Category: History

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Alfa Sprint crash from ‘Les Choses de la Vie’ 1970

I enjoy movies set in Europe in the 1960’s where they have real street scenes.  I watched ‘How to steal a million’ with Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole the other night and the street scenes were amazing.  I was reminded I haven’t been featuring video’s in a while and it brought to mind this video.  I know, you’ve seen this before but paying close attention to the details will get you thinking.  If you’ve never seen it watch it before you read the comments after it. 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeKtzX1pAXo]

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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.

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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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D&S 6: original SS color options

d’Amico and Tabucchi in their ‘Alfa Romeo Le vetture di produzione’ list the color options for the 10120 SS as follows (the English translations are their work not mine): azzuro nube (cloud blue), bianco ambra (amber white), bleu notte (midnight blue), rosso Alfa (Alfa red), bianco gardenia (gardenia white), grigio metallizzato (metallic grey), argento metallizzato (metallic silver), verde Suez (Suez green), rosso rubino (ruby red), argento auteuil (auteuil silver), verde bosco (wood green), bleu sera (night blue), grigio Inglese (British gray), grigio Fiat (Fiat grey) and for 1959 and 1960: bluette.

For the Giulia SS they opted for a more streamlined approach to color, no doubt to increase efficiency in the paint department. You could choose from: rosso Alfa (Alfa red), grigio graphite (graphite grey), bleu Bosforo (Bosphorus blue), verde muschio (moss green) and bianco gardenia (gardenia white).

I imagine that these 5 colors are available across the line up of Bertone built Alfa’s. This all goes out the window when you consider you could pay them extra to paint your SS whatever color you wanted.

Antti in Finland sent me this picture of a Bluette (if my guess is correct and this car darkens when rubbed out) Giulia SS he has that was one of three to come to Finland new, the others being red and white. All three cars survive which means 100% survivorship in the Finnish market.

I haven’t seen too many green SS’s. If anyone has pictures of any of these colors listed that they KNOW is an original car in factory paint drop me a line and I’ll add it to this post to create a palette for reference. I don’t have access to my library of pictures right now or I could add a few.

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A new page and suggestions please

This story, that each of these cars is a part of the unfolding of, has a perfect format for the telling and I am struggling to find it. I have been writing a “Giulietta models” page on and off for months and every time I work on it I think it might be time to build a real website with links to pages and all but this too would lead to limitations.

The story is all at once a history with a genesis, a genealogy, accounts of the heroic deeds of remarkable family members and the humans that operated them on race tracks and winding mountain roads, a tale of economic forces, a tale of product life-cycle and today a tale of restoration, preservation and history. I have been telling this tale ad hoc, as the material comes available and time allows, but the time is coming when the whole singular tale could be told from the pieces.

An early SS advertising photo.
An early SS advertising photo.

So what am I getting at here? I guess this is another call for help. You all know how you would like the story to look, how the pieces would fit together and tell the larger tale. I want some recommendations. Is there a book I should get that is exemplary in its presentation of this sort of history? I have a lot of Alfa history type books but they all focus on a piece of the story, and even the best are budget limited and thereby content limited by the publisher.

Have a look at the beginnings of the new page and send me an email or post a comment.

By the way, woo hoo, this is my 300th post!

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1495*00004 Bertone Spider Prototype 2

In the last Spider prototype post I looked at was 1495*00002. Alfa liked that car but found it a bit alienating for their more traditional customers so Bertone was sent back to the drawing board and this car, 1495*00004 emerged. There are definitely cues from 00002 that carried over, but there are also new elements. This design is attributed to Franco Scaglione.

argiuliettabertoneThis picture from google images. I have a picture of this car form Pebble Beach a few years back somewhere. It does share the look of the BAT cars but to me also seems to predict the Zagato treatments that Giulietta’s would see. Note lack of a top cross bar on the windshield assembly and the cut down angled side windows.

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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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Setting the standard, pushing product 3.

You’ve all seen these, or at least most of them, I know I have, but I had a special request recently that included some examples.  The premise of the request is seemingly that, well, obviously the Italians invented the use of sex to sell cars, I mean, who else??  {Insert carefully researched claim that in fact, the Greeks invented the use of sex to sell chariots -oh, wait no, it was the Chinese and Rickshaws…}. Nowadays you see a good looking young woman with perfect semi-curly hair and green eyes in a drug company bus stop poster making you think herpes might not be so bad.   Next thing you know they will be using sex to sell celibacy.  Ahh, but I degress.  Here are a group of advertising pictures featuring the perfect woman lending her allure to the, in this case, alluring enough product.  Enjoy.

alfaromeojuniorzagatoadvertisement05Very nice.  Perfect composition in this one.  Proof that sexy only needs to be hinted at to be effective. 

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Berlina Register Newsletter 28 out now!

Andrew likes to keep us up to date on the Berlina world by reporting sales, stories and the like in his newsletters. Newsletter 28 (berlet28) appeared in my email box yesterday so naturally I decided to post about it.  I’ve noticed the last few years he has strayed from the primary topic (Berlinas) and it has become more and more the Alfa Sedan Register Newsletter. Yours truly features in one of the sale reports, as I did in Berlina Newsletter 27.   Stay tuned for the next installment on that front where I will likely feature again, perhaps twice in Newsletter 29, which will put me in there three issues running.   If you go to the Berlina register website (there’s a link on my homepage) you can find an archive of all of his Newsletters going back to when market reports included $800 Berlina original runner/drivers that would be $8000 these days.  So it goes.

SF Gate published an article about Andrew in their CARS section recently that is linked below.

SF Gate article about Andrew.

andrew_alfa_4The SF Gate article included a photo session but strangely there are no pictures with the article anymore.  Here’s Andrew with his Super.

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Auto Universum Giulietta Tribute Article

J Kraus, the writer and editor behind Auto Universum sent me notice that he had published an article about Giuliettas.  He recounts the roll out of the various branches of the Giulietta family tree nicely and  included a lot of period press pictures.  Also on his blog are articles about Louis Reard (Renault’s equivalent of Busso or Satta), the Citroen U55 Currus Cityrama and more.   Check it out!

ti20martindaleAnother unrelated picture I found in my picture files that I have no idea the origin of.  Notweworthy is the diversity of the field.  I see a Giulietta Berlina back there.