Hello, I was hoping you could assist me with a query I have in relation to my 1959 Alfa Romeo Guilietta Spider. I am trying to determine if it is a 101 series or 750? Is there a particular way I can identify this on the vehicle chassis? I did receive the Alfa Romeo certificate from the Alfa Archives in Italy which confirmed the model of the vehicle being the 1959 Alfa Romeo Guilietta Spider however it did not specify if it was a 101 or 750 series? Thanks
Fusi's production numbers posted here may give you some hints (but also has some errors).
I understand 1959 was a transitional year (certainly for Sprints) but I don't know if this also applied to Spiders. People in the "Giulietta & Giulia (1954-65)" may be able to better guide you with respect to what details are 750 or 101 or transitional.
The 1959 Spider is normally has a 750 engine and could have either a tunnel case transmission or a split case transmission. I recently restored a 1959 Spider Veloce that had a 750 engine with a split case transmission, 101 front suspension, later type steering box and of course the 750 Spider 88 inch wheel base. I am not sure when Alfa started to produce the 101 Spider body that is two inches longer than 750 body.
Thank you for the information Kuni, much appreciated.
I’m thinking it’s a 101 series however I was hoping to identify it from the body as the 1300 engine is from another Alfa of that time.
According to the Alfa archives the vehicle was produced on the 28 December 1959 and delivered to Indiana on 1 st February 1960 so perhaps that’s why it’s recorded as a 1960?
Based on this info, Would it be correct to say the vehicle is a 1959 or 1960?
Most cars used to be titled when they were sold. Seeing as how your Spider was made the last week of December, it wouldn't have been sold and titled until 1960. It's either one of the last ~50 cars made in 1959, or one of the first 50 made in 1960, depending on how you look at it. I don't know that it makes a difference being a super late 1959 model, or a super early 1960 model. Technically you could take the documentation from the Alfa archives to your DMV and see if they would change it to 1959 if you like the sound of that better.
I normally go by the production date and not the sale date. I do not think that it matters if you call your car 1959 or early 1960 but, the car is probaby a 101 Giulietta Spider. I have a late 1959 Sprint engine that has a 1495 serial number but, it is a 101 1300 engine. The easy way to find out what body you have is to measure the door and I could measure a door from several 750 Spiders and see if you have a 90 inch wheel base.
Lia,
Based on the chassis number clearly a long wheelbase car, a 101.03 or 101.04.
No need to go measuring the length of the door.
Incidentally, the easiest way to tell if it is a long wheelbase car is to look at the crossmember behind the drivers seat; if it goes straight across the car it is a SWB, if it had an indent it is a LWB.
The anomaly between the 1959 quoted by Alfa Archives and the Fusi records is because the cars were not produced in numerical sequence, hence the yearly cut offs can only be approximate.
The archives have the final word on production date of your car - 28 December 1959 it is
OK, you have a long wheel base Interim / Transition Spider, the model designation should be 10103 (or 10104 if it is one of the USA Spec tipo cars). Technically it's a 101 model with LWB & quarter light windows, however during the Interim period Alfa still ran the old 750 designations of 1495*XXXXX (in your case 1495*08587), but by the very end of '59 they were running the 00102 engines, the 750 type 1315 motor was phased out some time around the middle of '59 to be replaced by a short lived 101 type engine which was still designated 1315 but numbered from 01001 to 010509 - easily identifiable as a 101 type as it has a block mounted fuel pump.
The change from SWB to LWB is given in the Parts Manual as chassis 1495*08001, but we know that it happened some 500 cars earlier circa 1495*07500
I have a Feb '60 1495*08930 and a 15 July '60 1493*10990, both of which are LWB Interim/Transition cars still using the old 750 chassis numbering systems, but both are 10103 Spider Normale's.
3 more posts and you can attach pictures - car + chassis number engine & engine number plus the Data plate will help in identifying what you have, this is from my '60 Normale
Hi I wondering if the rocket cover to my 1964 Alfa Romeo Giulia Spider 101.23 series is correct? I had someone query it and I was hoping someone could confirm if it’s the correct one on the vehicle. Photos attached
I do not know what you refer to when you write "rocket cover".
Returning to your 1959 spider, chassis AR1495*08587*, I can say that, a few years ago, I was allowed to study and take some notes at Alfa Romeo but failed in my goal to improve upon Luigi Fusi's published tables describing Alfa Romeo production. My notes show that I have seen your car described in the Alfa Romeo production ledger. I studied only one book and that review took several hours. I had promised to record no details about any individual car and cannot be specific about details for your car. I was seeking to begin to improve upon the number-range charts published by Luigi Fusi but failed to gather enough information to do so for even one complete year. I wrote down the lowest and highest chassis number on each page, the lowest and highest engine number on each page and the earliest and latest production date on each page. Because I did not check more than one ledger book, and that book described cars produced July 1959 to August 1960, my data cannot yet be compared to Fusi's charts. There was a major number gap described almost certainly in another ledger book not seen. Neither year was described completely, so an additional visit to do some data recording will be necessary. One day, perhaps I will be able to continue this data recording?
As I write "1959 spider", I have to acknowledge that even the Italians would have called a car completed during December 1959 a "1960 model" even though their use of model year designations was nothing like what the American auto manufacturing market utilized at the time. Incidentally, the hand-written label on the ledger cover shows "750 Spaider", making the otherwise foreign word quite phonetic in Italian and also not reflecting the fact that the bulk of the cars described were Series 101 examples. Minor details!
The Alfa Romeo ledger book at this time described 16 cars per double-page spread. The time period it covered (incompletely) ran from July 1959 to August 1960. There was a break in the numbering and it became clear that the one book was not complete even as to the chassis number range it seemingly described. I remember that one car was described twice, at the bottom of one page and again at the top of the next. There was a large number range of roughly 1500 cars in the area of your car where it seemed that all but two examples were what we would call "Normale" in specification. I did not specifically record the two examples that were recorded as having what we would probably call "Veloce" specifications but I did record that there were some references to some special cars that were numbered fairly "close" to your car's number. There were many surprises in just the one ledger book! Some interesting names as well. I wish I could have recorded some of them.
Almost all cars numbered between 08001 and 09537 had "Normale" engine numbers. Again, there were very few exceptions. From the numbers I recorded, I believe your car would have had an engine numbered between 10596 and 12399. This means there are more than 1800 engines out there that "might be" the original … in general terms.
I should remind one and all that, when one writes to Alfa Romeo seeking information, one should always include the engine number even if you think it is perhaps not original to the chassis. In the past, Alfa Romeo has often confirmed when a number is the original. If it is not, they will not tell you what the original number is. This has led to some uncertainties for some owners even though they have nice (but incomplete) documentation from Alfa Romeo in their responses.
The sixteen cars described (08577 - 08592) on the same page had production dates running from 17 December 1959 to 8 February 1960. These data points for sixteen otherwise very similar cars gives us reason to think that any simplistic table or chart will be almost certainly inadequate to describe what was clearly a complicated production!
Lia the valve cover / cam cover on your car is incorrect, together with the cylinder head, they are for a later 105 Series model - I can tell that because they have the 2 little tabs for the 6mm bolts at the front and the cam cover has the breather for the crankcase-to-air filter vent which arrived circa late '66/early '67
This is a common modification as the '64 heads on the 1600 Giulia's were prone to cracking. Gordon Raymond has covered this extensively before. I would guess that the original weaker head on your car cracked and a good replacement was sourced.
If the engine block is original (10112*xxxxx) is will have the crank case breather at the back of the block just above the clutch - then you can source an earlier cover without the vent & just swap them over. With a bit of careful work using a Dremel tool, the 2 tabs can be removed and cleaned up so that the head looks like an earlier one (you really do want this later stronger head !!!)
What you don't want to do is fit the earlier cover without the vent if the block isn't vented - over time /distance when driving the crankcase suffers from pump-up and eventually the dipstick is blown up out of the tube which hoses the engine bay down in a good spray of oil.... Guess how I know - Took me ages to clean it & I took to running a GTA vented cap after that.
I just read through this thread, here are my two cents:
- The quarter windows were introduced before the transition to the longer wheelbase 101 body. I owned 03312, an early 1959 750, which had them. They were documented in a supplement to a 75 only parts book I had and sold a while ago.
- The valve cover is not a rocker cover because our Alfa engine, being overhead cams, does not have rockers.
Yves you are 100% correct, the early SWB Spiders did get the quarter light windows, this is the European spec for 750, while Hoffman ordered the Spider without the quarter light and as 80%+ of Spider production went to the USA this is the predominant view we see.
We have 02806 in the collection, an October '57 SWB Normale with quarter light windows. Your 03312 would have been an early '58 & if it was sold though the Canadian Concessionaire it would have been the European spec.
Yes, 03312 was imported directly in Canada. Sort of Canadian spec, miles Speedometer, salad beam headlamps and Lucas tail lamps. I was told it might have been the first new Alfa imported in Canada, along with a 1900SS.
The 750 parts catalog initially showed no quarter light windows for the Spider, most certainly reflecting the fact that the Spider was developed for Hoffman and the US market.
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