Tag: Italian cars

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Market #28: Rough Giulia 1600 Sprint project

Reserve not Met.  Auction ended at $3300 on 7/6/08.  This ending price is probably the parts value of the car.  I would guess the reserve was $3500 or $4000.  Car has been relisted and I’m not sure but I think there are additional photos.

Giulia Sprint 1600 10112*356469. Yet another project Sprint from the eBay seller out of Newport Beach. Whoever bought the subject of Market #11 might consider this car as a co-project to make two into one from with that car. With values where they are today a Sprint like this is in a much better position for survival than it has ever been. That said, I think this car is a better value as a source of parts than as a restoration project, though the optimist in me would love to see it restored.

The body is for the most part straight, with the usual decent panel gaps and trim fit. It has rust issues, probably not terminal but challenging. Replaced rear drivers corner could hide major headaches, but with cut out and weld in rust repairs to do anyway it would probably fade to background noise by the time you got to it.

Even in near death the Sprint is beautiful. Drivers side headlight is neat period Marchal unit. Headlight rings mismatch. Front bumber in picture is not original.

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Roadside repairs: Motherlode 400 fuel pump failure

I purchased my Sprint Veloce March of this year (2008) .  The car had been gone through mechanically by a local vintage Alfa Ferrari Lancia mechanic who specializes in long involved rebuilds to a high standard.  While great care was taken in the set up of the SV, it had been about 4 years since its mechanical setting-up was completed and it didn’t receive more than a few hundred miles of break-in.  What it did receive is a lot of dis-assembly, rust repair, then reassembly.  No real teething drives were taken after this.  I put the car on the road after a thorough cleaning and reinstalling the interior pieces and spending about 20 hours stabilizing the wiring in the car to fix some little problems like 4 volts at the headlights, brake lights only when the headlights were on and no turn signals or horn or gauge lights… you get the idea. 

Woe is me to be laying in rough gravel under the car roadside in 80+ degree heat sleepy from a belly full of lunch getting grease and gasoline all over my arms.  Why is the fuel pump not in the trunk or under the hood?

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Giulietta Sprint Veloce Allegerita at 1958 Coupe Des Alps video

It’s easy to forget what the Giulietta Sprint Veloce Lightweight was made for when caught up in pondering values, looking for restoration parts or simply pursuing an abstract historical interest in something like manufacturing techniques of 50’s Italian coach builders. A quote from d’Amico and Tabucchis ‘Le Vetture Di Produzione Dal 1910’ says it better than I could hope to.

“The Giulietta Sprint’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the Porsche 356 Super, itself a 1300cc car, in the Gran Turismo category of the 1955 edition of the Mille Miglia that Alfa had intended to dominate shook the powers that be at the Portello. The company needed to produce a car for the 1956 edition capable of beating the German coupe.”

Thus was born the Sprint Veloce and the seeds planted that would eventually yield the SVZ, SZ and SS.  Below are two video clips that would probably cause most Giulietta Sprint Veloce Lightweight owners to faint if it were their car being driven this hard in this environment.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bbAsjyjm6U&feature=related]

The Youtube video above is a segment from the 1958 Coupe Des Alpes featuring a Sprint Veloce. 

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Market #26: 1 seller & 2 Bertone Sprints: a 750B and 2600

These two cars have been available for at least two years and attempts to sell them via eBay, Craigslist, Fantasy Junction and elsewhere have been made. They are owned by a long time Alfa collector in southern California and when they were first put up for sale they were part of a seeming collection thinning which included an amazing Giulia Promiscua, a Romeo Ambulance, a custom Giulia Super 2 door coupe and a Giulia Super pick-up truck with an early 70’s Toyota Hi-lux bed. I seem to remember a website that had all these cars on it a few years back, but haven’t been able to find it.

The Giulietta Sprint is a 1955 model which makes it one of a very few survivors from that year. Bring a Trailer has tracked this Giulietta 750B Sprint here for a while and their thoughts on the car are much the same as my own -they also have better pictures from the eBay auction. It seems like it should be a reasonably good deal, it should have been sold by now but it hasn’t. A friend of mine checked it out a few months ago and reported that it was nice, but he couldn’t get excited about it.

Ad on Craigslist reads: “Restored, dual Webers, 2000 Alfa engine and running gear, new paint, interior, chrome etc., small headlight 750B normale car, no rust, straight and solid body.”

My usual complaints about Craigslist photo quality apply here. Car looks straight enough. Small headlights and simple early grills look very nice. Imagine that… it’s red.

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Market #25: Bertone Scaglione orphan NSU Sport Prinz

Update 6/27/08.  Seller decided to keep the car.  Bravo!  Unfortunately he couldn’t actually end the auction in time due to the need to cancel bids and there is a time window that it all has to be done in.  Should be interesting for him to dig out of.  Sale price was $5100 after a few cancelled bids, who knows where it would have gone if the auction had played out.

NSU type 41 Sport Prinz Nr. 4109649. This car is available right now on eBay out of Sacramento. I know what you are thinking, why am I writing about a German mid-sized microcar? Turns out this little car is a second cousin of the Giulietta Sprint and first cousin of the Sprint Speciale. It also turns out I’ve owned an NSU Prinz I and have owned a group of NSU motorcycles, mopeds and scooters. Last, turns out I was on the California Melee the year this car was dragged against its will to Red Bluff resulting in the destruction of its original low-mileage engine.

Handsome little guy whose sporting look would probably be improved by removing part or all of the extensive front bumper, though it may upset the steering geometry to lose all that weight up there. Bumper is reminiscent of an SS front bumper. I’d be surprised if the paint color wasn’t the very same red as my 59 Sprint.

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Market #24: One-off? Pininfarina/Coune? Spider Coupe

Update 6/26/08: Yet a second comment, this one from someone who knows Mr. Coune and asked him if he made this car.  Mr. Coune says this is not his work.  I am not surprised because I don’t think the work on this car is up to the standard that can be seen on his MGB based coupe or Volvo Amazon convertibles.  Does anyone have any information on this car?  Please leave a comment or email me at sprints@giuliettas.com so the mystery can be solved. 

Update 6/23/08: Received a comment from someone familiar with Coune who says this car is not his work.  Whether the Coune connection was a pure fabrication on the part of the seller or a reiteration of a claim by someone else is somewhat immaterial in my opinion.  Regardless of who made it and under what circumstances it is more odd than beautiful and will have difficulty finding a new home at a restored Giulia Spider price.  If anyone knows more about this car please comment or send me an email at sprints@giuliettas.com. 

Original post: Another foray into international eBay, this time French,  turned up this odd one-off coupe based on Pininfarinas 101 Giulietta Spider.  Asking price is 17,500 Euro’s, about $27,000.  Sellers description is “ALFA ROMEO Giulietta Spider 1960 Coachbuilder Jacques Coune or factory ????? I have been told 3 are existing.  Car is running and is all original .Body generally sound . Needs restoration . Engine is original but gearbox is not (5 speed) French documents.”

Not a bad looking car combining a late-60’s Italian budget coupe sort of Kamm tail rear with the always pleasing Giulietta Spider.  I’m not really a convertible guy, having suffered sunburned nose after sunburned nose over the two years when an Austin Healey Frog/Bug-eye Sprite was my daily hack, but have often thought about how nice it would be to have a coupe version of some of the attractive convertibles I’ve tried to convince myself I could live with.  Harrington did it successfully (from a styling standpoint) for some of the British main-stays like the TR4 and Alpine so I guess it’s no surprise someone made a coupe out of a Pininfarina Giulietta Spider, despite the existence of the Bertone Sprint coupe.  I guess this is the point where I admit to having fantasized about welding a GTV roof on a Duetto, good thing either of those cars is too expensive to consider doing something like that to. 

Pretty much looks like your standard 101 1600 Spider wearing an after-market hard top from this angle.  Might be an earlier 1300 Spider with the 1600 ‘scoop’ hood.

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Market 21: California Black plate ‘Interim’ Giulietta Sprint

Update June 17, 2008.  Sold! The auction for this car ended today at $12,100. I don’t really understand this result unless here were major undisclosed problems and the primary bidders found out about them. This car seemed like a great deal compared to either the project that was the subject of this post or the incorrect and possibly sketchy subject of this post. Of course my theory that the market is somewhat flooded with Sprints may have been proven to have merit by this auction. If the sale sticks I have a feeling this car was very well bought. If only I had the cash I would gladly have welcomed this car into my shop.

Giulietta Sprint 10102 1493*20747, engine # 1315*011118. According to Fusi a 1959 year model based on the engine number. In classic car circles the world over, whether you’re talking about Alfa’s or Mopar’s in German or Japanese , the description ‘California Black plate car’ evokes a certain quality of preservation. This car is the very definition of what is meant by ‘California Black plate car’. Wearing it’s original issue black and yellow plates, no rust, low miles (79,884) and drivable with some deferred maintenance to tackle. This car is the twin of my 1959 Sprint and several other local cars I know about.

If you want to get into a true black plate Sprint, this is a good one to buy. I don’t know how many more Sprints like this will come out of California garages but it has to be few indeed.

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Like a casual family picture, all that is missing is a Golden Retriever laying in the shade at the front of the car. Car looks good… straight with shiny chrome bumper and grills, good panel gaps and reasonably shiny paint. “Appears to be rust free.”

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Market #23: Giulietta Sprint 750 B project

Giulietta Sprint 750 B 1493-03822, Engine 1315-03887.  Available here on Italian eBay is this early project Sprint.  Seller also has a Lancia Appia Zagato  project which, if you’ve never seen one, is worth taking a look at. 

I love a good project.  The enjoyment of seeing a car like this and imagining it eventually being transported to a garage where it is pains-takingly brought back to life is hard to explain to someone who doesn’t care much for old cars or working on them.  This looks like a better starting point than the crushed Confortevole I wrote about earlier, but that car had three times the upside this car has.  One would have to buy carefully to have this car make sense as a full restoration candidate, a thoughtful approach to this car may be a slow rolling restoration.  That said if this was in my neighborhood I’d be borrowing a trailer right now rather than writing about it.

Small headlights and simple grill surrounds are the most obvious differences between 750 and 101 bodied cars.  I bet that round sticker on the windshield is from some garage that doesn’t exist anymore.    Note ambiguous rusty patch behind the front wheel.

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750 Veloce Intake Parts on eBay, Weber 40DCO3

I am thinking about my 1958 Sprint Veloce’s future engine rebuild to original when I look for Veloce engine parts on eBay. All I have from the original Engine is the block with matching crank bearing caps and front cover. Having the original engine is a necessity if the car is ever going to be restored to absolute top dollar status but so is having all of the correct parts bolted to the engine. If you look at how much you can spend to get all these parts together you begin to see one of the reasons besides rarity that correct Veloces are so much more expensive than Normales.

The intake set-up on a 750 Veloce consists of a sand cast Aluminum intake manifold with a separate tapered water pipe, a pair of sand-cast Weber 40 DCO3 carburetors, a two piece Aluminum intake plenum and a firewall mounted sheet metal air filter canister fed from an intake horn built into the body on the drivers side front grill.

If you are restoring a 750 Veloce and you don’t have a pair of Weber 40DCO3’s, your wallet is in for a shock.

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Resting Sprints picture show

I’ve walked by these cars a few times, not really giving them a second glance. I suppose they are better preserved than a lot of others hiding in backyard hedges beside tilted fences in wetter climates but it still smarts a little to see these sad though save-able cars.

I’ve heard stories of running original Sprints robbed of mechanical parts to restore Spiders then cut up for disposal. It makes me wonder how many are left out there. I bet a third of the Sprints made still exist physically as cars but less than a third of those run. As the information age appropriates more of the world and makes it available perhaps the counts in registers and the like will become more accurate.

Back of a 101 Sprint showing heavy patina.

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