Category: Modified cars

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Modified Sprint Speciales

A rerun since I’m tropically indisposed.  Enjoy.

Originally posted July 5th, 2008: While not considered competitive on the race track in retrospect, the Sprint Speciale must none the less have been a somewhat attractive option for wealthy amateurs when it was first sold. The combination of an aerodynamic shape and powerful engine must surely have seemed like a winner if some weight could be shed and current engine tuning tricks being used by Conrero, Bosato and others could further improve the engine. This is supported by period race photographs and entry lists which document the occasional SS among the field of SV’s, SVZ’s and SZ’s.

An early SS (00045) running the 1960 Targa Florio, 00029 and 00040 also ran. 00045 went on to run in ’61 – ’64. Anyone know where 00045 is now?

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Market 175: Sprint rebodied by Zagato in Belgium

Update 1/2/10: I changed the location to Belgium as corrected by several readers. I knew making obvious mistakes would get some of you to comment!
Giulietta Sprint 750B 1493*04045. This Zagato rebodied Sprint is for sale in Belgium as an SVZ, no price is stated. I list it as a 750B because d’Amico and Tabucchi do not list 04045 as a Veloce and my SVZ book does not list this chassis as having been rebodied by Zagato ‘back in the day’. What does this mean? Not a lot actually. In the first place several period Zagato modified cars are not Veloce’s, in two cases not even Sprints, but rather Spiders. Second, if you spend 4 hours and read through the whole of the “complete SVZ file” on the Alfa BB you will see that (in addition to a lot of confusion) there are a lot of Zagato bodied Alfa’s in race photographs from the late 50’s that are not identified as any particular chassis number. This leads to the third point, if there are a bunch of unknown cars wearing Zagato bodies, couldn’t you just find a Sprint, rebody it in the style of an SVZ and pass it off? This question leads to the fourth point. Even if it was made yesterday it is not easy or cheap to fake an SVZ and if a legitimate coachbuilder today undertook the transformation of a car to the specification of an SVZ it would be very expensive. How expensive? I don’t really know. You tell me. The last point is: most of the original, known, accepted, documented and indisputable SVZ’s don’t wear their ‘back in the day’ body, so even if a somewhat modern recreation -how different would this car really be? Again, your thoughts please oh wise and comment prone reader.

When you look at a car like this you take in little details like the absence of side marker lights, the sliding windows, the shape of the rear quarter windows, the fit of the windshield etc and then go to your history book and try and figure out if any of the blurry black and whites are this car in action. Good times. Oh, and thanks Elmar for the heads up on this one.

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Market 130: Bertone Giulietta prototype?

Giulietta 10591 prototype.  This car is available right now out of Finland.  It is said to have been made by Bertone but the styling cues seem to me to be a little later than 1959 though (1969?)  I do see a Sprint under there if a squint just a bit.  Anyone know the story here?  Sellers story is below.  Oh, and it’s 40K Euro’s.

0745403001245856381

Looks a bit like this modified car.  Kind of approaches something sort of Opel or??

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Alfa SS Project

This Giulietta or Giulia ‘Alfa SS Project’ was forwarded to me by Elmar who has seemingly volunteered to hunt down Vin numbers of SS’s for me in Europe (Thanks Elmar!!!) and I added several new SS’s to the register with his help.  The company that has this Frankenstein on their website also makes Alfa repair panels for SZ, GTA etc.  I suppose if all you have is the body, without any other parts, this sort of thing makes sense, and everyone would approach it differently so I can’t really criticize too much, but from the pictures it’s going to look like an SS body with a Spider nose and Milano wheels rather than some cool ‘ooh, what’s that’ special. 

I have long thought that a GTV or Giulietta roof on a Duetto would make for a neat special, but a Spider nose on an SS… not so much.

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Market #50: Al Leake’s 57 Monoposto Spider race car

Update 2/11/09: This car just showed up on Anamera advertising that it will be auctioned by RM.  They are looking for $125,000.

95a9ec9425How much mark up does a detailing add?  Someone is going to find out!

213965f39dThis is one sweet ride.  Knowing me, if it were mine I’d commute in it.

Ex-Al Leake 1957 Giulietta Spider ‘Monoposto’ 1495*02646, Engine 00106*00512. This is a pretty serious purpose-built race car and it is available right now from Fantasy Junction. Click on the link if for no other reason than to look at the 50 or so pictures provided. No price is stated but Sophia, his most often raced Giulietta Spider made about $75,000 on eBay last winter so you can bet that this car will be at least that much.

Al Leake along with some other guys including H.B. Luginbuhl had an SCCA race team that started in the late 60’s/early 70’s called Rubber Chicken racing. Al continued to race and build Alfa’s for many years until he lost a battle with cancer earlier this year. A little of his history and cars can be read here on the Alfa BB. I saw Al race a few times at Sears Point and Laguna Seca and I can personally attest that he was very very fast and that this car is capable of winning against seemingly faster and more nimble cars if well driven.

It’s refreshing to see a modern era vintage race car that is both fiercely competitive and tastefully presented. I like the contrasting white wheels and cut down windscreen. A lot of Giulietta Spider race cars lose the under door trims, eyebrow trims and even grill heart. If you are fast this eight pounds of jewelry isn’t going to keep you from winning.

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