Alfa produced one of its most iconic cars 53 years ago, and this beautifully restored example is ready to make a lucky buyer happy.
- This Alfa Romeo GT Veloce 1750, on sale now on Bring a Trailer, underwent a full restoration that was completed in March 2020.
- The Alfa GTV 1750 weighs about 2300 pounds, has 120 horsepower, and is known for its rich character, playful handling, willing four-cylinder, and raspy exhaust note.
- The current high bid is $60,000, but expect it to go higher still; prices for the best examples have crested $100,000. The auction closes on Thursday, February 17.
It would be a wonderful world indeed if every car enthusiast could rack up some miles behind the wheel of an Alfa Romeo GT Veloce 1750. I say that as someone who once had the good fortune to put miles on a well-maintained GTV similar to the one pictured here. And this one, luckily for you, is currently for sale on the auction site Bring a Trailer—which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos.
The diminutive Alfa sports coupe, better known as the GTV 1750, represents everything that was right about Italian cars of the late 1960s. It’s one of those rare automobiles in which the ride, handling, engine, gearbox, and major controls are in perfect balance, imbuing it with a special sort of harmony that makes every drive memorable. The exhaust note is alone is reason enough to want it. This is a car with personality.
Early in my career, I got to drive a friend’s GTV during a trip to Palo Alto, California. We cruised the San Francisco area for several days, and I would have happily driven it all the way back home to New York City.
Even though that GTV was by then a dozen years old—ancient in car years—it felt totally contemporary. The GTV 1750 was built at a time when small cars were light; at about 2300 pounds, the car is roughly 500 pounds lighter than the current Toyota GR86/Subaru BRZ twins. Thanks in part to that featherweight mass, there was a magical delicacy to the way it drove. It felt lithe and lively and agile, with light-to-the touch unassisted steering, an easy-shifting five-speed manual gearbox, and solid four-wheel disc brakes.
Its ride was a sweet compromise between taut and supple. Best of all, the spunky double overhead-cam four-cylinder engine, which would feel merely peppy by today’s standards, nonetheless snarled like an angry German shepherd with each prod of the accelerator. The GTV seemed made for brisk drives on the kind of two-lane roads you find in Napa Valley, California, or in the hills near Modena, Italy.
The dark blue GTV on Bring a Trailer looks to be a spectacular example of the breed. It’s described as a Europe-market model, which is why its 1779-cc four-cylinder is fitted with dual Weber DCOE carbs rather than the Spica fuel injection found on U.S. GTVs. (The fuel-injection system was needed to meet early U.S. emissions requirements.) This means that the buyer will need to find a local Weber carb expert in order to keep their new-old GTV running smoothly—or learn the tuning intricacies of the finicky Italian air-fuel mixers so they can do it themselves.
The BaT GTV underwent a full restoration, which was completed to seeming perfection in March 2020, and there are ample photos documenting the build. This car’s original color was Gialo Ocra, which is a shade darker than school-bus yellow, but it was refinished in an Alfa-correct dark blue named Blu Olandese. The interior was reupholstered in black vinyl. It rolls on silver-painted 14-inch wheels topped with Alfa hubcaps and shod with 165/HR-14 Pirelli Cinturato tires, which sport the tall sidewalls of high-performance radials that were available 53 years ago.
This car also was treated to a complete mechanical restoration, according to the seller. Its engine was treated to a full rebuild, so we’d expect it to deliver its all of its advertised 120 horses. The brakes, rear axle, and five-speed manual gearbox were also overhauled. A shot of the car’s underside looks factory fresh. The seller says that the car has been driven about 7500 miles since it was reassembled.
Bring a Trailer recommends that shoppers conduct an in-person inspection of the vehicles that they’re interested in before they start bidding, which will take some doing with this GTV; it’s located in Mallorca, Spain. Obviously, the winning bidder will also have to plan on higher-than-usual shipping costs, but BaT has an app for that. And there may be one other complication: though the car is located in Mallorca, it is registered in Sweden in the name of the seller’s business. We hope the transaction will not be bogged down by this Alfa’s multinational status.
Bidding for the beautiful blue GTV 1750 closes on Thursday, February 17, and we envy the lucky winner who scoops it up. We expect that the driving experience will be as full of brio now as it was more than a half-century ago.
Keyword: 1969 Alfa Romeo GT Veloce 1750 Is Our Bring a Trailer Auction Pick of the Day