Biba Restorations

[canguro]

Many of you probably have a copy of Chris Rees' excellent "Original Alfa Romeo Spider" which features an immaculately restored 1750 Spider. Out of curiosity, I searched the web for the restoration shop that did the work. The shop, Biba Restorations, has a web site featuring some interesting photos of their restoration process as performed on a Giulietta Spider.Biba Restorations Has anyone ever used their services?

[John M]

Hey Iori:

I would give Biba a thumbs up. He is quite a character. I have never had anything done by him, but he and I have shot emails back and forth and I quickly gathered that he is a perfectionist and a purist. If he sticks something on a car that is not original....he wants to make it look original. I just about drove him crazy from his purist standpoint with all the little stuff I do to mine. He is big into polishing items out beneath the hood.

I say go see his shop. Its probably a hole in the wall. A mechanics castle so to speak. One other thing about Biba, my perception is that he is expensive. And he will probably want to turn your car into a 69. He loves the 69 model year.

Best Regards,
John M

[canguro]

John, I think you're right about them being expensive. A close look at their website shows that they will only do complete restorations. I wonder what the final cost was to restore that perfect-looking 1750. Even if I could afford to do so, I'm not sure I could bring myself to take an Alfa to the street after that kind of costly and meticulous restoration. It's still good fun to see a broken Alfa returned to showroom condition. Since Biba isn't too far from here, I'll pay them a visit to see if they're working on anything interesting.

[PSk]

After reading through some of the pages on that site I do not think that they would be rediculously expensive. They appear to have a practical, use you car attitude ... thus not always concours correct.

Just my 2 cents worth.
Pete

[69Spider]

What do you consider expensive? I am in the process of a complete 69 resto and we're rapidly aproaching 30k. We may be another 10k into it once the motor and all the detail work is done (paint, etc.).

Full restorations are far from cheap but the one caveat is that almost no fully accurate restorations of the Duetto or 1750 have been completed. Some are close but I have yet to seea car over 92 or so points.

J

[Cali67Duetto]

This guy lives and breathes Alfas. To be more specific, this guy loves 1750 Round Tails. Biba doesn’t work on Alfas to make a living; he lives to work on Alfas.

Details …. that’s Biba. I spent a couple hours with him about two months; we went to go drop some parts off to a polisher in Pomona I hooked him up with. I wish I had run into him before I started the restoration of my Duetto.

I am aware he is not cheap, but the detail he puts into these cars is amazing. The good thing is he is very straight forward.

I am going to have him work on my car after I get it back from the paint shop. Biba will be pissed when he sees that I put chrome K&N air filters on my Duetto.