 29 bids and $12,200 resulted in a sale. Fair all the way around.
Giulia Spider Veloce 10118*390255, 00121*01757 & 10118*390245. These cars are on eBay right now as a package deal out of Ithaca New York from a seller who sounds very knowledgable and realistic about the condition of the cars. A little over 1000 of these late run 101 Spider Veloce’s were made, with engines in common with 1600 SS’s. Fusi says the engines should be tipo 00118 but no such engine exists. Values are strong for good ones, so a project is worth doing.
The overall picture isn’t too bad, but everything you see will require work. At least the nose dimple is in pretty good shape.
Market 201: clean 1600 Spider in Florida
Update 4/26/10: Car has been sold as of 4/4/10. I imagine the selling price was a little shy of the asking, perhaps about $26k?
Giulia Spider 10123*373471, 00112*15253. This car is currently listed as for sale on the Alfa BB out of Florida. Asking price is $28,500 which includes a Pininfarina hard top to be restored and an original Giulia Spider hood.  I would call this restored to very nice driver condition.  Not necessarily original or perfect but attractive and usable.
The money shot for sure, like a mature super model in sunsets orange glow. Â Remember that this is what the average person sees before you go and pick the details that are not perfect apart.
Interesting parts: Blank 101 1300 block
It appears that I have an opportunity to buy an 00120 block with a number appropriate to by SS.  Exciting? Yes! Well, to help make it happen I am selling off some of the more interesting bits in my collection of spares. Among them is this block, a blank 101 1300 in fantastic condition.
Before I get into the details of this particular block I should address the subject of blank blocks in general. I have seen these, or cars with them under the hood for sale occasionally and the story often attached to them is that Alfa’s procedure for catastrophic failure (thrown rod, broken main support web etc) called for the replacement of the parts with new factory parts. If the block was damaged, you got a new one. I don’t know if the replacements were short blocks, or blocks only to which any required parts were added to replace any unable to fulfill their role, but in any case, what came out the other side was an engine without an identity. Like that seen here. Why no number? Something to do with accounting perhaps. Maybe they were supposed to stamp the new block with the old blocks numbers, but the dealers never received the stamp set. Anyone know more?
Starting from the part you see at the end of the build, the outside. You can see this is a pretty nice block. In better shape than any of the blocks I’ve built up before. I would paint the dipstick tube if I were building this.
Spider Market review 2009
It has been on my mind as I write the other 2009 market reviews that the Spider review is going to take some time to complete, there having been a lot of Spider sales in 2009. I am thinking this will be my longest post ever. I think this will be helpful to anyone buying, selling or trying to figure out the future value of restoration work. Enjoy!
Market 39 was 10104 1495*11267, selling for $2025 after a year of eBay runs. I think the difficulty with this car was location and portability. How do you transport a car from an absolute middle of nowhere dirt road that doesn’t have wheels or even axles to mount them on? Continue reading “Spider Market review 2009”