Tag: Classic cars

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Sprint Veloce market review 2008

The Sprint Veloce is one of those cars that has a pretty big value range as is evidenced below.  It’s not really fair to lump them all together  -for what really does an early bred-to-race lightweight have in common with a late upholstered-for-comfort 101 car besides the basic shape and name-  but if I separated them I would have to write at least 3 market reviews and I don’t want to do that so here they are unfairly lumped for comparison.  I am wondering if SV 06476 is currently being restored…

Market 42 was 1493*08315, a seamonster of a Sprint Veloce failing to sell for $7000.  I would have gone for it if it was in my ‘hood. Continue reading “Sprint Veloce market review 2008”

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Sprint Speciale market reviews 2008

You know I like the SS’s so I’ll start my long overdue 2008 Market Review’s with them.  Below are the SS’s I wrote about in 2008 in order of cheapest to most expensive.  I didn’t keep as good of records when I first started this project so I ended up editing the posts along the way which made this project take a lot longer than it should have.  Enjoy.

Market 36 was this unidentified incomplete rusty hulk for 1000 Euro’s.  At least it rolls.

Continue reading “Sprint Speciale market reviews 2008”

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Market 179: Early 750B Sprint Project

Giulietta Sprint 750 B 1493*05372, 1315*04810. This car, for sale on Anamera for 13,500 Euro’s or about $19,500, actually sits in Ventura California.  The body has been primered to even out its appearance and protect it, but anyone taking this on will want to take it down to bare metal and start over.  I’m surprised it is still available considering the lack of rust.

I think primer was a good idea, gives it a look of being ‘almost there’.  Door and hood shut lines look pretty good and the nose is in great shape.  This car must have been very near the end of the small headlight run.

Continue reading “Market 179: Early 750B Sprint Project”

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Market 178: RHD Giulia 1600 Sprint

Giulia Sprint 1600 10112. I have taken to ignoring advertisements for cars where the VIN number is not mentioned, an arbitrary filter of sorts to keep me from spending all my time on Market Reports if you will, but this car, off of the awkwardly named Car and Classic dot com, deserves mention because I think it’s the first right hand drive late 1600 Sprint I’ve seen. Maybe one of my UK based readers will recognize it and have a VIN for it they can send along. Alfa did about 400 RHD 1600 Spiders with their own Tipo number -10119, I wonder if a RHD Sprint has its own Tipo number? RHD SS’s don’t.

Looks like a very nice Sprint with exemplary chrome and paint. Is it Good wood or Goodwood? Either way, it’s one of the places I need to visit someday during their Festival of Speed Week. Why don’t they have a car show with period dress required of attendees here in the USA? Oh yeah, we are on average a nation of slobs so attendance would be low. Continue reading “Market 178: RHD Giulia 1600 Sprint”

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Fasteners 4 and Engine 7: small progress

With all these market summaries and Spiders to write about I’ve been neglecting to have my postings keep pace with my progress on the SS.  This is not a total disaster because I really haven’t done anything momentus, just more plating and small jobs on the engine rebuild.

Over the winter break I torqued the lower end and head all together so the engine is ready for final assembly, but the details of final assembly have taken some time, mainly due to a missing lock nut.  Sorry for the quality of these pictures, they were taken on my phone because I didn’t have my camera.

These lock nuts that go over the main nuts that you torque down are strange.  They are sheetmetal and when you tighten them down they flex and distort, and I think the distortion creates a spring force that makes them not want to loosen. After torquing the lower end I found the bag of them from when I took this engine apart.  I was surprised to find only seven in the bag.  I must have lost one or maybe I used one on the Sprint engine rebuild last winter and just don’t remember.   Good news: I have extras, bad news: they are inside a completely assembled engine. Continue reading “Fasteners 4 and Engine 7: small progress”

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Top 5 Cars for sale in 2009 on giuliettas.com

While I was reading through the 107 market reports of 2009 and compiling the wrap up reports for the different models there were some real stand outs. It’s not because they were necessarily good deals or well restored or anything like that, they were just cars I liked and in a few cases really wanted to try and buy. Fortunately I am becoming  immune to the desire to buy all these cars, perhaps from seeing so many every week.  BTW:  There are links to all the 2009 market summaries at the end of this post.

So here they are starting with number one:

Market 131 will prove to be a source of irritation to me and probably others for years to come. Not only did it sell for cheap, it was complete, not far from roadworthy, came from a longterm alfisti and for me anyway, was a Giulietta with perfect patina. If I had known the auction was going to end at $27,000 I WOULD have figured out how to buy it. Continue reading “Top 5 Cars for sale in 2009 on giuliettas.com”

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Market 176: Interim Spider Veloce

Update 1/12/10: Auction ended with 18 bids at $16,751.  If the commenter who outlined this cars history on Craigslist is right, then this is a pretty good result for the seller.  Not really a bad price to pay for a Spider Veloce either if that’s what you want and you’re looking for a pretty good project.

Giulietta Spider Veloce 750F 1495*05693. This car, an early 1959, is on eBay out of Colorado.  It looks like the seller saw the action some Spider Veloce’s were getting in late 2009 and decided it was time to send it on its way.

Looks presentable with shiny chrome/stainless, straight panels and decent paint.  I like the color. Continue reading “Market 176: Interim Spider Veloce”

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SZ SVZ and other rarities Market review 2009

Below are the cars that sell in such small numbers that it doesn’t make sense have a separate review for each. Still in order of least to most expensive with in most cases just the asking price identified.  I’ll try to find enough Giulietta Sedans and SZ’s this year to have reviews for each next year.

Market 94 was this 10109 Giulietta TI for 750 pounds, about $1200. Rusty, complete and cheap. Continue reading “SZ SVZ and other rarities Market review 2009”

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Spider Market review 2009

It has been on my mind as I write the other 2009 market reviews that the Spider review is going to take some time to complete, there having been a lot of Spider sales in 2009. I am thinking this will be my longest post ever. I think this will be helpful to anyone buying, selling or trying to figure out the future value of restoration work. Enjoy!

Market 39 was 10104 1495*11267, selling for $2025 after a year of eBay runs. I think the difficulty with this car was location and portability. How do you transport a car from an absolute middle of nowhere dirt road that doesn’t have wheels or even axles to mount them on? Continue reading “Spider Market review 2009”

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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.