A retro Alfa with a big dollop of passion

THE Alfa Romeo marque is renowned, the world over, for its legacy of building vehicles for the enthusiast at heart.

I’ve always loved Alfa Romeos. I was lucky enough to regularly drive one, my uncle’s 1984 beige Giulietta 1.8 Executive, in my early days as a newly licensed driver.

There is something intrinsically special about an Alfa Romeo, something unmistakeable about the way it sounds and drives and probably, most importantly, the way it tends to turn its drivers into enthusiasts.

We featured 28-year-old Ryall Paul’s gorgeous Alfetta some time ago in this column. Paul, a resident of Northdale in Pietermaritzburg, is an office administrator.

A diehard Alfista with a taste for old-school Alfas, he has a small collection of these classics as a result of his hobby of buying, fixing and restoring these treasures.

Paul’s car, a classic Alfa Romeo 3.0 GTV features respectfully minimalist and restrained upgrades – a standard branch is mated to a 50mm performance exhaust system, to augment the already significant three-litre, six-cylinder original manufacturer’s spec performance kit.

Paul has endeavoured to keep his car as close to stock as possible and so kept the stock factory suspension.

He also maintained the form and functional aesthetics of the original GTV bonnet and front spoiler.

In a slight departure from this ethos, he installed a Momo Corse steering wheel and fitted an awesomelooking set of 17-inch Oz “wide and narrow” mag wheels with 205/40/17 rubbers all around.

Paul said the car had a basic sound set-up comprising an MP3 player and set of mid-range speakers.

He did not disclose how much was spent on the his car. SERVICE PROVIDER: Midlands Motors.