Berlina/Giulia/Giulietta Register Newsletter No. 29 (October 2009)

Notes and Comment

Welcome to 2009; hope things are not going too badly for you.  Things stay busy at my house. The Giulietta Berlina continues to be refined and drives better and better. The project Giulia TI is on its feet and running with a 1600 I rebuilt (took four blocks to find a good one), after 20 years dead. I bought a pristine pale blue low-mileage Giulia 1300 TI in Boston in August and drove it home to Berkeley in five days with not a single issue other than fending off the hoards who loved it en route. It’s for sale if anyone’s interested (see threads on these cars on the AlfaBB). I’ve bought, fixed, and sold a few cheap Spiders, and the BMW 2002 moved on to a new home. Working on a deal for a Giulia Super race car, but the seller and I haven’t worked it out yet.

Fall Berlina tour is coming up October 18; mostly a social session rather than a major tour. I’ll report on it next time. Spring Tour in May was fun but poorly attended due to unseasonal rain; see report below. Fair amount of activity in the Berlina Market section, and a lot of cars of all types for sale recently, the better ones going at high prices despite economic woes. Project and beater cars are having a tougher time selling.

Anyone looking for custom floor mats for a Berlina (or maybe Giulia too?) with floor pedals, Custom Auto Accessories (www.customautoaccesories.com) now has a stock pattern Robert Downey developed from his 1969 Berlina.  Labeled AR#137, the pattern is available in all options and colors.  Contact Robert (mabawa@bellsouth.net) or order directly from Custom Auto Accessories, whose president, Rich Van't Hof, can handle questions.  

The keeper of the Berlina Register, North American Giulia Sedan Register, and Giulietta Sedan Register is Andrew Watry, email watry@prodigy.net.  Send corrections to your information or any other Giulia- and Berlina-related facts, rumors, tips, or needs.  Always seeking articles for the newsletter.  The keeper of the international Giulia Sedan Register is Barry Edmunds in Australia, email Giulia105@optusnet.com.au


Installing Air Conditioning on a 1967 Giulia Super
By Jason Arrington

As the cognoscenti know, the 105/115 Alfa Romeo sedans are one of the most enjoyable vintage cars on the road – great styling, plenty of room, reliable, fun to drive, and much more usable than the coupes and spiders. It's a classic you can use every day – with a couple of exceptions. First, anyone who drives a rust-prone vintage car in the snow and salt should be drawn, quartered, and forced to drive a Prius for the rest of eternity. And second, those of us who live where the summers get hot and sticky tend to wuss out and leave the old Alfa at home in favor of a more modern air-conditioned ride between June and September. Let the purists scoff and point the craggy finger of scorn – I want A/C in my Super, and I suspect I'm not alone.

The goal of this article is to chronicle some of the lessons learned about adding an aftermarket A/C unit in general, and quirks to accommodate the 105/115 sedans. A good bit of this should apply to the Coupes and Spiders as well, but I can't speak for how parts will or won't fit in those cars.

I would highly recommend doing some reading to understand the basic components of auto A/C before you tackle the project. Vintage Air has a nice writeup on their web site:
http://www.vintageair.com/DownloadsSection/MiscDocuments/ACBASICS(92806)-Inet.pdf

Parts list (mine, at least)
Alfa Sedan with a 1750 or 2L Spica engine, converted to carbs
Bosch Spider style 2 groove front pulley
Sanden 508 or equivalent A/C Compressor w/ V-belt pulleys
York to Sanden converter bracket (fixed style). Custom weld-it-up brackets are also available.
Hardware to mount compressor to bracket
Evaporator with appropriate switches, vents, and hoses
Hoses, fittings, and A/C dryer
Pressure (safety) switch
12”x21” Universal A/C Condenser (the biggest that will fit in front of an Alfa radiator)
Aftermarket Electric fan – I'm using a 9” SPAL from thefanman.com
SPICA style water pump

Sourcing parts
There are plenty of companies that will sell you a universal “kit” that should include all of the basic parts needed for your A/C adventure. Vintage Air is the granddaddy of them all, but other companies include Hot Rod Air, Southern Rods, Nostalgic Auto Air, and probably several more I don't know about. If you want to source your parts the easy way just send one of those places a check for a grand or so and you're golden. But we all know you're cheap, otherwise you'd own a Ferrari. So if you try you can probably get a lot of this stuff a good bit cheaper piecemeal. Here's what I got my stuff for, shipping included. All this was sourced in late 2008 / early 2009:

Part                                                     Source                         Price
New Seltec Compressor                      ackits.com                   136.63 (on special)
Used under-dash evaporator               eBay                            71.00
New condensor                                   eBay (radiators4less)   84.00
Hose kit w/ dryer                                eBay (realrodsales)      66.54
9” SPAL thin pusher fan                    thefanman.com           65.81

So the total was not too bad, compared to some other options. I did need to get a couple more fittings and a binary safety switch from a local auto parts place. The biggest score was the evaporator, which was a nearly new under dash unit. For comparison, the universal kit at nostalgicairparts.com is $545.00 at the time of writing, without the fan but with a universal compressor bracket. In retrospect I should have just bought the stuff from him and not spent so much time on eBay.

Compressor mounting
If you can't hang a compressor off the engine and drive it with a belt, you don't have A/C. Simple as that. There are a few options:

  1. Hang a compressor up above the alternator, using a bracket mounted to big fat studs screwed into the front of the head. This is the way the factory / dealers installed A/C on SPICA vintage GTVs / Berlinas / Spiders. Ugly, and requires some very rare parts.
  2. Mount it Alfetta style, outboard of the SPICA pump. No way is that going to fit in the engine bay of a 105/115, but good luck trying.
  3. Take advantage of those nice studs where the engine used to have a SPICA pump.

This doc focuses on option #3 for a few reasons. First, if you're trying to put A/C on anything smaller than a 1750 you're nuts, so I assume you probably have a US Spec engine with provisions for mounting a SPICA pump. It puts the compressor nice and low in the engine bay, so unless you're looking straight down between the radiator and the distributor you won't see it. And it makes the hose routing easier, if you're mounting an underdash evaporator on the passenger's side, like I am. Of course, if you still have SPICA on your car this won't work for you. Sorry.

The bracket I used is a readily available fixed mount designed for bolting a modern Sanden compressor in the place of an old York. It fits in the place vacated by the SPICA pump perfectly. There is not enough room in the 105 engine bay to use the kind of mount designed to tighten the belt by rotating the compressor. The holes on the York/Sanden bracket aren't in the right place for the SPICA pump mounting studs, but it's easy enough to drill new holes. Spend plenty of time measuring – you need to make sure the compressor pulley is going to line up with the engine pulley correctly when you're done. One of the studs interfered with the compressor mount, so I just pulled it out. It's plenty solidly mounted with 3 studs. As you're fitting the bracket try to get it more or less centered between the sump and the distributor, so it doesn't interfere with the lower radiator bolts. You may even want to modify the bracket so the compressor sits as close to the engine as possible, to maximize clearance with the fenderwall.

The compressor won't fit with a SPICA pump block-off plate in place, so you will need to do something else to plug the oil galley. I just tapped the galley with a fine thread 1/4” bolt and used a stat-o-seal washer to seal around the bolt head. Then I hollowed out the back of the compressor bracket to fit over the bolt head. You could also use JB weld or try to replicate the o-ring seal from the SPICA block-off plate on the back of the bracket, if you wanted.

To fit the compressor I removed the passenger's side horn and bent the horn mounting bracket up and out of the way. The pulley had very little clearance with the triangular shaped section on the inside fender, so I flattened the point of the triangle a bit with a ball peen hammer to give it a bit of room for when the engine rotates. This probably wasn't necessary but it made me feel better. Helpful hint – fit the belt in the groove before you mount the compressor in place, as there may not be enough room to get it in there otherwise. If you're using a custom welded bracket it should be possible to get plenty of clearance by mounting the compressor more closely to the engine. You could also probably achieve the same effect by modifying the York / Sanden adapter bracket.

Fitting the V-belt
A two-groove crankshaft pulley is a must, for obvious reasons. I originally tried to use a SPICA vintage 2 groove pulley but when it became clear that the compressor would need to be fixed in place – in other words, that there was no room to rotate it to tension a belt – I had to come up with a new plan. Fortunately, the 1982-1989 Bosch L-Jetronic cars with A/C have a pulley designed to handle this scenario. They are built in two pieces, with the front of the A/C groove attached via allen head bolts. Tensioning is done by inserting or removing shims between the two sections of the pulley – as shims are removed the groove becomes narrower, forcing the belt higher in the groove and tightening the belt.

While this pulley is not a rare part they are surprisingly expensive, as the were prone to failure and so there's a strong market for used replacements. A billet alternative is periodically available from Centerline and others and is even less cheap but will not likely develop the same problems as the original Bosch unit. I went this route, but I'd rather not think about the cost.

It is important that the pulleys on the crankshaft are aligned on the same plane, and at the same angle. If the crank and compressor pulleys are uneven or out of level you'll need to adjust the compressor bracket until they're aligned. The actual belt to use may require some trial and error – mine was belt number 25-7300 from NAPA.

Installing the radiator, condenser, and fan(s)
Fitting the original plastic fan and shroud can be tricky with the new pulley, fan belt, and compressor in the way. You're going to install an electric fan anyway to increase air flow through the condenser, so you can probably leave the mechanical fan out. That gives you back a few of the HP you're losing by adding A/C, anyway.

The condenser needs to be installed in front of the radiator to work properly, and should be slightly smaller than the radiator. The Super radiator is so small that the smallest readily available universal condenser is just about right. In my car, all the A/C components are on the passenger's side of the engine compartment, so I installed the condenser with the fittings on the left. The only problem with that is that the top condenser fitting fouls with the upper radiator mount bracket. I simply removed the factory bracket and made a custom bracket. You can probably find a condenser that wouldn't have that problem, look for one where the upper fitting is a good distance below the top of the condenser.

There isn't a good way to mount the condenser or fan in front of the radiator, so I secured the fan to the condenser with some strong cable ties, then used the brackets that came with the condenser to secure it to the radiator. The radiator, condenser, and fan come out as one big assembly now. This took some tweaking, to use a technical term, as I basically had to mount the fan so the motor fit within the grille opening. Find the thinnest fan you can, and maybe shim out the radiator 1/4” or so closer to the engine so you have a bit more room. Of course this moves the lower radiator hose closer to the A/C belt, so pick your poison.

Routing lower radiator hose
At least on the Super, the A/C compressor you so painstakingly mounted will now interfere with the lower radiator hose and the 1600 style water pump. You can heat the lower radiator outlet with a torch and rotate it so it points straight up so the hose doesn't route right into the new V-belt and A/C bracket. If you're nervous a radiator shop should be able to do this for you easily. With a 2L SPICA water pump and the altered radiator I was able to use a stock Alfa lower rad hose I had sitting around, I think from a SPICA vintage Spider, and keep plenty of clearance with the A/C belt.

Routing refrigerant lines
Purists, avert your eyes. There's no way to get around cutting holes in the car for this step. The hose kits come with rubber grommets that look remarkably like OEM Alfa grommets, or you can use a fancy billet firewall bulkhead. Either way there is a large and small hose that need to go from the engine compartment to the in-car evaporator unit. Get out the hole saw. I put my holes in an indented stamped panel below where the 2 heater hoses and the cowl drain hose pass through the firewall – it actually doesn't look too bad.

Air Conditioning System
There are 3 sizes of refrigerant hoses that hook together the compressor, condenser, evaporator, and drier. I used a safety switch that screws directly into the drier to save a couple of fittings. Rather than have me try to explain it, take a look at this diagram, shamelessly stolen off the internetz:

Routing and fitting the hoses is pretty straightforward. Mount your compressor, drier, condenser, and evaporator in place, then measure and cut hoses to connect the components together as per the diagram. Take the hoses and fittings to your friendly neighborhood Napa or equivalent and pay them a few bucks each to crimp the fittings. Don't forget to install an o-ring on each fitting as you assemble.

Fitting the evaporator
There are 2 basic choices with evaporators – under-dash, or in dash. I opted to keep the original Alfa heater box behind the dash, and mount an under-dash evaporator in place of the little parcel shelf on the passenger's side. This will require me to do something creative with the glovebox that I haven't quite figured out yet, to make it slide out instead of rotate down. The fiberglass Super dashboard doesn't give a ton of options for mounting the evaporator, so I just bent up a simple bracket that attached to the heater box and the kickpanel, then hung the evaporator from that. It could use maybe one more brace to stabilize it a bit better.

You're on your own with an in-dash unit. There's not a lot of room back there, so good luck. There are cool only, cool/heat or cool/heat/defrost versions available. I can't see any way you could fit one on a 105/115 without replacing the Alfa heater box, so plan on a combination version. You'll also need to run vent hoses and mount and wire the control panel – steps that aren't required with an under-dash unit.

You will need to run a drain hose out of the car, unless you want to sit in a puddle of water. Rather than drill another hole in the firewall I ran the hose under the carpet and through the plastic plug in the passenger footwell.

Wiring the system
Wiring is pretty simple, at least with an underdash unit. You need switched 12V power to the evaporator, then run the signal line from the evaporator to the safety switch. Hook the other terminal on the safety switch to the compressor clutch and you're done. There are also trinary safety switches that have an outlet for the fan as well, but I just chose to run the fan whenever the A/C clutch is engaged. A relay for the fan(s) is a good idea as well.

Charging and running
If you bought a new compressor it should already come preloaded with the right amount and kind of compressor oil. You'll have to make the call whether you want to DIY or take it to a pro for the charge; after listening to about 5 variations on “uh... I can't find the recharge specs for this in the book” I decided to take a crack at it myself. I picked up a set of manifold gauges and got a vacuum pump from the tool rental program at Autozone. Explaining how to charge R134a systems is way beyond the scope of this little paper – your friend Google will help here. In my experience very little refrigerant is needed for this application. Maybe a bit more than one can should be plenty.

Conclusion
So far, so good. You can definitely feel the cold air from the evaporator. I will need to pick up another electric fan to mount in front of the radiator, as it seems like that little 9” pusher just isn't cutting it with the condenser in place and I'm running without the stock engine driven fan. While it was more work than I expected I think it's a worthwhile modification, as it makes the car much more usable in hot weather.

 

Berlina Register “Alfas Over Altamont” Tour

The Berlina Register hosted its first 2009 tour on May 3 in an unexpected rain. 13 lucky cars attended, foolishly competing with the Hillsborough Concours and Ferrari Challenge at Infineon.  We started off in Fremont, Calif., near Niles Canyon. These cars/owners attended:

The group headed out Niles Canyon, through Sunol, crept around the southern edge of Livermore, and opened it up on Tesla Rd., staying on Corral Hollow Rd. up and over the summit, a great drive. Stopped at Carnegie ORV park for a break, then continued on to The Big Valley and Tracy for the biggest burgers you’ve ever seen at Wallie’s.  Waving goodbye to Tracy on a full stomach, we passed APE and touched the southern edge of the Delta on Bethany Rd., then dropped down to Grant Line Rd. Up and over Altamont Pass Rd. is always fun, though driving in sunny rainy conditions can be very glary. Some confusing freeway work, cars going in various wrong directions, then off 24 to Upper Happy Valley to Bear Creek to Wildcat Canyon, and we all headed our separate ways.

A fun day even with the unexpected weather, and small groups are easier to herd than large ones. Few problems, though hesitant starters and poor wipers were a recurring theme. And now to the awards: the Slip ‘n Slide Award goes to Aaron Curtiss for discovering that a Giulia Super on 165-15 tires can break the rear end loose when lubricated by rainwater.  The It Came From Another Planet award goes to George Attia’s GTV, an ongoing engineering exercise ever further removed from where Alfa started (not in a bad way). The You’re Braver Than We Are award goes to Don LaVance, the only attendee in a Spider (he had a good top). The Can You Really See Where You’re Going award goes to Matt Hamilton, whose Berlina wipers’ “glass-clearing ability” has to be seen to be believed.  People’s Choice award goes to the Muller/Parmenter Sprint, very demure in white, looking and sounding great. The Stein Berlina a close second, stunning in dark green with Montreal Turbinas.

 

Berlina/Giulia Market Report

1965 Giulia TI. Orange with black interior. Straight, clean, very bright Montreal color. Interior done to a “GTA style” with bucket seats. 1750 with Webers; ATE brakes. Engine, carbs, brakes poor; driveline recently sorted. Car had cosmetic restoration but functions were never sorted out. $16,999 ebay, Burlingame, CA. Outrageous-looking car that kicked around the Bay Area for decades. Started as a daily driver for an Alfa shop owner’s wife, then fell into disrepair and sat for years. Passed through a couple wheeler-dealers and finally got restored in a “boy racer” style that doesn’t appeal to everyone in a TI. Functions not fully sorted out after restoration; car had poor carbs and poor compression. Could be dialed in as an outrageous street car or mild track car pretty readily, but there’s a lot of work to do.  Seller got a good price considering color and mechanical condition, but still lost a ton of money. 4/09 

1966 Giulia Super. Green with tan interior, a very common combo. Rust-free car brought into Calif. from Italy in 70s and used by older Alfa guy since. Good body, paint good but with some blemishes. Interior good with covers over original seats. Carpets, etc. good.  1750 with good trans, brakes, and suspension. Issues included poor exhaust, carbs needing dial-in, and many non-standard stickers and plaques. $30,000 alfaholics.com, San Francisco, CA. Overall a very nice car, bought from the owner of AFRA and pampered.  Looked to be the top of the heap in pictures, but in the flesh the stickers, badges, and paint issues let it down.  Functionally a very strong car and the body could not be faulted. Buyer really wanted a good solid Super, seller was not very flexible on price, and so this deal, somewhat over market, was consummated. Both folks seem happy though. Finding good Supers, even in hard times, is not easy. 4/09

1972 US 2000 Berlina. Silver, black interior. A beater driver that’s been in the Bay Area since new. Strong Dell’Orto 1750 engine, good mechanicals dialed in for daily use. No-gloss paint with POR-15 patches, poor-looking body that is better than it appears. Virtually no rust or serious dents. Interior pretty sad. New windshield. $2750 craigslist, Oakland, CA. A storied Bay Area car that’s using up its nine lives. After its 2000 blew up, Berlina’s longtime owners resurrected it with 1600 from their wrecked GTV. When the 1600 gave up and a tree fell on it, breaking the windshield and the dash, it went to a Berkeley Alfa shop that planned to cherrypick it, then send it to APE. An East Bay sedan nut happened by at the right time and bought the shell for a song. He dropped in a good 1750 and trans, bought seats from me, and used it for a daily driver. To fund another sedan project, he sold it. Cosmetically it is what it is, but it’s a solid driver. If the buyer is interested, with new seats and paint it will be a nice car for $6000 if quality level is kept in check.  Price is higher than I expected, but there was lots of interest on craigslist, seller’s blog, and BringaTrailer.com, so market for rust-free beater Berlinas is on the rise. 5/09

1960 Giulietta TI.  Red with grey interior. A complete, restored, great looking car. Mechanically and cosmetically sound and maintained to a high standard. A few mods from stock including column shift to floor with non-stock shifter, remote oil filter, some other items. Not surprising as the car is in Mexico with limited access to supplies. $7,000 ebay, Guadalajara, Mexico.  A steal assuming you either were in Mexico or had a certain way to get the car out of the country without a lot of expense and/or hassle. I would call this about 1/3 the market price for such a car legally and physically in the US. This is what I paid for my 56 Berlina, a non-running rustbucket, two years ago. 5/09

1965 Giulia TI. Silver with red interior.  Complete, straight black-plate car that’s been stored indoors and out in Northern California for many years. Amazingly complete and essentially unrusted other than one major spot in the trunk wall where something corrosive spilled. Stock components in non-working condition and interior baked.  $4,000 private sale, Calistoga, CA.  This car was literally pulled out of the blackberry bushes after many years outside; somehow it didn’t rust away in spite of such treatment. Two NorCal owners from new. Will need complete going through to get back on road (head has been off for 20+ years) and interior is very sad, but a very good starting point for whatever level of restoration is undertaken. Could be refreshed and driven as is, or made into a stellar example with lots of work. Price maybe a tad high considering the money that will need to be injected, but how many straight, complete, un-screwed-up, basically rust-free TIs are left? Adjusting my thinking to this as market price. 6/09

1967 Giulia Super. Green/tan interior. Rust-free California car that was brought back to life after many years sitting. Rebuilt 1600, brakes, suspension. Good original interior, straight, rust-free exterior with poor repaint and overspray. Well presented on ebay with lots of pictures, honest description, youtube video of engine running. $10,000 craigslist, San Anselmo, CA. This car caused both excitement and confusion. Those of us with similar cars in the Bay Area were watching closely as this seemed to be an ideal indicator of where the market stands on our cars. First posted to ebay, bidding shot up to $14,500 in a day or two then didn’t go up any more, which surprised me; I expected this car to make $17,500-20,000. Then it popped up on craigslist at the same time, then back on ebay, all at different prices. Screwy. Maybe in person it was worse than in the pictures. But Supers don’t come any better than a rust-free, original condition, black-plate California car. If the car was as solid as it looked in the pictures, a very good deal for the buyer. 6/09

1967 Giulia Super. Blue/tan interior. An operable, nice-looking car that was resurrected to sell by the longtime owner after 10 years in storage. Paint had a few minor issues, but overall it looked like a cosmetically sound, mechanically sorted example. Car had been in CA, CO, then NC, and appeared rust-free. Engine rebuild before storage, Turbina mags, which do not go well with the Super body style.  $11,100 ebay, Sea Level, NC.  The car looked solid and could speak for itself, but the seller was manic, screechy, and high-maintenance, and likely made many potential buyers uncomfortable. He posted the car to SF CL, NC CL, the AlfaBB, and ebay multiple times over several months, and talked at length about himself and his problems more than the car, not a surefire way to a solid sale. Nonetheless, the resulting “final” sale (we’ll see) seems like a very good deal for the buyer. 6/09.

1975 1300 Nuova Super. This blue/tan car looked quite solid, if dusty. Complete, operable, recently painted car with good mechanics, no evident rust, and extra parts. Brought into Canada from France in 2007, it had no plates, registration, or paperwork. But looked like a good functional and cosmetic car. $6,000 ebay, Montreal, Canada. This car was on ebay for months, with a Buy It Now Price starting in the mid teens and slowly dropping til someone jumped when it hit $6,000.  The car itself looked great for the money, but the seller was not very forthcoming, seemed cagey, and the [lack of] paperwork on the car and its being a 70s car that would cause lights to flash on the Customs/EPA/DOT computer at the US border likely held down bidding. Why a Canadian didn’t pick it up when it got below $10,000 I don’t know. I seriously considered it and communicated multiple times with the seller, but the vibe was not good, and the import risks seemed too great.  Phenomenal deal for the buyer. This is three cars in a row where the car was fine but the seller was screwy. 6/09.

1972 US 2000 Berlina. A beige cava/tan car that many sedan nuts in the Bay Area, including me. looked at over time. This car had been off the road for some years, but was functional and essentially complete. Engine and trans good, brakes draggy, suspension not bad. Interior typically worn, paint bad with microblistering all over from poor prep. Minor to moderate rust in sills and doors.  $2,247 ebay, Petaluma, CA. This car was owned for years by a Fiat guy who wanted it to go to a good Alfa home. It was on SF CL a number of times, but price was always too high for condition. Finally on ebay it got the respect it deserved. Car could have been on the road with a hard weekend’s work on Spica, brakes, exhaust, but to make a nice car it needs stripping to address the paint reaction. Price a bit higher than I expected, but not out of the ballpark. 7/09

1967 Giulia Super. White with tan interior. Nice, restored car with 2000, rebuilt trans, most work by Bay Area specialists. In past car was hit hard enough to require a new rear clip, which was taken from a Giulia TI, including its lights and rear trim.  Work well done, but front looks like a Super and back looks like a TI. $20,500 Fantasy Junction, Emeryville, CA. This car was for sale a couple times in the past couple years through FJ, with asking price in the mid 20s. Looked like an extremely well done car, with faultless mechanicals and good bodywork. The TI trim, lights, and odd C-pillar work might put me off a bit, but I’d have to see the car in person to say for sure. Buyer looked the car over carefully and was satisfied with what he was getting. Next time it’s painted it would be easy enough to Super-ize it, if one was so inclined. Pretty much market price, maybe just a tad high if the TI stuff bothered you. 8/09

1956 1900 Super. Blue/white exterior with blue/grey seats. A bit off topic, but the big brother of a Giulietta sedan. Looked very nice in the ebay pics, with just a few small body issues and a very nice interior. Amazing amount of exterior trim was all present. Engine compartment was not restored to the same standard, but that’s not unusual. $13,500 ebay, NY, NY.  Just love these; a Giulietta TI blown up to 120% size. A cheap nasty taxi-cab yellow one was on ebay in 2008 that many of us monitored, but it was in the Northeast and too beat to make sense to drag 3000 miles home. This was a much better car, but still, it’s all the way across the country. Hard to say what the market price on these is; a Giulietta sedan in similar condition likely would be 50% more. I’d call this a fair buy considering the condition, perhaps even a good deal. If it’d been a West Coast car I’d have been very tempted. 8/09

1969 Giulia 1300 TI. White/black. A fast street car and/or mild track car. Brought from UK in 2004, hot Keith Goring 2000, Spruell headers, Mike Valant lightened gearbox, suspension etc., set up as a street/track hybrid. Mechanicals, body, interior all looked really nice; some floor and rear end rust. Checkered racing stripes and genuine Minilite wheels. $14,500 AlfaBB, Connecticut. This car was for sale a long time on the BB, starting at $20,000. The seller lowered the price after discovering more underside rust than he realized, a refreshing approach for which he should be congratulated. From the pictures, seemed to me a reasonable deal at the starting price considering the overall condition and the name-brand engine and trans, and basically a steal at the final price. I was very interested in this as a track car, but it sold before I could look at it. Driven 3200 miles home to Los Angeles with a problem days after the similar car, below. I saw this car at the APE swap in September and am convinced it was a deal. 8/09

1967 Giulia 1300 TI. Light blue (“acqua di fonte”), red interior. On a parallel, though slower, course to the previous car, this beautiful, unmolested car was offered by Aston Martin of New England for months, on ebay and elsewhere. It was a very original, rust-free, low-mileage loved car that came from Italy and Holland to the US in the last five years. Perfectly straight body, excellent interior, no mechanical issues. Valve job in 2006, rebuilt trans and new clutch, new Vredesteins. Flawless. $15,500 ebay, Boston, MA. Generally these market reports are anonymous, but I’ll fess up: I bought it. I’d seen this car a couple years ago when Motoring Investments in San Diego had it; it looked charming and impeccable. This summer, after it went many rounds on ebay without selling, I made the dealer a lower offer and got it. Flew to Boston and drove it 3300 miles home to Berkeley in five days, just ahead of the other 1300 TI (see above). Runs and looks great; charming in every way. I would call this an excellent deal; I think it must be worth $5,000 more than this. I counseled many people over the past six months to buy this car while its price was falling on ebay as better than whatever car they were looking at but no one did. 8/09

1974 US 2000 Berlina. Maroon (originally giallo piper) with black interior. Driveable beater with rubber bumpers removed to make it look sporty.  Relatively rusty around the lower edges and front and rear windows, but a decent looking car in all. Average interior with tatty seats, OK headliner and door panels. Inop dealer-installed AC. Turbina mags. $1,000 AlfaBB, Oklahoma City. The car sold in one day on the BB. For a beater driver you couldn’t fault it; a running Berlina at this price is gonna get snapped up.  Good deal for the buyer, who drove it away. Wouldn’t make sense to do a full restoration, but for a fun usable car, a great buy. Immediate sale generally means the price is too low. 8/09

1973 Giulia Super. White with tan interior. A late Super, just before it morphed into the Nuova. Basically a rolling shell kit less engine, trans, exhaust. Recently repainted from blue to white, with good pigskin interior. Fabric sunroof, likely installed at dealer in Europe. Doors, trunk, hood all need installing plus headliner, door seals, etc. but looked to be a solid, decently painted rolling shell. Hanging pedals means installing 1750 or 2000 will be easy. $1,646, ebay, Atlanta, GA. If you had a drivetrain and could do the work, a good deal if the shell was solid and bodywork decent. Could make a nice road car or a very good start on a track car, though the sunroof would probably need closing. As always, if you’re paying a mechanic this could quickly become a $10,000 project, but for a home tinkerer this saves a lot of rust repair and bodywork compared to many projects. 9/09

1966 Giulia Super. Verde muschio with red interior. Long-time Seattle-area car from respected owner. Lowered, TZ mags, 1750 engine. $26,500 private sale, Seattle, WA. This car had it all; what more could you ask for? Basically stock appearance, good colors, good wheels, good suspension; a strong-looking car that I’m sure is a road-burner at market price for a dialed-in Super. Everyone should be happy. 9/09