Rusty But Trusty

Today we’re reaching a minor milestone with our 300th post. And to celebrate, it seemed most appropriate to find something that is represented in the RustyButTrusty fleet. Alfa Romeo Alfettas are few and far between, particularly on the road, so it’s always interesting to see others available. Mostly, these are west coast cars, but in this case someone in New Jersey was actually able to keep the rust worm from doing too much damage to the body. So if you’re in the Northeast, this may be a worth candidate for a fix-in-winter, drive-next-summer car. You can find today’s 1979 Alfa Romeo Alfetta GT for sale in Orange, NJ for a mere $1300.

The seller has an interesting approach to photography, showing some really useful detail shots and some not-so-helpful macro shots. Here you can see the passenger side of the car, and from one of the detail shots in the listing, you can see the bottom half inch of the door has gone lacy along about half its length. There’s not much other visible rust on the Avorio paint, but there will probably be more somewhere. Nothing disastrous in any case, but you’ll want to treat it if you’re planning on staying in a 4-season climate.

Under the hood, it looks complete and pretty clean, leading to the conclusion that this may have been a dry state car. On the far side of the engine compartment, you can see the alternator is mounted up high, which confirms that the air conditioning was added at port or by the dealer. Oddly enough, the filter canister says Alfetta on it, even though they’d moved to Sprint Veloce naming by 1978.

The interior leather will need attention. These cars also came stock with cloth or vinyl seats, so if leather is not in the budget, you have options. The dash seems to have minimal cracking for a car this age, but the wood veneer facing on the center console looks super-cheesy, especially since it doesn’t match the real wood wheel or the fake wood dash trim.

The car is said to only have 45,000 miles, which could also explain the lack of corrosion. The seller does say the car needs new tires, but on the bright side, it’s said to “rum and drive” – just don’t get caught drinking that rum while you’re behind the wheel. So new tires and you’re set to start debugging an old car? How bad could it be?

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

This entry was posted on November 12, 2013 at 5:48 pm 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.