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Map analogy part 1: Where are you going?

A Sprint project lurks in your garage.  It’s in need of attention and you need a plan.  To have a plan you need to know what you want from it -where are you going with it.  So… -what do you want out of it?  What does your Sprint look like and drive like when it’s done?  This is the most important information for your restoration.  Why?  Defines your budget, timeline and a lot of other details.  So, what do you want?

This is a starting point that was all the excitement on the AlfaBB a few years ago.  The project has gone dark as far as I know, but this car is in a garage somewhere waiting for work to be done.  This is probably as difficult a starting point as you want to call a starting point.

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The car for you

So you’ve read and reread my post about restorations and decided to buy a project Giulietta (or 101 Giulia).  There is a reason you have decided to do this, and you need to try and identify it to make sure you find fulfillment in your purchase.  What do I mean?  Well, you need to ask yourself why and come up with a satisfying ‘because’.

For example… I had an Iso Rivolta 300GT.  How I came to possess it is unimportant, nor is the fact that it was a rusty hulk -a fast rusty hulk, but a rusty hulk no less.  Anyway, on the 2000 California Melee I chased a 750 Giulietta Sprint on the deliciously twisty and fast road from Leggett to Fort Bragg -45 minutes of 50 mph bliss.  If it was a scene in a movie it would have gone all slow motion and a Chopin prelude would have played sweet yet dramatic.  That’s the car for me I thought.  It took me a few years to round one up and the rest is history.

You never know when that first glimpse happened.  I sold my Fulvia to a guy who had a toy of one as a kid and it was his favorite toy.  Thirty years later…

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Thoughts on Restorations

Restoration (noun): The process of repairing or renovating a building, work of art, etc., so as to restore it to its original condition.

Over the weekend I was talking to a friend about my write ups of cars on the market and they asked why I was somewhat critical of some cars and forgiving of others.  I thought about it and decided I am usually critical of cars that are described as restored but lack the level of details in their description a restored car should have, and I’m easy on cars that are just, well… used cars.  I guess I’m also critical of cars where the ‘restorer’ should have been more sympathetic to the originality of the car, and work done would better be described as customization, modernization or some such, than restoration.

Henrik sent me this picture with the note: “Check out the fog lights”.  I also noted the ‘eyelids’ on the headlights. This is a car that, if it turned up in project form to be restored, requires some particular skills, including appreciation for the history of the car.  Restoration would likely be defined as returning it to the historically significant form seen above rather than it’s as-new form.

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Market 22: Mexico City Giulietta Sprint survivor

Update 7/1/12: 1 bid, reserve not met.  No sale.

Update 6/25/12: This car has turned up on eBay after 4 years with the same pictures and from the same seller. Sprint values have come a long way in the last 4 years. I expect it will find a buyer this time.

Original post 6/20/08: Reserve not met! $12,099 was the ending price, $1 less than the black plate car out of Cottonwood. Seller added some new pictures of the car outdoors in daylight that show it is a pretty nice car. I think either of these cars was a pretty good deal and would be a great basis for putting together very nice original driver. I think both suffered from somewhat poor presentation and the fact that they both went through eBay at the same time. There can’t be that many guys (or gals) out there looking for Sprints, so any more than 2 or 3 a month in a given area is market saturation, and we’ve been seeing 5 or 6 a month since I started this blog. Last, I suspect both these sellers, encouraged by the strong sale prices mentioned earlier for project cars, put these on the market just to kind of see what they would do, without a real necessity to sell them.

Added pictures include this nose shot, always a pleasant sight. I wonder if a yellow curb has the same meaning in Mexico.

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Market 415: Giulia Sprint Speciale 381399 -the last one

Update 7/1/12: Imagine that.

Update 6/23/12: Driver’s Source out of Houston, who seems to specialize in buying high and trying to sell even higher, has this SS for sale now for a whopping $198,000. It is, if photo’s be believed, a stunning car, but I’m not sure the world is ready for a Giulia SS at this price point. All prior high sales have been Giulietta’s (anyone??).

Original post 4/20/12: Giulia Sprint Speciale 10121*381399.  Michael has made me aware that Ferrari of Seattle is selling this car right now for $125,000.  A pretty good deal if the last two projects I listed for $60,000 each are really worth that.  Just think, no bodywork, no rust repair, no parts hunting.  Just fly in, write a check, add it to your insurance and drive home.  Oh, and if you’re one of those people who likes ‘interesting’ VIN’s, this is the last SS they made.

Great color!  Everything looks straight and clean in this picture.  Is there anything to the theory that a high-end dealer would risk reputation selling a less than perfect car? Maybe. This will sell immediately I think.

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Market 333: SS Project 00486 in Ohio

Update 6/21/12: Didn’t take long for the 50+% dealer tax to be added to this car.  More pictures show it to be complete and needy.  Here it is in Denver.

I definitely don’t like the look of knock-offs. Pretty straight car.

Original post 11/5/11: Giulietta Sprint Speciale 10120*00486, 00120*00949.  Frank pointed me in the direction of this car listed on Hemmings.  Condition is pretty good and it should make for a straight-forward restoration to ‘clean driver’ without going too far under water at the $40,000 asking price.  For a full on restoration it will require just as much work as a car like the disassembled project I listed recently.  Wheels are very rare (on a Giulietta) Borrani wires complete with a spare.  I’m personally not a big fan of the wire wheel look, but many are.

Am I blue?  Yes, but not the right shade.  Looks pretty good as far as derelict SS’s goes.

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Market 425: Spider 00739 on eBay

Update 7/1/12: $9500. Not too bad for a fairly straight ’56 with the matching engine. You’ll see more from this car soon.

Giulietta Spider 750D 1495*00739, 1315*40574. This car is on eBay right now out of Denver. It looks fairly complete and in reasonable shape to restore. Will need a lot of work and $ to get it together, but as the seller states, these early cars do bring real money.

Looks like the usual ‘been apart for a while’ Spider project.  Door fits well. 

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Sprint front bumper and rocker trim mounting

My goal for the black Sprint right now is to get a lot of the big delicate stuff mounted on it, like bumpers, grills, and trim etc so I don’t have to find places to store it.  You probably saw the front bumper on the ground in front of the Sprint in the pictures of my new space -well, on the car seemed like the best place to store it, so I got to work mounting it.  Of course, it wasn’t straight forward, I had to chase a lot of threads, straighten some parts and go on and off a bunch of times with it until I was happy with how it fit.  It took several hours and went something like this.

Starting at the middle.  These grills and bumper are original, warts and all, I just polished them by hand as well as I could with steel wool and Mothers mag polish.  I’ll get some electricity involved and polish the heck out of them at some point.  Note the spacing between the grills and bumper is fairly even -took a lot of bumper mount bending to make that happen.  Grills will have to come back off to fit the lights but this was a good exercise.

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My new space / Engauged part 2

It’s been a while since I had a dedicated space to work on my cars.  I thought I could do with one car and one parking space.  I thought I could keep my tools and parts at my dad’s place.  My acquisitive nature has thwarted those thoughts.  I now have: Giulietta Sprint, Glas 1700 GT, Lancia Appia (plus parts car), Toyota Stout, NSU Prima IIIKL Scooter and a 1963 Honda Trail 55.  As the Byrd’s paraphrased in some old book: there’s a time to gather stones together.  I moved out of my one car garage and storage space and signed on with another acquisitive Giulietta owner for a nice big space for very reasonable money.  Check it out -it’s why I haven’t been posting much (besides Rufus)!

The space.  1000 sq ft.  High ceilings.  Lights.  Skylights.  Giulietta’s waiting for help.

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Series 2 Lancia Appia joins the circus

Some cars you pursue, some pursue you.  Some need engine work, others bodywork, and still others both and everything in between.  This car?  Just needs some easy stuff…  How did it come to pass?  I was in the right place at the right time and rolled with it.  A few days later I purchased this series 2 Appia.  It needs an engine swap -comes with the new unit even, but needs little else.  Check it out.

Heard about it on Monday.  Bought it on Tuesday.  It’s kind of a metallic gray-green.

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