You like Italian classics, especially from the 1970’s. Your tastes lean towards the sportier end of the spectrum, You also need your sporting classic to be at least somewhat practical, but although some of Italy’s most glamorous marques do offer cars with four seats – even four doors – your (and our) restricted budget doesn’t stretch to a Lamborghini Espada, Iso Lele, Maserati Quattroporte or Ferrari 330GT. In any case, they’re too big. and too complicated. And expensive.
Fabulous – but ever so slightly over budget…
What does that leave? Well, you’ve still got Italy’s volume manufacturers, FIAT, Lancia and Alfa Romeo, and here you might think there are potentially rich pickings. You could consider an Alfa Romeo GTV, though good ones are not cheap. FIAT Dino’s are already in the £40k plus bracket, so there’s no joy there. Hmm…this is proving more difficult than you perhaps originally thought, but you trawl patiently through the classifieds and various auction websites and then presto! A choice of not one, but two medium-sized and stylish Italian sports coupés comes up, both being offered for sale at the same auction in just a few weeks bearing similar price tags – and now you face a proper dilemma, because either of these would give you what you want, and neither of them is particularly expensive; in fact, I’d go so far as to say that – subject to condition – they look remarkable value.
They’re both reasonably practical, offering seats for four (maybe not for long distances, but nevertheless), and one of them even has a full tailgate, while the other has a hatchback. They’re rare, too, at least in the UK – you can count their road-worthy numbers just using your fingers and toes, making them possibly more exclusive than some of their high-end fellow Italians.
So what do have here that is giving us such a headache?
Well, the auction is being held by Anglia Car Auctions over the weekend of November 7th and 8th, and one of the two cars creating this conundrum is the very first one listed on the website, the advantage of beginning with the first letter of the alphabet – or is that Alfabet? Sorry.
Anyway, classic Italian coupé number one is a white 1981 Alfa Romeo Alfasud Sprint Veloce. OK, not strictly 1970’s but the Sprint was first launched in 1976, so to all intents and purposes, it’s a ‘70s car.
Based on Alfa’s much-loved Alfasud saloon (the clue is in the name), it shared that car’s mechanical specifications but looked very different, with a sleeker, lower and more angular design from the pen of Giorgetto Giugiaro (who also designed the Alfasud). Originally powered by a version of the Sud’s 1186cc engine bored out to 1286cc pushing out 75bhp, the Sprint was really more of a dawdler, with a top speed of 170kmh and a 0-100kmh time of 11.3 seconds, a bit more show than go perhaps, although judicious stirring of its standard 5-speed ‘box made it fun to drive, according to early tests. After all, the base Alfasud is tremendous fun, so why would the Sprint be any different?
Within a couple of years the engine choice was expanded to a 1350 or 1490cc, and a year after that, in 1979, came the Veloce, basically double twin-choke carburettor versions of the engines in the standard coupé, offering significant power boosts. In the case of the smaller engine, 85bhp was on offer, with 95bhp from the 1.5. In the case of the 1.5 – of which our car is an example – top speed was lifted to 175kmh and 100kmh was reached in 10.5 seconds, still not particularly quick.
In 1983, the Sprint Veloce was upgraded further, with the “Alfasud” and “Veloce” being dropped from the name, and for the rest of its production run – which lasted until 1989 – the car was known more simply as the Alfa Romeo Sprint. In all, 116,552 Sprints were built over a thirteen-year period, of which 34,191 were Veloce’s, but few are still on the road in the UK – 11 at the last count, so you won’t come across many on your travels.
Coming back to our car…finished in white with brown/beige upholstery, it’s an import from Italy, therefore LHD, where it has had just two previous owners in the same family. Some £5,000 has been spent on recommissioning the car since it was brought to the UK in 2016, and it has a low – if warranted – 76,148kms on the clock.
While white isn’t my favourite colour for any car, this Sprint Veloce appears clean and the interior looks like it reflects the claimed mileage. It’s hard to tell from the photos, but bearing in mind that it spent 35 years in a relatively dry environment, there’s a good chance it hasn’t suffered too much from the demon rust. It sits on a set of NOS alloys but the original steelies also come with the car. Pleasingly – to me, at least – it has the smaller chrome bumper bars, which I think make this version of the Sprint much more attractive than the facelifted 1983 model.
This lot carries an estimate range of £7,000 to £9,000, which for a car that’s more exclusive in the UK than any Ferrari Dino, seems pretty reasonable. So that’s decided then?
Well, not quite… because our other Italian sporting coupé is at least as stylish, even more practical, and frankly more sporting, with a top speed of over 200kmh achieved thanks to the 135bhp produced by its supercharged 1995cc engine, which back in the day powered the car to 100kmh in just 8.5 seconds – respectable by any standard at the time. Oh, and it’s even more exclusive than the Alfa.
The other half of this dilemma is a 1983 Lancia HPE Volumex in a metallic bronze with a cream or ivory cloth interior. Like the Alfa, the HPE – launched in 1975 – is based on a cooking saloon, in this case, the Beta Berlina (we featured a Beta Berlina just a few weeks ago, but HPE’s come up for sale even more rarely), and it’s in-house design – combining the front end and doors of the Beta Coupé into a stylish shooting-brake body – is a distinct improvement on the base car, in my view. HPE initially stood for High Performance Estate, but was later revised to High Performance Executive, perhaps reflecting a desire to make the car a more aspirational lifestyle choice.
The Volumex was added very late in the HPE’s production life, introduced in 1982 and built in small numbers until 1984, when all Beta manufacture came to an end. 71,258 HPE’s were built in total between 1975 and 1984, but only 2,370 of these were the Volumex, and in the UK, only nine HPE’s in total remain on the road, so there’s a fair chance this is the only HPE VX in the country.
There is very little information about the car on the auctioneer’s website as I write, though more is promised later. In the few photographs currently on the site, the car looks good both inside and out, and comes with the original factory alloys. It is LHD – only 186 VX’s were produced with RHD – as is the Alfa, so for some potential buyers this might be a deal-breaker, but it does broaden their general appeal to the wider European market.
The choice isn’t quite between two varieties of apple – with its significantly more powerful engine, the Lancia represents quite a jump up in performance compared to the Alfa – a 1600cc version would make for a more direct comparison, and with the added complexity of the supercharger, is perhaps a riskier buy.
Nevertheless, both cars are being offered at similar estimates, so the financial outlay is comparable – as with the Alfa, the estimate range for this mini-exotic seems very reasonable, at £7,500 to £9,500. In fact, you could, if the estimates prove accurate, potentially buy both these rare and stylish cars together for less than our self-imposed £20k ceiling, though they may prove demanding to run. Now there’s a thought…
You can see the lot details on ACA’s website – from where we have also borrowed some photographs – here for the Alfa, and here for the Lancia. It will be interesting to follow their progress in November. I find them both tempting, but in the end think that of the two, I’d plump for the Lancia of the two, if only for having never previously owned one.
With our Saturday instalment of Prime Find of the Week, we’re offering our services to the classic car community, by passing on our favourite classic car for sale from the week that passed. This top-tip might help a first-time-buyer to own his first classic, or it could even be the perfect motivation for a multiple-classic-car-owner to expand his garage with something different. We’ll let us be inspired by anything from a cheap project to a stunning concours exotic, and hope that you will do the same.
Just remember – Any Classic is Better than No Classic! We obviously invite our readers to help prospective buyers with your views and maybe even experiences of any given model we feature. Further to that, if you stumble across a classic which you feel we ought to feature as Prime Find of the Week, then please send us a link to primefindoftheweek@viaretro.co.uk