This story starts as many of my car stories have started: a chance encounter while going through the usual motions of seeing what’s out there in Alfa Land. Alfa Land isn’t all that big, so if you’re taking your time you can see what’s out there in about 20 minutes. This was late spring of 2008, and everything about the ad said ‘buy me’ except for the location, which was in a town a couple hours north of Miami, Florida, or 3000 miles east of me.

Cosmetically it was rough, but mostly complete and intact. It had rust for sure, in the driver and passenger floors and in various locations around the lower perimeter of the car. It didn’t appear to have any accident damage. The driving parts sounded very good: a recently rebuilt carbed 2L with hottish cams and a transmission by Merritt Carden. The only major problem (reported) was the differential, which was locked up.

I have bought cars sight-unseen before (expect future posts relating my adventures retrieving a 1963 Citroen Ami6 from Oregon, and a 1969 Berlina from Colorado), but this one wasn’t drivable and that made me less eager to pursue it. But by summer the ad was still being posted on craigslist, and, as happens, I found myself doing some preliminary work on what it would take and cost to get the car drivable, checking airfares to Florida, finding a reputable mechanic in Miami, etc. It was actually this last piece that set the wheels in motion.

I found a post on the AlfaBB that recommended Luciano at Auto Veloce, in North Miami. I gave him a call and explained what I was contemplating. Luciano was both knowledgeable and accommodating, which was enough for me to continue the process of actually buying the car.

After a couple of emails and a call with the owner, whom I shall henceforth refer to as Ernest, I decided to go for it. We agreed to look into payment options and I started putting the plan together for a late summer cross-country road trip to bring the little Giulia ‘home’ again. It had been a California car originally, and then moved at least once to Oregon and back, and finally to Florida. Ernest knew a lot of the local East Bay Alfa guys, and the fact that he’d used them for so much of the car’s maintenance added some value to the car, ignorant as I was of the actual results.

Logistics proved to be more of a challenge than I had expected. This was due partly to location, partly to circumstances beyond my control, and partly to a level of caution from the seller that was understandable but also uninformed and grossly disproportionate. It’s my privilege and pleasure now to skip over a rather significant amount of …diplomacy, I guess you’d call it… and a not-insignificant tropical storm to get to the point where payment was received and the shipper dropped the car off at Luciano’s. From “I’ll buy it” to delivery took nearly 3 weeks. Ouch.

Luciano called the day the car arrived to report on his findings. His first finding was that the differential wasn’t locked up at all. He unloaded the car, gave it a once-over, started it; so far so good. He drove it forward and backward. All good. So he took it around the block and sure enough, rounding corner #2 the diff locked up and he had to tow the car the block back to the shop, tail between legs. Further inspection revealed a ridiculous repair job to the exhaust system, crapped out brakes all around, and cracked rubber on the tires, of which only 3 even matched. Otherwise, the electrical system was functional and the motor was indeed strong, so one way or another I’d be driving this car home — which I’ll talk about in Part 2.

Posted Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 at 8:37 pm. Filed under 1966 Giulia TI, Alfa Romeo. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or Trackback from your own site.