750 Veloce Intake Parts on eBay, Weber 40DCO3

I am thinking about my 1958 Sprint Veloce’s future engine rebuild to original when I look for Veloce engine parts on eBay. All I have from the original Engine is the block with matching crank bearing caps and front cover. Having the original engine is a necessity if the car is ever going to be restored to absolute top dollar status but so is having all of the correct parts bolted to the engine. If you look at how much you can spend to get all these parts together you begin to see one of the reasons besides rarity that correct Veloces are so much more expensive than Normales.

The intake set-up on a 750 Veloce consists of a sand cast Aluminum intake manifold with a separate tapered water pipe, a pair of sand-cast Weber 40 DCO3 carburetors, a two piece Aluminum intake plenum and a firewall mounted sheet metal air filter canister fed from an intake horn built into the body on the drivers side front grill.

If you are restoring a 750 Veloce and you don’t have a pair of Weber 40DCO3’s, your wallet is in for a shock.

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Market #19: Another Italian Ebay 101 Giulietta Sprint Veloce

As if in response to my declaration in Special Sprints #11 that good 101 Sprint Veloce’s seem to be going for $55,000 this 1960 Sprint Veloce appears on Italian eBay with a 36,000 Euro price tag, about $56,000.

The color of this car is Tornado Blue, very rare on these early cars. As explained in Special Sprints #9, Italian eBay is different from eBay USA in that car listings are more like the classifieds found in classic car magazines. You get a brief description of the car, some low resolution pictures and an email and phone number to use to contact the seller.

Looks like an honest enough car. Not sure I’d keep the sail out front. Grills, headlight rings and all the other trim look good.

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Market #18: Stunning silver Giulietta Sprint Speciale

This 1961 Giulietta Sprint Speciale is listed for sale on several European classic car classified websites and is described as having been restored in Denmark in about 1989 and currently licensed there. Asking price is 36,000 Euro’s, about $55,000 at the time of writing. If this car is as good as it looks this is probably a good deal, but from California, the requisite journey to inspect the car and then the shipping to get it home would add as much as $10,000 to the purchase price.

Restored SS’s are seldom seen in silver. Most of these cars seem to get returned to their original color and I don’t think silver was on the stock palette, though with Alfa you could probably call them up and get whatever you wanted for a price. Chrome bright-work up front blends in and is almost lost in the beautifully finished paint. This is the effect I enjoy so much on the 007 DB5 Aston. It doesn’t scream ‘look at me’ like a shiny red car with a chrome grill, it doesn’t have to. You can’t help but look.

Very classy looking car from this angle. Bodywork is arrow straight and fussy, hard to make right front trim all fits together perfectly.

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Market #17: a trio of sold 101 Veloces

These three Sprint Veloces sold just before I started this blog. It is my goal to track as many as possible of the sales of Speciales and Veloces so that in the years to come trends may be detected besides the simple upward trend that these cars seem to be enjoying.

1961 Giulietta Sprint Veloce Tipo 10106 AR*E159111, engine 00106*02376. An absolutely stunning example sensibly restored with a perfectly complementary mix of original and new parts. This car sold in April. Asking price was $57,500. This car sold very quickly which tells me that it probably sold for the asking price and the buyer probably had been looking for a very high quality Sprint Veloce. A visit to Fantasy Junctions sold cars page to see this car is worthwhile, the description is thorough and there are 54 high quality pictures to enjoy.

Straight, clean and shiny. Good panel and trim fit. Bumper looks slightly higher on drivers side, but it may just be an illusion from shadows. This car looks good no matter how close you get.

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Market #16: Veloce-ized clean Sprint

Giulietta Sprint ‘Normale’ Tipo 10102 1493*23260. This presentable Giulietta Sprint has been on Fantasy Junction’s ‘off-site’ cars page for at least a year. The $24,500 asking price seemed high for this car the first time I looked at the ad but I think the market may have come around and this is probably a decent deal now if it is still available at this price. According to Fusi the serial number for this car falls in the 1960 10102 Giulietta Sprint range (1493*21488 – 26200). As usual stated year of 1963 is probably what is on the title.

First impression is good with this car. I like the color, the paint work is, as described in the ad text ‘very good from a few feet away… but not Pebble Beach quality’ and the bright-work is said to all have been re-chromed. There are 28 high quality pictures on their web site documenting every corner of the car, so I can’t gripe about a lack of good presentation. The details of the car are just enough to make you call for more if you were interested. I don’t know that ‘adorable’ is an adjective I’d use to describe these cars, but maybe someones grandmother helped write their description.

Looking good. I like the little mirrors and Italian plate ‘TO’ is for Torino if I’m not mistaken. I don’t usually like the orange turn signal lenses but they compliment the blue on this car. Continue reading “Market #16: Veloce-ized clean Sprint”

Market #13: Italian eBay Sprint Veloce

I love Italian eBay. Spending an hour or two some quiet evening with a glass of red wine (Barolo or Amarone works best) and a fast internet connection, looking through page after page of interesting cars, most of which never made it to the US, is both great fun and a learning experience. I tend to forget that at one point all the cars on the road were what we now call old and in places like Italy and France, this means that there are still lots of clean original interesting old cars looking for new homes. I suppose eventually even the supply in these countries will run out. Someday, before they are all gone, I’m going to go to Italy, buy a one owner perfect original Giulietta TI, preferably a 56 or 57 model, tour around in it for a month then ship it home.

I came across this car during my last window shopping spree on Italian eBay. A restored 1962 Giulietta Sprint Veloce in Vespolate, a village about an hour south-west of Milan. Italian eBay auctions are different from American auctions, they are more like an advertisement in the back of a classic car magazine, giving only the minimum information about the car and an email and phone number to call if you are interested.

Celeste SV pensively poses for photos outside the gates of the biggest house in the village. Maybe my next owner will drive me more…

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Market #11 1965 Sprint 1300 project

Sold! This car ended on 5/20/08 for $5300. A decent buy for parts if nothing else. I imagine the buyer and seller will both be pleased. I am wondering if the success of this sellers last 2 Sprint projects is bringing more cars out of hiding, and if the market has the capacity to digest any more Sprints at these strong prices. I guess we will see since there has been a seeming steady stream of them the last two months.

Giulietta Sprint 101 10102*385744, engines 00102*33631 and 00536*17120. A third project Sprint from the eBay seller out of Newport Beach, though not nearly as nice as the prior two. Body has some very serious though not terminal rust and everything needs rebuilding, which detracts significantly, but the car appears to be complete and unhit which is good. According to Fusi, the two engines that come with the car are a 1600 from a 67 Giulia Sprint GT that is installed, and an 00102 1300 from a 1962 Giulietta Sprint or Spider. Since the 1300 is not the original engine for the car I would stick with the 1600. If it can’t be original, it might as well be fun.

Car doesn’t look too bad in this picture. Grills, bumper and light rings all appear to be fine. There is probably $1500 – $2000 worth of value in those parts alone. I am not sure if the sill plates are original.

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Market #10: Shiny red 10102 Sprint ‘Driver’

Sold! This car ended on eBay at $12,301.57 on 5/17/08. I said it wouldn’t be a bad deal for less than $12K, hopefully I am right. Another curious aspect is there were no questions answered and added during the auction. If I were bidding I would have asked a lot of questions. Compare this car to Special Sprints #3 and you get a sense of what Giulietta buyers want. As always, we’ll see if the auction sale is final.

Giulietta Sprint ‘Normale’ 10105 1493*20428. Seller lists the car as a 1961, but Fusi says it falls in the 1959 101 Sprint number range. There is actually no real information in the sellers description other than paint and interior were ‘done to driver standard’ and most chrome work was recently done. These are items whose quality can vary wildly, so I would want someone to look at the car in person for me. The information in the eBay ad is so scant I would have to send an email with a tiresome list of questions if I was interested in buying.

The condition of this car is very interesting. It looks great at first flush, and someone who is new to these cars would be wowed by all the shiny stuff, but if you know how these cars are supposed to be that wowing slowly gives way to uncertainty. I am going to critique this car, comparing it with originality, but one has to remember that there were about 35 years in this cars life when any sort of non-mechanical parts were simply unobtainable for most people and this car looks to have been put together from what was on hand during this period. If it wasn’t for this approach, this car probably would have been scrapped a long time ago

Nice looking car for the right price. Wheels are later 105 Giulia Sedan or GT items. I wonder if the hub caps had to be modified to fit? I think the marker lights are Fiat 500 items.

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Market 9: Original 1958 750 B barn find

Sprint ‘Normale’ 750B 1493*06329, engine 1315*05724.Sold on eBay 3/31/08 for $26,600. A nicer start for a total restoration couldn’t be found, but I don’t know if I could bring myself to erase the original patina of this machine, and it may not make any financial sense. Engine is loosely assembled to add to the pictures appeal. Mileage is a claimed 108K at which point it blew its head-gasket, in 1971. I would estimate $10,000 or more to bring this car up to a safe, reliable operating standard, and maybe another $2000 to get the interior in shape. Seller, operating out of Newport Beach California, is known for bringing well presented barn-find Alfa’s to eBay and this is in my opinion his finest offering to date.

The 750 Sprints were all hand made, with body panels hammered out on wood bucks and welded together. When you scrutinize these cars you see some very fine detail work beside some very rough welding, totally normal given the manufacturing circumstances. Any repairs to the body are hammer and dolly, or cut, shape and weld. The car is a true uni-body so there are no removable panels and this adds to the expense of restoration. Fortunately this car needs none of that.

rightfrontlow

Clean, straight, original. This car sits like a car that was driven to this spot. Grills look great as do side spears and window surround trim. The nickname ‘eyebrow’ car comes from the two simple trims surrounding he openings on either side of the grill.

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Market #8: 1959 Interim 750 Sprint barn find

Sold! This car ended on 5/14/08 at $15,100. This is more than I expected, but not much, and I was not thinking of the current dollar weakness when I said $12,000. I expect this will be a sale that finalizes and the new owner will be very happy with their purchase. A couple of good showings for Sprints the last couple of months has me thinking I finally bought a car (or three) at the right time. I wonder what additional money would have been spent on this car if the original engine were included? Another win-win auction.

Sprint ‘Normale’ 750B 1493*08260, engine AR00112*01160. Another fantastic barn-find from the eBay seller out of Newport Beach area. This car is one of the Interim Sprints which were made from 1958 through 1960 and in a few cases beyond. The 750B and Tipo 10102 Sprints were made side by side with essentially whatever parts were on hand the day of the build. I suspect Bertone was told by Alfa to use up stock of old parts where they could. My 1959 Sprint is very similar to this car in most respects though it is a 10102 with a 1493 body number. The Fusi book of production Alfa’s lists the 59 750B’s starting with 07922 and ending with 10301. The 10102’s start with 20001 and end with 21487. I think that adds up to about 3500 examples made that year including Sprint Veloces, which were pulled at random from among the two series and labeled with an E between the Tipo prefix and number.

Stance looks right, body is straight as is the front brightwork. Too bad every mechanical part on a car like this will need attention before it can see the road.

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