Thousand Dollar Supercar

He has the V12 - he'll need a top hat. Top hats are made for Jaguar owners - they provide Grace and Space.

Absolutely! I always wanted an XJS cos they look awesome, but I couldn't handle the thought of another three speed automatic. Combine that with the grandpa luxury interior, the "Huh? Efficiency?" V12 and the speedboat handling they're supposed to have, and it just didn't add up. There was a white one with an aftermarket exhaust I used to see on my route to work, but I never heard him boot it. See that you bring your Jag to the next track day, sir, without the standard Fuel's-Eterna-GSR-style whisper quiet exhaust! It'll be more of a challenge than controlling the Fronte I'm sure! Bring a hat, too, to pass around and collect petrol money donations...

*finally spots this thread* There was rust around the tail lights, around the bottom corners of the rear window, surface rust under the bog on the bonnet (which had cracked off in the middle due to bonnet flexing, and everyone kept telling me there must have been an engine fire!)... I've since fixed or hidden some rust in the boot, around the sunroof, in behind the front bumper, a random hole through the floor in the passenger footwell, and the rust around the windscreen is waiting until a WOF inspector complains. I suppose it's not especially bad for a car from the '80s, but if you're not doing the work yourself, every time a panel needs repainting, there goes a few hundred bucks... Snoozin, I know the factory airbox is supposed to be just as good (or better) than anything else you can come up with. I have a K&N filter for it, and that's the setup I drive around on. But the noise isn't as good! When Weber Specialties were doing my carburettors, they found that my car had been supplied with 36mm elbows joining the carbs to the airbox. The carbs on a 1.7 are 40mm, 36mm is for the 1.5 motor! Typical Italians, putting on whatever parts they happen to have stock of. But it would be helping my intake velocity...

A photo I wanted to include, from when I pulled out the ventilation unit to no avail (it still sucks): I took the 33 on arrows collection and finish timing duty on two Dunlop Targas, I've been WRC-chasing a few times, I did a Cape-Reinga-to-Wellington-and-back road trip for the sake of it, I take the car on everything from Alfa club runs to business jobs, regularly at maximum attack the way it should be. In light of this, the present value of my 33 and in honour of my favourite Top Gear episode ever (where the guys buy old mid-engined Italian "supercars" for a few thousand pounds and put them through a series of tests which they all fail), I chose my forum name 'Thousand Dollar Supercar'.

Yes. I got a year or two of nothing mechanical going wrong, which allowed me to channel excess cash into enhancements. Driving lights: Jaycar digital tacho and digital voltage gauge kitsets: (The digital tacho reads 150rpm lower than the car's rev counter, but I know which one I trust. It's the one that doesn't show 500rpm when the car's stopped and sometimes waver its needle about just for fun...) Homemade gearshift boot: Rice boy painted air vents and new steering wheel: The steering wheel is smaller and is dished, and it means you're not forced to sit Italian-style with your knees wide apart getting in the way of you trying to drive! Removing the old wheel saw me almost render the car useless - the old wheel broke off its bracket but the bracket refused to budge. A gear puller tensioned till it started to bend, plus a sledge hammer and a chisel eventually persuaded it! New speakers, new Sony CD head unit (doesn't look too out-of-place, and has decent 52W of power versus 7W from the 1980s cassette original!): Then I started getting into track days. So I needed some directional tyres. A K&N air filter. A fire extinguisher. And an RPS rear muffler with shiny chrome tips, from Pitstop : And more recently Hawk semi-race brake pads, and rebuilt carburettors ported to suit shiny intake trumpets (which are superb in their role of making More Noise ): Recently I had my water pump start leaking, which was an expensive exercise due to my latest mechanic struggling with it over 6 hours without resorting to a chisel. And among the ongoing electrical mysteries was the more-difficult-than-usual speedometer failure. I obtained a second hand circuit board, which had happily worked in another 33 for 18 years. Within weeks of being installed it my car, it failed. I gave the instrument cluster to specialists and drove around on just my Jaycar tacho until they'd found the faults.

Discussion: I crashed my first car when I was under 25, and started looking for a replacement I could afford to insure. I wanted to like the sensible Mitsubishi Mirages, Honda Preludes etc but before I settled for one of those I tried an Alfa Sprint. And so began the search for one in good condition! Lack of time saw me wind up with this Alfa 33 1.7 for $2150: That's my previous car in the background. The 33 is a FWD longitudinal flat-four with a 5-speed manual gearbox. Mine is series 2; 118hp-in-1988 8 valve with twin dual-barrel carbs. The facelifted series 3 gained power steering and fuel injection (not oldschool!), but went down 8hp (until they brought out a DOHC version with four valves per cylinder). This 33 was the best non-fuel-injected one I came across, but that isn't saying much. It leaked, it had rust, the painted bog was cracking off the bonnet, and it wouldn't idle without your foot on the accelerator until the temperature gauge passed 1/4. I stalled it several times a day and questioned my sanity. The first big spend was a $700 tuneup - plugs, leads, distributor cap, rotor, air filter, carbs balanced, new carb floats, new fuel lines (ones without electrical tape bandages on) etc. Instant power, driveability and economy improvement, and instant grin. Next up was the timing belts, because the car was past the belt replacement interval and the previous owner hadn't seemed concerned. I was still pretty new to cars, and I took the car to a garage and requested they change the timing belts and water pump. Which they did. The rusted water pump was smashed with a chisel to aid removal, and I paid $440... But the rust was still there. Here's a cosmetic bit: But if you look, you can see a little bit of bog and a little welding seam.. Bog appears to live under most of the paint on the car. I took the car to a guy recommended by the last garage. He operated out of a scrap yard, with no electricity, and he has his comical/crazy old mother answering the phones! I did any basic labour, and he fixed up the worst parts of the car to the tune of $1800 over very many weeks. I'd now spent well over the car's value and had the car off the road as much as on it. But I figured I'd have the decent Alfa I wanted. For five months only little things needed doing. After the expense of the rust repair, I installed an electronic rust talisman which repels rust through the awesome powers of Voodoo and active oxygen bubbles (http://www.couplertec.com.au/). But then a timing belt tensioner failed It gave me a week or so of funny noises, during which time I had several people check out the car but nobody picked it. Turns out I should have asked the last garage to change the tensioners at the same time as the timing belts! My Alfa bent four valves and got a ride over the harbour bridge behind a towtruck. Engine replaced with second hand block and heads. New timing belts AND tensioners, new clutch, new fluids. Car off the road for weeks again. I did over 1000km in a Fiat Uno courtesy car and never had to open the bonnet once. When it came time to pay I found that my EFTPOS card limit is $2500 per transaction. So now that I'd spent more than my car's value TWICE, did I have a good Alfa?

According to the interweb, they were rear-engined and had air-cooled flat 6 motors. They even made a van and a station wagon, with the same engine locations! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Corvair The Corvair is in this book I was given called "Lemon: 60 Heroic Failures of Motoring", alongside *ahem* the Alfa 33.

Three hundred and twenty something pictures later, I feel like I went to the car show myself! That's one hell of a cellphone number! Har har har....