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How to destry a alfa

3K views 28 replies 17 participants last post by  concept 101 
#1 ·
#3 ·
9 times out of 10, when somebody decides to put an American v8 into something the finished product lacks attention to detail. This is no exception. There is something sacrilegious about opening an Alfa engine compartment and finding a collection of parts that could have been purchased at Pep Boys or Sears.
 
#5 ·
To be fair...

20 or 30 years ago, an old Alfa shell was a pretty low-tech, valueless thing. The ad states most everything had been stripped off of it. To turn that into this is an admirable effort, I think, particularly in the context of the time.

It's looks reasonably well assembled, and who among us wouldn't get a grin from the power-to-weight thrill?
 
#6 ·
I wonder if it were a 356 b if it would be commendable. Turning a car that was built for twisty roads into just another straight line beast was foolish to say the least. I would buy it if the cost to return it to it's original state wasn't cost prohibitive.
Just because you could pick one up cheap back in the day doesn't make it right. A friend of mine had a 356 b super 90 he bought in the 70s for 1k and never considered butchering it. It would blow away another friends Firebird with a monster engine on the Twisties.
Any fool could predict the future value of these cars.
 
#9 · (Edited)
"Any fool could predict the future value of these cars."
So.....
How many did YOU buy ?
In the late 70s, these were lined up at the wrecking yards and sold in the local paper as non-runners for a few hundred $. I bought and sold quite a few. Fixed many of them up and hopefully saved some from the crusher.
But no one knew what would eventually happen to the value.
Heck, when the baby boomers are gone, the value will probably go the way of the model T fords.....
Straight down !
 
#12 ·
It's interesting that when a Manufacturer installs a V8 (AC, Sunbeam and many others) it's greatness, but when an individual does the same, no matter how well it's done, it's forever rubbish.

Maybe it should of been a small block Ford...
 
#14 · (Edited)
It's interesting that when a Manufacturer installs a V8 (AC, Sunbeam and many others) it's greatness, but when an individual does the same, no matter how well it's done, it's forever rubbish.
I see it differently:

- When a manufacturer installs a V8, even a small-time shop like Carol Shelby & Dean Moon, they not only stuff in the big engine, but re-engineer the brakes / suspension / chassis, design a proper tunnel, etc etc. The ebay Giulietta appears to have none of that.

- When a manufacturer applies its badge , the result is a series-built car that has some history. A one-off, back-yard hot rod seldom has any provenance. There are exceptions, such as Max Balchowsky's "Old Yeller".

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with building hot rods. Just don't expect the market to respect them the way it respects a Cobra or a Tiger.
 
#15 ·
I guess I wasn't "any fool".

I declined buying the following in the 70's.

Two AR 1900 CSS coupes, $500 each
One AR 1900 Sedan, $500
AR 6C2500 Ville d'Este - $100,000 (didn't have that kind of money, anyway, but not a bad return to today's values.
Maserati A6 coupe $500.
Several AR Giulietta and Giulia coupes. Take your pick for $300. They were lined up in rows, unloved.
Several AR Giulietta and Giulia spiders. Take your pick for $500. Not quite so many to be found as the unloved Sprints.

If "any fool" could have seen what the market would value these at today, we should all have simply set up careers stockpiling them in environmentally controlled storage.

I, too well, remember the glut of old sports cars littering Houston in the 70's. Healy 3000's rarely brought more than $500 as well. I bought my MGA for $50. In 1974 I went to work at BAP/Geon making $2.40/hr. I had a mortgage, a new child, and a wife to support. Still, I had a Giulia Sprint GT AND a Touring 2000 to play with. If the Sprint GT engine had died, I would have just gone and found me an Alfa engine and dropped it in, disregarding the as-yet-to-be-discovered concept of "matching numbers".

Let's not be to hard on the past. Too soon old, too late smart.
 
#16 ·
Yep, hot rods are inherently an expression of the builder's specific goals and desires. As such, buying someone's hot rod is kind of an antithesis to the whole concept of a hot rod. That's why hot rods generally don't fare very well on the market.

Look, from the condition it sounds like this car was in and the market for old Alfas twenty years ago, it was probably either this or scrap value. Not my style at all, but whatever.

Now, if you did this to a veloce *today*, I would personally come and burn your house down :D
 
#17 ·
Someone in this thread remarked that they would buy this car and restore it to full Veloce standard, if it wouldn't cost so much to do so.

My "any fool" take on this is that you could restore any Veloce of this era and make your money back within a decade or less. It's a bit like North American P51s. There are any number of them flying around with nothing but the original paperwork to prove their identity. An actual Veloce, redone perfectly, is likely to be a positive gain within far less time than from the 70s to today.
 
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#18 ·
People can do whatever they like to their car; its their prerogative. But that doesn't insulate them from scrutiny as to how well they did it. This car IMO is typical of a hot rod. No thought to engineering, a small budget, and an end result that devalues the car. Honestly, do you think a reasonably correct drivetrain for this car, 20 years ago, cost more than the small block chevy and the work to install it? The fact that this car runs and drives is a testament to nothing. With all that weight ill placed up front this car is most likely no fun to drive. HP to weight isn't the only criteria. If it was we'd be riding Hayabusas instead of finely tuned Alfas.
 
#20 · (Edited)
The cost vs doing a "correct" drivetrain misses the point entirely - this thing is a ******* mad scientist job. You can just imagine them down in Arkansas: "**** Billy Bob, that engine is almost as big as that little Eye-talian car". "It sure is, Billy Ray - say, do y'all think it would fit inside?". "Billy Bob, yer a genius!!".
 
#19 · (Edited)
It's not THAT bad. Sure the giant engine in a tiny old car thing is goofy, but otherwise it appears to be a very nice car. It's not like they put fins on the back and a Rolls grill up front. The body is gorgeous aside from the goofy hood and black bumper and side pipes. If you could get the power to the ground I'm sure it'd be a demon in a drag race.

And just think of all the people on this forum that will tell you an '81 Spider will never be worth anything (cue....). Someday boys, someday.
 
#22 ·
Some decades ago a fellow in the South put a Montreal engine in a Sprint GT (or similar), and went drag racing with it. Why not? It bothers us only from a modern perspective.

Some people seem to treat cars like a religion. They are not, plus there are no religions worth much worry, either....
 
#24 ·
I love Alfas, have owned a few and two British. It is a shame to see what he has done.....But I did help a friend install a 260 Ford engine and tranny in a bug eye sprite. But I feel the best way to destroy an old Alfa is to drive it in the mid west or the upper east coast. The real pleasure I have enjoyed is helping my friend restore a 1955 AR 1900 CSS Zagato that once belonged to Pat Braiden when he lived in Michigan. Look up on Google the Alfatross and if you are in New Mexico September 23-25, come to the Santa Fe Concorso, Alfa Romeo is the featured marque.
Germans invented rust....the Italians perfected it .
 
#26 ·
By the early to mid 70's, only 10 years after the 750 and 101 series cars, it was nearly impossible to buy new body panels. Why would anyone want to repair a $500 car? These cars were not rare, high-tech, art. They were cheap, sporty cars in an era when such a thing was expected to last a decade, and little more. By the time they were 10 years old, they had been given to the teenage nephew to learn his auto-repair skills. Dad moved on to a new car.

Most of the teenagers started on a project, hooked up with a girlfriend, and left the dismantled hulk in the backyard until the day mom had it hauled off.

This one is a testament to at least one person having the tenacity to get something on the road.

I bought my very first Alfa, a 1959 Touring 2000, in 1972. It was only 13 years old. I paid $500, and drove it home. I discovered it had a cracked crank, so had to ferret a used engine via the "Road and Track" ads. I went to work as the parts manager at the local Alfa dealer in 1973. Even with that connection, parts were nearly unobtainable.

Many of the 102s ended up with SBCs, partly because engine parts were not much supported by the Alfa network, and partly because the remaining population of 102s had not yet rusted to the point they were turned into donor cars.

There's no guarantee this car actually is a Veloce, but if it is, it's probably worth buying and restoring. First of all, you CAN get the body panels now.
 
#27 ·
Not my cup of tea but not an unmitigated disaster and for the price it isn't horrible. As far as collectibility goes, nobody knows what is going to bring the money later on in mass-produced cars. I can only hope that the values of older Porsches and other interesting cars decline precipitously in about 20 years when all of the youngsters don't know how to drive with 3 pedals and wouldn't be caught dead driving anything without a fully connected Wifi entertainment system, let alone something without Air Conditioning that has less than 300HP.

Then I can have my 911S, GTV, and 356 in the garage together :)
 
#28 ·
I wonder what this car feels like to drive. The engine bay is cut up pretty well, though it's impossible to see it all clearly in the ad. But I have to believe that the car is a little squirrelly, with the front subframe weakened as it seems to be. Pretty weird.
 
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