10120 Giulietta – Page 6

April 9, 2009

Market 105: Sprint Special 00339, best project yet!

Giulietta Sprint Speciale 10120*00339, engine 00120*00611. This car is available right now from The Car Nut in Georgia. The seller says the price depends on where he is in the restoration ($45,000 as of 4/8/09, 5:42 pm) when a buyer appears which is practical. It looks to me like all that is really left to do is the clean assembly that can seem to take forever but is generally regarded as fun. The body looks to have been finished to a very high standard and silver is a good color for SS’s, as evidenced also in Market 18.

Work in Progress. Those wheels are odd, but the seller indicates originals with new caps are included. If this car is as nice in person as the pictures, this is a great deal.

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February 20, 2009

Market #64: Very Early SS project

Update 2/25/09: Seller sent me a few pictures of this car out of the little garage where it’s been living the last 20 years.

al-ss-back-three Car looks even better out of the cramped garage.

I wish my SS looked this good from behind.

Update 2/20/09: I went and saw (translated that means I drove from Oakland to San Diego and back in 21 hours) this car on Wednesday to either get the idea of buying it out of my head or get the ball rolling on the buy, combine, sell process. It sounds like a big drive just to look at a car, but I also picked up an extra set of door glasses, seats and some small misc from the other SS the seller got with this car, which was stripped, cut up and thrown away due to being ‘very very rusty’. I am listing some of the other parts for the seller on my for sale page.

Looks pretty good as far as projects goes. Headlight appears to be pushed into the body a bit and the marker light has been molested at some point. Hood fit doesn’t look too bad.

Okay, so how is this car you ask? I think it’s pretty good. If you wanted to just drop a running engine in it, do the brakes, lube the suspension and get the electrical parts working you’d have a roadworthy rough SS. Kinda cool. The dash, headliner and all is pretty good, the door panels are out of the car but could be sympathetically installed to achieve the RSS ‘Ratty Sprint Speciale’ look.

The engine you can see propped in it is a blank Veloce block, the crank is out and one of the main caps is missing. The seller says he has more boxes of SS stuff ‘somewhere’ but I would either plan on an align bore or write the block off going into the deal if I didn’t see it. The intake manifold, 40DCOE2’s and plenum are correct for 1300 101 Veloce and I found the fuel pump blank off plate, Marelli distributor, engine front over with aluminum fan etc, so there is a lot of value in what is present. Personally I’d throw a known good 1600 or 1750 in it and keep these bits on the shelf for the ‘restoration’ while I drive it around.

Send me an email at sprints@giuliettas.com if you want to hear more about this car. The seller is ready to deal but this is no fire sale.

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January 23, 2009

Market #80: Black Giulietta SS at Bonhams

Update 2/10/09: Car sold for 41,100 Euro’s including auction fees. Not too bad.

Giulietta Sprint Speciale 10120*00366, Engine 00120*00775. This 1960 Giulietta SS is going to be auctioned by Bonhams on 2/7/09 as part of the Retromobile show in Paris, France and is expected to make between 25 – 30K Euro’s. Without better pictures I can’t really comment on that estimate, but from what can be seen it looks like a nice car.

ss-366-corner These pictures are not very high quality but I have a contributor who is going to get better pictures if possible. I am into this color combo and may have to change my SS color plans, Black with Dove gray is spectacular!

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November 21, 2008

Market #61: SS 00001, ‘Squalo’ again.

Another thought for this car: I’ve been thinking about this car (what can I say, despite my tough talk below I think it’s awesome and wish I could buy it) and as recommended by Elmar, I think the thing that should happen is it should go to Arese to be part of Alfa’s permanent ‘Museo Storico’ collection. They have the prototype successor to the SS there and they have the model they made this SS after so why not add this car to the collection. Fiat has deep pockets and Italians are museum minded if my trips there are any indication. If the BAT cars are worth what they are worth (hey, if I had a spare 20 million I’d buy them in a heart beat) then this car has plenty of headroom, but I want some cold hard documentation before I call it the prototype. If this car is the SS prototype, it is more closely related to the BAT cars than any other car. I have seen in print that the SS is considered the production result of the BAT cars so it makes perfect sense. OK, back to worrying about the small end busings on my crappy 59 Sprint Normale…

Update: A reader informs me this car is known to Italians as SS ‘Squalo’ or shark for the shape of the grill opening.

Giulietta Sprint Speciale 10120*00001, Engine 00120*00003. This car has surfaced for sale again, the third time in a year or so since the ‘well-known collector and long-time owner’ parted with it. Each time about $100k has been added to the price but nothing has been done to rectify the cars short comings and so here it is looking for an owner who will appreciate it for what it is and what it isn’t. Oh, and the new owner will be required to fork over $275,000.

Looks phenomenal in this picture, but the flaws have been air-brushed out and apparently it is appropriate for deep space travel. Those alumimum headlight rings are too cool. I bet the mirrors take the coefficient of drag from .28 to .30.

Continue reading “Market #61: SS 00001, ‘Squalo’ again.”

November 14, 2008

Alfa Romeo Giulietta SS ‘Leight 00002’ Low-nose

Elmar, my European correspondent, sent me a link to Classic Motor Action in Belgium (who is currently offering a Fiat 8V that is spectacular!!!), telling me they had Low-nose SS number 2 in their archive of cars they had sold at auction, sure enough they do. d’Amico and Tabucchi say of this car “Machino presso il servizio esperienze principali”. I’m not sure of the nuance of the Italian language but I suspect they mean this car was put to work by the factory for testing, shows, journalists etc. It’s good to know it exists as it is truly the second SS made behind 00012 and before 00006.

Definitely a low nose. I wonder how old this picture is? Notice the similarities to 00001 below. I assume the title ‘leight’ means it is aluminum.

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October 27, 2008

Market #54: Luzzago Giulietta Sprint Speciale auction 11/15

Giulietta Sprint Speciale 10120*00687, engine 00129*29819 (not original). This car is going to be auctioned 11/15/08 at the Luzzago in Italy. The engine is from a Giulietta TI which seems funny, but once the original is gone, almost any 101 1300 can serve as a basis to build an 00120 spec veloce engine, you just have to verify what was done. I really like the look of the car, lowered and with all extra trim removed. I’m not crazy about the white wheels and some of the interior treatments, but that’s all easy enough to deal with.

Paint looks great, note there is little reflection distortion across body lines. Home-made grill is simple but effective.

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August 19, 2008

Market #41: Giulietta SS 00207 cleaned up.

Another update: This car has reportedly sold! I guess that means you have to buy mine…

Update: I found a couple of pictures from the previous sale if anyone is seriously interested in this car and wants to see them email me at sprints@giuliettas.com. Also this car is missing the hood spear but they are available.

Giulietta SS 10120*00207, Engine 00536*08350, Bertone *87*209*. Fantasy Junction has this car listed for $48,500. This car was sold by them last year for about $28,000 as a project. Interestingly the link on their ‘Cars we sold’ page is gone. I suppose if I was selling this car a second time after it under went a cosmetic face lift I’d rather the world didn’t know.

The engine in the car is a 1600cc from a 1966 Giulia Sprint GT Veloce or a Duetto and contemporary literature lists the power output at either 125 or 122 depending on the brochure, either way a few shy of the 129hp claimed for a 10121 Giulia SS. The good: Probably a fast smooth 10120 Giulietta SS, not as high strung as one with the original 100 hp 1300cc engine but the bad: it’s not original and the price doesn’t adequately reflect this in my opinion, though I suppose it could be argued that it’s close. I could of course go on at length with opinions but form your own from this: The correct 00120 Engine with all the the correct parts in running condition starts at $15,000 due to its commonality with the expensive SZ, a 1966 Veloce engine like the one in this car is maybe $5-6000.

Car looks a lot better than it did when I looked at it last year. All of the loose ends seem to have been tied up. I like the addition of fog lights. Headlights are cheapo Wagners or something. I’d like to see some period Carello’s or Marchal’s but if you’re sprucing a car up to make money it probably doesn’t make sense to spend money unnecessarily, especially when so few would notice.

Continue reading “Market #41: Giulietta SS 00207 cleaned up.”

June 7, 2008

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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May 5, 2008

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.

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May 4, 2008

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.

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