SECONDLIFE
IT CAME HALFWAY AROUND THE WORLD TO SETTLE INTO AUSTRALIA WITH ITS ORIGINAL OWNERS. NOW THIS LITTLE FAMILY ALFA IS ENJOYING A NEW LEASE ON LIFE
We got sent some photos of it with its nose poking out of a barn from a car collection in NSW. I showed it to Marie and she fell in love with it. Just saw the front and said Oh my god, I’ve got to have it. It has a lot of appeal from the front, with a beautifully detailed set of chromework.
We at first didn’t realise it was quite so small – the chrome made it look quite big. It’s definitely a girl car.
The engine is a twin-cam 1600 101 series – most of the Alfas of the period had them (often in 1300 form) and the basic engine carried right on through almost 45 years.
It’s pretty much the regular Alfa recipe in that regard, except of course being an early model it has a two-barrel
single downdraught Weber carburetor. Twin side-draughts were much more common on later versions of the engine. The transmission is a five-speed manual.
There are few features inside that denote this as the deluxe, such as the clock on the passenger side, full instrumentation including a tacho, the bucket seats in the front. Plus the carburetor on the standard car was a single barrel.
While it looked rough when we got it, the car was in pretty good shape underneath. It spent a substantial part of its life in Whyalla (SA) and we think the dry climate there helped to preserve it.
We didn’t need to do a single repair to the floor! There was a little rust in some of the other usual places, such as in the sill behind the front wheel and ahead of the rear wheel. *It was very unsual for one of these Giuliettas to need so little.
It had been partially dismantled by the previous owner, an older fella who had many projects underway. Things were piled on the roof and parts were in the interior or the boot. It was reasonably complete, but smaller items such as bright work were in poor shape.
“IT’S KNOWN IN ALFA CATALOGUES AS FRENCH BLUE, FORMERLY SWISS BLUE”
In between refinishing and plating bits. There was a long process of hunting down new old stock parts – a search that of course ended up being international. Some minor parts, such as bezels were not easy to come by for sedan models – most people concentrate on restoring the more glamorous models out of the range. The poor old four-doors often end up languishing and becoming parts donors for the two-doors.
One thing we discovered is that you often finds parts indirectly. Someone might be advertising parts for a different model, but it never hurts to ask if they have what you want – sometimes they do and it hasn’t been advertised.
We’ve looked after a string of Alfas and this one took about four-and-a-half years to restore. In the meantime we were running a business, machining mechanical parts for Alfa Romeos.
We took the body back to bare metal and got a professional to do the finish in the original colour. It’s known n the Alfa catalogues as “French Blue (formerly known as Swiss Blue)”.
We suspect there were more export sales to be had if you named it ‘French’!
It was a bit of a challenge with modern paints to match the colour and finish properly.
As for the interior, we got the colour combinations by going through period catalogues and road tests. Some of the vinyl was sourced from Italy and the rest locally.
While the painter and trimmer were doing there thing, we rebuilt the mechanical side of the car, going through the engine, gearbox, suspension and steering. It was more or less what you’d expect, just tired and worn out.
The aluminium block and cylinder heads had suffered some corrosion. In decades gone past, people didn’t understand the importance of maintaining coolant mixes and corrosion inhibitors in aluminium engines.
Then we pulled it all together and assembled it at home. Funnily enough, one of the big victories with this project was being able to assemble a complete original toolkit. That’s what everyone seems to get excited about!