Hardtop Identification

Hi GTD,
As in "cannot be made to fit"?
or "alot of work to make it fit"?
or "a few mods needed to make it fit"?
after all it needs restoring anyway!
Nick

Nick
As in "must cut and remove 5cm from length of chassis".

Much easier to find a correct 101 top. They do show up now and then. The 750 tops are too rare to be cutting on anyway. Leave them for the 750's and find a later top.
Mine is a very late 101, 1600 top, made for the trunk hinge hooks. On disassembly, it never had the PF # plate, though it is correct and I have known it since it was imported by Knauz Continental in Lake Forest Ill. in the mid 60's. ALL the 1300 101 tops with the rear wing nut hold downs I've ever seen had the PF # plate. Hope this helps. Gordon Raymond

Hard top: "To have or not to have"

I am trying to understand the wisdom or logic of having a convertible hard top. First: they are boat anchors sitting in some obscure corner. Second: these cars are never driven often enough, or by that matter a daily driver whose owner will be better served by installing the hard top during winters. Who drive a convertible car during the best season of the year Fall, Spring and early summer with a hard top?: Third: One justification is that increases the value of the car, nonsense, the car is valuable no more with top or no top. Anyone who feels that it must have a hard top contact me I will be happy to unload my original steel Pininfarina hard top to the highest offer. I am not trying to sarcastic, I just having a hard time believing that having a hard top is such a great thing. Of course, I would not have felt the same way 30 years ago. Today, these are very different times and if you must have it.

Hardtop

Lionel is absolutely right on this one. The tops may be pretty, but they weigh a ton, are ungainly, typcially scratch the paint on the rear panel. I haven't used mine in 25 years, yet folks are always pestering me to sell it. In fact, I don't even use the soft top on my 1600 Spider because of the frame, another finger-crushing, tear-inducing, torture device. Best of worlds: get a tonneau cover.

Lionel et all
If you own a hardtop and do not use it, and feel it does not increase the value of your car, there is a simple solution...sell it.
The fact that you've kept it for years betrays the value of the item -to you. It's not that you need it - you simply can't part with it!

GTD said:

Lionel et all
If you own a hardtop and do not use it, and feel it does not increase the value of your car, there is a simple solution...sell it.
The fact that you've kept it for years betrays the value of the item -to you. It's not that you need it - you simply can't part with it!

Click to expand...

I will be happy to sell it!!!! BUT, I am not going to give it away either. In fact, as of this moment I will take $3,000. I purchased the car from a one owner car that was sold in 1965 in Dallas. I got the original trade sheet were the owner traded a TR3 for the 1965 Giulia, the spare key still with the original dealer tag containing the stock number. I am going to keep the car and will gladly part with the hard top. Any seriously considering the acquisition of the original Pininfarina hard top such contact me off line.

Unlike Lionel's my Pinin Farina top is not for sale; I'd have nothing to ***** about if I sold it.
Vince Coppola

GTD said:

Nick
As in "must cut and remove 5cm from length of chassis".

Click to expand...

I was more thinking along the lines of inserting 5cm into the steel hardtop

I come from a kitcar/hotrod background and making things fit is a hobby of mine (if the price is right i'm willing to give it a go).

As to why a hardtop, how about this senario:-

You are taking the spider on a fall vacation with you (1000 mile round trip) for one week and don't know what the weather will be like, you have to cross high mountains to get there and it is going to rain some on the way. Why not fit the hardtop for the journey (snug as a bug in a rug) and remove it when you get there?
plenty of lakeside days for topdown motoring when I get there!

Also I think the spider looks funky with the hardtop!
Nick

I've edited my previous post to agree with this information which I recently discovered. There was an aftermarket supplier of steel hardtops; Ellebi. They are distinctly different from the Pinin Farina design.

I drove a 101 Spider one winter when transferred to Winnipeg, and my claim to fame is starting it at 49 below F.. Parked overnight outdoors, but plugged in with a lower rad hose heater and battery warmer.

Installed a bigger interior heater and with a lot of driving at 20 t0 30 below it was warm inside.

Never thought about getting a hard top.

Nick,
We just completed a 2500 mile, two week trip to the Alfa convention (in Detroit) in our '65 Spider Veloce without a hardtop and lived to tell the story. If you like the appearance of a Spider with hardtop, then go for it. But the standard soft top works fine for me, and we didn't get wet in the rain when the top was up. Of course, no one puts the top up in light rain. That's what the accelerator is for
Jim