Rusty But Trusty

As regular readers know, I am a sucker for a nice Alfetta, or even a not-so-nice Alfetta, which is how I end up spending more on bodywork than I probably should! While they have their issues, which are well-known from when Alfa Romeo was trying to sell these as daily drivers, many of those are significantly diminished by the weekend driver status. When sorted, they are really quite reliable as a fun second car. With that, let’s see today’s example, a 1976 Alfetta GT listed for $1500 in Seward Park, near Seattle, WA.

Silver is a handy color since it makes any rust particularly visible. Granted, the rockers are painted black, so you’d want to check those out, but it really does look good in silver. The two little spoilers on the front are missing, although honestly that doesn’t really detract from the look. True Alfetta dorks will notice the 1978-only grill with two chrome bars on each side, where other years’ grills are all black plastic. Combined with some other details, this could be a mistake or actually a 1978 car.

Issues: Apparently, the car has frozen rear brake calipers, which is a bit of a pain, but hey, it’s a chance to get to know the car and replace some bushings while you’re down there. Also, the car looks like it’s been “stanced” at some point. To be usable, it does really need to be a bit higher, and you’ll still get the benefit of a lowered suspension – and frankly, lowering from the bizarrely high US-spec is worth the effort, both in handling and looks.

The vinyl interior is said to have some tears and fading, but this is also fairly inexpensive to fix – I paid about $500 to have the seats redone in cloth at my favorite Oakland upholsterer. No detail is given about the condition of the dash, which is nearly always cracked on cars of this vintage – it looks to have a dash pad over the original. From this angle, the car looks pretty clean inside, even the seats, and the center console is complete. The steering wheel and shift knob look to have been updated, and here’s the other late-model GT part – the door panels are not the funky molded plastic type that’s usually on the early coupes.

Lastly, a not-so-useful image of the engine. At least you know it’s got the original SPICA injection, so bringing it down to California might not be too hard. It appears the air conditioning compressor has been removed, although looking at the dash you can see it was originally an A/C car. The car also comes with a lightened flywheel – while I realize this makes the engine rev more easily, it also makes it less likely to hold a steady RPM. Is there some Alfetta-specific issue this was intended to solve? Let me know if you check it out – this car looks to have great potential.

Oh, and in case you have twice the readies in your pocket, check this one out. It’s in Sacramento, CA for $3000, and has had a recent driveshaft rebuild.

Tags: alfa romeo, alfetta, coupe, Feature, gt, sprint veloce, under $2000

This entry was posted on July 5, 2013 at 12:28 am and is filed under Feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.