Alfa Find Story Part 2: From Horsebarn to Horsepower

We met Kyle Fleming, Bill Jones, John Sheally, and several others down there who managed to do stuff with cars, even though there were no major tracks close by. It was surprising how many Alfas, Lancias, Ferraris and other interesting cars could be found in Tidewater, no doubt because of all the military people who had brought cars over from Europe for next to nothing.

Kyle was fast becoming the go-to guy for used Ferrari and Maserati parts, having a yard full of what would be platinum bars today. John Sheally was the Morgan guy, importing new Morgans and marching around as the guru of old Morgans, having recently written a coffee table book. Bill Jones had just moved into Norfolk (with his wife and daughter Giulietta), but we felt like we already knew him since he wrote columns from Italy (which were the most interesting thing) in the Alfa Owner magazine while a civilian employee of the Navy over there. There was also Keith Butler, who ran the local imported parts store, and I remember another guy from whom we purchased a Spider. (That very peculiar Alfa became the dragster that keeps re-occurring on eBay time after time!)

Pete worked for AT&T, but dreamed of vintage cars, as he had been bitten by the car bug very early on. One of his treasures was a reply from Stirling Moss to a letter he had written to him when Pete was about 8 or 9 years old. Pete began to write for Car Collector, Vintage Motorsport and Victory Lane. He had a nice bunch of cars over the years, including various Abarths, a 2600 Alfa Zagato and a Bandini. His wife Mary would go along with him on interviews and she began to take the photos for the articles. Their work was published in many magazines and several books.

We kept in touch with all of them over the years and when Pete called and said he had found an old Sprint Veloce in a chicken barn, we immediately hooked up the trailer and went down to pick it up, taking along a Lancia Appia Pete needed and we didn’t. We first saw the Alfa in the street in front of his house, still covered with chicken crap and dust.

He was kind of cryptic as to where he had gotten it, but it had white circles where the numbers used to be, a roll bar with a drill hole and an old, faded SCCA tech sticker. The interior was gone except for a very primitive bucket seat and a Wink mirror, as I recall. It also had a shield around the transmission similar to what drag racers install for personal damage control lest the clutch explode.

According to the serial number, it was still a 750 series, although it had 101 taillights, all correct for a 1959. We winched it on the trailer, brought it home and ripped out what was left of the wiring, took out the weird rear shock setup (sort of a coil-over arrangement with a threaded cylinder) and installed a 1300 Veloce motor, five speed (since the tunnel was already carved up), and enough of the trim to appease the gods of the VSCCA (Vintage Sports CAr Club of America). We raced it in red for about 6 or 8 years (I took the drivers school in it back in the early eighties), mostly at Lime Rock, at VSCCA events and the Alfa Owners Club track days. It was great fun to drive, as it still had the period feel of a fifties Alfa and was very fast and agile with the Veloce setup. As it had most of an exhaust, we usually drove it to the track. We even loaned it to customers taking the VSCCA drivers school, including Pete who came up to Lime Rock a few years later to get his VSCCA license.

At Pittsburgh, the unthinkable happened and it was crashed into a barrier. Someone had oiled one of the corners, and Keith had nowhere to go. The corner workers apologized as they had not had time to put the oil flag out. He got the “Hard Luck” award.

So back home we went with a lot of stares from the drivers on I-80. I think that was the trip where we first met Ali Lugo, who was pulled over on the side of the road peering into the engine compartment of a Jaguar 120 coupe that belonged to someone else (Jim Stephens? Ed Sutherland?) He was adjusting the carbs with an unfiltered Camel hanging out of his mouth. My first thought was this bastard’s going to blow himself up. This was the beginning of a long and wild ride with Captain Lugo.

When we finally got back home to Connecticut, we got busy and fixed the damage, although it was years before the handling finally got straightened out. We got the chance to get it back to the original white, although I think the Italian version of it probably was a bit more ivory, and we found a set of Campagnolo wheels and TZ seats. I rewired it, and we installed a lot of the choicest stuff we had collected, including lights and a lot of rare trim. I was beside myself when we came across a 101 Sprint with a very rare “deluxe” interior – all leather, in burgundy. I took the door panels off that one and put them on the Sprint and it looked so wonderful even if it was not perfect.

We still went mostly to Lime Rock with the Sprint, as we had a bunch of other cars we were racing at the time, and a lot of customer’s cars. I also took it to Mt. Equinox several times, and I think we went to New Hampshire and maybe Pocono at least once. It was really a member of the family. The last time I drove it was at Lime Rock. A kid we had doing work on the cars put so much grease in the sleeve of the master brake cylinder that I lost the brakes, not on the track where I had just come from, but in the paddock, where I barely managed to avoid a group of people walking and ran into a transporter. That was it for the Sprint, and we parked it, until it was sold several years later.

The Alfa According to Keith

When we first picked up the car in 1977, it wasn’t actually VSCCA eligible, for at the time, the club had a very limited list of cars that were considered eligible. It wasn’t until later that Alfa Guiliettas were allowed in, and then they had to be Veloces made before December, 1959. I had many a conversation with the club about taking it to Mt Equinox and finally got it in under an invitation for the Alfa Club.

My first race prep of the car included installing a 1600 GTV engine and five speed, disc brakes, mag wheels and 1750 GTV seats for “Alfa Club Days”. As we worked on the car, it became obvious that whoever built the car for SCCA racing has been an engineer or at minimum, a very talented mechanic. The fenders were very subtly flared (probably illegal for SCCA at the time) and very stiff springs and a threaded ride height adjuster were hidden inside nylon pull-string sleeves. It had white nylon bushings in the rear trailing arms (possibly still in there) to make the handling more precise.

The 1600 blew up at Lime Rock, so then a 1300 GT Junior engine went in. Eventually, when VSCCA allowed the car in, I re-prepped it to largely original specs as called for by the club rules. Drum brakes went on in place of the discs, and a correct period 750 Veloce engine was found and installed.

The GTV seats were removed and replaced with TI Super seats, very similar to those used in the SZ and TZ. We painted the car red the first time, but found original white after the Pittsburgh crash and at tha point returned the car to white.

We towed it out to Pittsburgh at least 5-6 times, using a trailer a few times and flat towing it with our Alfetta Sedan once. And once after a race in Pittsburg, we left the car with Tom Sheehan of the Lancia Parts Consortium and continued on a vacation to Wisconsin to visit Susan’s aunt and uncle. Apparently Tom took it out roaring around Pittsburgh a couple of times. On one return trip we met Ali Lugo, smoking a Galloise cigarette and tuning the SU carbs of a Jag, just as Susan recalls, but as I recall it wasn’t the same year I crunched the fender.

We got the “Hard Luck” award that year for two reasons. I crashed the Sprint and we got news from home that a young employee on mine had taken Susan’s GTV out for a joyride and rolled it into a brook.

We raced the car up and down the East Coast for many years. We did Pittsburgh 5-6 times, Lime Rock many times, Mt. Equinox, Bryar (now NHIS), I drove the car to the Meadowlands IndyCar race, ran the car in pouring rain and drove it home. Stopping in a gas station in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, someone asked, “Weren’t you just racing that car at the Meadowlands?” After the Pittsburgh crash (maybe 1985), the car sat for a few years. When we got wind of the recreation of Bahamas Speedweek in 89, we started to fix the car, but didn’t finish it. We VERY quickly prepped a Giulia Spider that we bought sight unseen from Cal and paid for it with a Master Charge Card(long before eBay and Paypal). The Spider was painted white and dubbed “The Bahamas Car” but that’s another article.

Our son Jonathan (future race driver) came along and the Sprint Veloce slowly got put back together. We had it out a few more times, but as Jonathan’s karting and car racing career was growing, I didn’t have time to race myself.

Eventually, I got a call from Shane Mustoe of Brighton Motors, who wanted a second vintage race car. So off it went.

Next week in Part 3: The Alfa finds a new life.