TjRubley.com

The last couple of days, we’ve made a couple of day-hike trips into the Oregon Coast range. Beautiful area and nice twisting roads. But driving the 1992 Toyota Pickup doesn’t exactly inspire, and I caught myself dreaming of a classic Italian sports sedan, the 1967 Alfa Romeo Giulia Super. I pictured it lowered, on Panasports (naturally), and with a proper performce tune on the drivetrain.

When we got home, I rushed to the computer to start the search. Only took 15 minutes to find the exact car for sale in California: 1967 Alfa Romeo Giulia Super at European Collectibles for $19.5k.

Guilia Super quick facts:

• 1570cc Engine Stock, featuring about 100hp. Later and larger engines slot right in, making for a very quick little car.
• Dual overhead camshafts, 5 speed transmissions, disc brakes.
• Quarter mile in 18 seconds.
• 2260lbs for 93hp per ton.

Some particulars on this example:

• Has a rebuilt 1750 in it with dual Weber DCOE 40’s, good for 130hp!
• 15″ Panasports
• Completely restored interior
• Needs paint, but as the ad states, “…in need of paint, but looks pretty good at 20 feet or 80 MPH.”
• $25k in records!

$19k+ is a lot of money, but there aren’t that many of these and the Super is the top of the line in the Giulia range. And according to this 1999 Sports Car Market Giulia Super valuation, not out of line at all. In a brief search, I was hard pressed to find more than 3 of these for sale on the web, and all were commanding about the same amount of money or more.

UPDATE: This car still hasn’t sold. Here is a recent post on the Alfa Romeo Bulletin Board stating a new price of $18k. I wonder if a paint job would take the car the rest of the way?

If you can do without all the performance bits, the Guilia Ti is apparently pretty good value for money, with one sold a couple years ago on eBay for as little as $6.5k according to Sports Car Market! (Update: Speak of the devil, here’s a 1970 Ti w/ a 2000cc motor transplant for $13.9k on Sportscar Market.)

Alfa Romeo Guilia Super Web Resources:

Giulia Super Specific

Jack’s Giulia Super Pages - Jack owns two Super’s and has a ton of information online including some listserv archives, original magazine article scans, paint codes, and even a scan of the original brochure.

Community

Alfa Romeo Owners Club USA - Has a national classifieds listing. Wouldn’t be a bad place to keep an eye on for a Super sighting.

Alfa Romeo Bulletin Board Sedan Forum

Multimedia

Flickr Photos Tagged Alfa Romeo Giulia Super

Youtube Alfa romeo Giulia Super Videos

Alfa Romeo Giulia Super Wallpapers

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Are these not as rare as I thought? A 2nd west coast Renault 5 Turbo2 appeared on ebay this week.

Not only are they not as rare (apparently), is my perceived value of Turbo2’s roughly half what I thought they were? This one is listed for $12k?! And those 3 piece Compomotive rims measure 11 inches in the rear, wearing 285/40 rubber!

Is this one too good to be true? What’s your take — leave a comment!

Update: Apparently it was too good to be true, the listing has already been removed!

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Apparently the Aston flew a greater distance than the original Wright Brothers flight!

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UPDATE: Image fixed and link added to 2008 BMW M3 Concept update post.

Oh this is looking hot, check out those front fenders! Pics and info sources from M3Post.com

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1981 Alpina B6 Ebay Auction - right here on the west coast in San Mateo.

Read all about the B6 on the Unofficial Alpina Homepage. Here’s some juicy tidbits:

• 2.8l motor sourced from the e28 528i
• custom fuel injection system fitted (!)
• 218hp delivering 0-60 times under 7 seconds

These e21 Alpina’s seem to be the most common ‘legal’ Alpina’s in the US and should be relatively easy to attain. However the post refer’s to a recent ebay auction where one of these sold for $28k. That car was perfect though, probably better than when it left the factory. This one is at the other end of the spectrum in the fixer-upper category, and I expect will go for $5-6k — maybe less. A great opportunity though.

The folks hosting the auction, bimmerbrothers.net, are a cool outfit. Three brothers who basically act as BMW consignment specialists sourcing cars from all over California. They always feature some cool rides that wealthy California owners bought new, including some cool gray-market items. Some notables from their current listings include 2 e30 euro-spec Baur’s (both under $10k!), a desirable US-spec e34 540-6, an old school e28 Dinan massaged 5 series, and lots of older 70’s BMW’s that all look like great drivers.

Update: Looks like they have this listed on their website now for $9900. Sounds high to me.

Update 2: Price dropped on their website to $8900ish.

Update 3: Didn’t sell the first time on eBay at $4051, but it’s been relisted at no reserve now.

Update 4:Winning bid was $5100.

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When the PS2 debuted back in 2000, I happily bought one on day 2 of it’s release for $300. I was just finishing college, and was still playing video games on the Nintendo 64 — Mario64 and Goldeneye especially.

My PS2 has been a trooper, with most of it’s action coming from Gran Turismo and playing DVDs. It’s been sent back to Sony once for the infamous PS2 DRE error and recently crapped out again on me. But that wasn’t a big deal because around the first of the year, I was still thinking the Playstation 3 was going to be released at any time. But come February, I started following the news more closely. Thanks to integration of Blue-Ray and allowing Hollywood to control the specs of the format, the release of the PS3 has been pushed back to November.

[begin rant]
Last week at E3, it was revealed that the upcoming price for the PS3 will start at $500. And the more desirable model with HDMI output for HDTV from Blue-Ray (yep, no HDMI, no HDTV from HD DVD’s or Blue-Ray) will run you $600.

I just read the History of Console Prices over at Curmudgeon Gamer, and his point is well made — that the PS3, when compared to console prices before it, adjusted for inflation, the PS3 is in fact not that bad of a deal.

But I beg to differ. Considering the preferred HDMI-equipped console is a must if you have an HDTV compatible screen, and that a game will now likely cost $80 or more, you’re facing a real budget of nearly $700 to get rolling with a PS3.

My opinion is extremely biased because most of my PS3 use would be for the upcoming HD version of Gran Turismo, “the Real Driving Simulator”. But based on that, consider that a BMW Club membership is $35, and their track days are $125 a pop… Well shit, that’s 5 tracks days! Screw the simulator, I’m leaving the confines of the house for a real driving experience!

And since I’ve only completed like 30% of Gran Turismo 4, I’m satisfying my GT fix with a new, small form factor PS2, which was just got it’s price dropped to $129.

[/rant off]

Update: Looks like the PS3 games may in fact go for $80 or more.

Update 2: Yep, I thought so.

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Like this article? Digg it!

And this one is for sale right here in the Pacific Northwest.

UPDATE: Relisted

eBay auction for 1984 Renault R5 Turbo2

And the owner’s son placed a post on VWortex for the R5 as well.

Sun Internation website on the Renault Turbo. Sun International was responsible for the DOT/EPA certification of the car shown here. This page is pretty out of date, but there’s some good info here. Check out the rest of the Sun Internation website for some other cool imports they offer.

Wikipedia entry on the Renault R5 Turbo.

Here’s an article from Sport Compact Car on the R5 Turbo 2. They speculate that Turbo’s are worth $15k-20k. This one’s starting at $22,500. Think it’ll go for under $25k? A pretty cool car and an important piece of motorsports history for $25k.

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Unfortunately this BMW Alpina B11 on eBay is for sale in Canada and would cost a considerable amount to make DOT/EPA legal for import into the U.S. But these early Alpina’s always get me fired up and usually leads me to doing the quick math on the 25 year import rule for the U.S. that gets us out of those retrofit requirements. Considering that Alpina was making many interesting models by 1981, not to mention the mid-late 80’s models are some of my favorites, the next few years should be interesting for importing these cars.

According to the Unofficial Alpina Homepage, hosted on M5boards.com, the B11 3.5 has a massaged BMW 3.5 ‘big six’ motor that produces about 250hp. Not a barn burner, but it was offered with a 5 speed, though this particular example sports an automatic.

Check out other BMW Alpina for sale on my blog.

The Mercedes-Benz Classic Center aims to tune, service, and even restore any of their cars that are 15 years or more out of production. I discovered the Classic Center on this week’s Motorweek television show. Mike Kuntz, Manager of the Classic Center Says

We have resources that no one else has. We built the car. We have the ability to produce any and all parts for the car. This is quite interesting that you can take a Classic Mercedes-Benz part and if we don’t have it in stock, we can produce that part, and no one else can do that.

So if you win this eBayMotors auction for 1937 Mercedes 200 Cabriolet, you’ll have a place to take care of it now — from the folks who built it in the first place!

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Surfing around on eBayMotors last night, I stumbled onto this little 1969 Austin Mini. Previously prepared for light competition in trials and hillclimbs, it has since been used for street use, according to the ad. Reminds me alot of our 77 Rabbit Racer really. As of this writing, the auction is currently showing $7600, reserve not met.

Some pics:

Looks pretty sharp huh?! Scratch the silly side skirts and it shows pretty nice. And the wheels are totally kick ass and period correct from the looks of it. 6×10’s!

The eBay ad states that it’s an authentic ‘S’ model. If this is true, the value of this vehicle is pretty high — but the fact that it’s not in restored and original condition, has race oriented body modification — like the fenders being cut out to accommodate fiberglass flares — will prevent it from being too expensive. I’d expect a final sale in the neighborhood of $15k-17k.

With a buyers feedback rating of 97% on 45 transactions, it appears to be a pretty safe bet… or is it? Most of those feedback ratings refer to the user’s own eBay purchases, not sales. And then I noticed his email address root, which leads to http://familyclassiccars.com Opening the link takes us to his classic car showroom, where we find the mini for sale for $29k!

So it may in fact be a real ‘S’ for that money, but it still sounds waaay too high considering the car was used in amateur competition. Perhaps if it were Paddy Hopkirks Cooper S Rallye….

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