I didn’t mean to create a concours car. The idea was to repair and refurbish this troubled 1968 Alfa 1750 GTV with the aim of having a fit, usable and rortily enjoyable car at the end of the process. Although I like my old cars clean and decently tidy underneath, I’m not one for shiny wheel wells, suspension that looks like it was installed last week and rubber grommets glistening with Back-to-Black.
Yet it is a potential concours winner that now sits in my garage. I haven’t been applying Back-to-Black to my Alfa’s grommets, but it does have shiny wheel wells and suspension that could have been fitted last week. It also has an engine bay that’s cleaner than most domestic ovens. So how did it come to this? Mostly, by buying a car that was a lot worse than it appeared. Nothing new there when it comes to buying cars that are the best part of half a century old, especially if they’re being sold as a project. And especially, you may well be thinking, if the car in question is an Alfa Romeo.
I’d argue, though, that 1960s Alfas were no worse than any other car of that era for committing self-elimination via oxidation, and having owned no less than four 105 Series Alfa Romeos before this one, none rot-free, I consider myself a reasonable, rust-stained authority on such things. Which is why I wasn’t discouraged from making a trip to Dublin to inspect a decomposing 1750 GTV that had allegedly once been a concours winner. This was almost a decade ago, when I noticed that GTV prices were beginning to rise strongly, and that what had once been a relatively affordable chunk of Italian glamour was beginning to get expensive.
