19/09/2022
Back in 1986, when the Alfa 75 first appeared, I was also fortunate enough to be about to get my first company car and took a 2.0TS for a test from West London dealer Lombarda Carriage Company, with an archetypal Italian sales lady called Marcellla. It was bucketing with rain but that didn't stop me from giving it a good thrash on the M40 flyover with the back flicking out on that nice tight right angle bend on the slip road. I was allowed a good long test and was loving it. So much so that as we headed back to the showroom I had already decided it had to be Alfa red and was calculating what options I would have and how I could make up the difference over our car allowance. Sadly, as we turned onto the big om
mt1 upproundabout at the bottom of the short M41 section, rain still pouring down, it stopped dead and wouldn't re-start for anything. Marcella did her best to excuse llp car putting it down to an early carpi0ii0ì was fitted, which she said had been wrongly wired in. However, having never had an Alfa before, and knowing of their reputation for suspect electrical, I allowed myself to be persuaded and took what I thought was the wise course - I bought a Golf GTi 16V! ...well I had kids and a wife to convince.
I had twinges of regret now and again - more frequent after I finally took the plunge and bought my first Alfa in 1993, a beautiful metallic grey 164 3.0 V6, which was an awesome car but not quite the rev-happy, flickable 75 I had driven. As time went on looking at ads, I comforted myself with the knowledge that most seemed to be dissolving to rust and it would have been a pile of trouble. My enthusiasm and confidence grew when I started racing against some truly awesome 75s in the Alfa Championship - driving an even older and remarkably solid - 2.0 Alfetta GTV, but the few remaining cars started to look pretty expensive as scarcity drove up prices.
Owning a 75 was starting to look like an unfulfilled dream by the mid-2010s until August 2016, when a very tatty - supposed 'barn-find' - 75 2.0TS, described a solid and turning over but needing a new battery to run came up for auction on ebay. Nothing ventured etc, I put in a late, cheekily low bid, unseen apart from the photos. The expected late surge of bids failed to materialise and for the grand sum of 919 quid it was mine! ...I was well chuffed!
It was Alfa red of course - and though it was clearly going to be a project needing some work and no doubt a fair bit if cash of cash, at least it wasn't a pile of red dust. My enthusiasm was tempered a bit one morning a couple of weeks later when I came across an absolutely beautiful, near immaculate (also Alfa red) 75 3.0 QV with grey Recaro leather for sale - quite a bit more expensive but well below its real market value because the seller was losing his storage for it. I managed to be first on the phone to the seller and with some very quick financial gymnastics to work out how I could make it happen, whilst verifying that the seller was indeed a true Alfisti and a genuinely reluctant seller, had agreed and paid the asking price in full - yes I know that isn't very sensible but this was proverbial rocking horse manure at any price let alone this price! When I saw the QV it was everything I hoped it would be - not that I let that stop me spending more money on a full brake upgrade and a few other tasty mods.
The Twinspark meanwhile, was becoming an ever longer-term project and moved through 3 or 4 specialists wgo either couldn't or wouldn't do the work it needed. In the process one of the more reliable outfits had diagnosed the car and had the head off to find it badly corroded and pitted, presumably from being left without proper anti-freeze in the coolant. After an unsuccessful search for a possible replacement engine, I eventually found the maestro of 75s, a very reclusive guy with a small workshop, specialising almost exclusively in 75s. He was able to repair the head and rebuild the engine to a very high standard with again some modest but nice upgrades. It drove very nicely afterwards on my next visit but being halfway through the body restoration looked worse if anything than before. After that, the pandemic struck, communications stopped and so did the work. For almost two years, trying to manage the project from overseas, I worried that he might have suffered with Covid or had to shut up shop and my car might have disappeared, but then an email out of the blue with some update information and then a week ago two photos of it almost completed and close to the culmination of a 36-year wait...
