In Episode 113 of the Alfa Romeo Driver Podcast, brought to you by the Alfa Romeo Owners Club – Editor Guy Swarbrick sits down in a kitchen above a bicycle shop in Ipswich, to explore the story of the Giulia cycling team car which was such a hit at Club events this year – and talk about Steve’s plans for next year.
You can find out more about the car in the December issue of Alfa Romeo Driver – or on Instagram – @alfabetti66 (https://www.instagram.com/alfabetti66?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==)
[Music] Hello and welcome to episode 113 of the Alfao Driver podcast brought to you by the Alfao owners club. This month’s episode ties in with a feature we’ll be running in the December issue of the magazine and we probably should have waited and released it then but I was in Suffukk signing off the October issue and our guest lives just down the road. So, I threw my trusty field recorder into the boot and headed to Ipswiche to meet Steve Grimwood, owner of the Julia cycling team car, which has been such a hit at AROC events this summer. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Lots of people have seen the car on track at National Alpha Day. I think that was the highlight of many people’s National Alpha Day this year. So, just want to take a step back. We’ll talk about the car in a minute, but tell us a little bit about you and and your background. Absolutely. I’m here in Ipsswitch and I run a bicycle shop and I’ve been in the bicycle trade all my life and I describe myself first and foremost as a as a mechanic. I love mechanical things. I’m certainly not a professional car mechanic, but I can understand how things work and I love discovering how things work. And I’ve always been into old cars. And I when I think when I was in my mid20ies, I I was persuaded by a friend or a friend’s dad actually to take on and buy a 1939 Morris 8 Tourer. So it was a pretty rough state when I got it, but I happened upon this old vintage car and had an absolutely wonderful time with it. Um I did London to Brighton, took it to Belgium. We took it all over the place and over that time I had that car for 30 years and I rebuilt it from top to bottom. I think I became the the country’s leading expert in 1939 Morris 8 series E Tourism. Probably a small pool, a very very niche interest. As the years went on, I I I kind of got to a point where I’d finished the car. I’d rebuilt it to a concourse condition by the end. I hoarded all the spares you could ever need. I’d pretty much done everything you could do with it, including my my I’d been to Belgium with my late father. I’d done my sister’s wedding. I’d done friends and family’s weddings. I’d kind of done all those normal things, but suddenly got to a point where there really wasn’t anything else to do that I wasn’t repeating things I’d done in the past. And over the last 10 years, using a a pre-war car on the road kind of started to lose its enjoyment. When I first got the car, I I thought nothing of going down to Brighton um on the London to Brighton, driving through central London, driving around the M25 in the dark at 45 mph with the clutch slipping and couple of mates in the back and a couple of bicycle lights on the back, hoping that they’d do. I think either I’ve got older and wiser or the traffic has got a lot faster and a lot bigger. I think it’s probably the the latter one, but it got to a point where I hadn’t I just suddenly decided one night I thought, you know what, I’ve done I’ve done everything. I’m going to do it. It’s time to try something else. And I’d always had I’d always had this little inkling that I needed an Alfa Romeo. And I think it comes from my dad who when I was growing up when I when I was very young, we had typical sort of 1960s decor I think with those doors in your in your house which had four panels on them, four plain panels. and he’d got some vintage car wallpaper and cut out the pictures of the cars and stuck them on these panels all over the house or just your bedroom. No, no, no. That would be a bit weird. Okay, that would be a bit strange. That would be obsessive. No, just my bedroom on just on the inside. But he stuck these pictures and I can vividly remember I got no interest in I was about five or six years old, but he cut out these pictures and one of them was um I think I think it was a Alfa Romeo 8C. It was a pre-war Alfao, but it and it had got the badge next to it. And I can still remember just looking there was a Bentley, an Alfa Romeo, a Lagand, and something else. There was four pre-war cars. But I always remember that the Alfa Romeo badge was the one that I liked the most. And I just kept looking at it when I was young and I looked at this car and it’s I think it was say an 8C or a 6C or something like that. And I loved it. And I think that just those little funny things just stick with you all your life. And a few years ago, I nearly bought I think it was a 156 that I’d seen at a show. And I just got this kind of hankering that I knew I wanted something. So I just I came home one night and I told the wife I said, “I think I’m going to sell the sell the Morris.” And she sort of looked shocked and what what do you mean you’re going to sell the Morris? I said, “No, I think I’m done with it.” And she goes, “Well, okay. It’s up to you. Whatever. But it would it was part of the family.” And I kind of told my children as well and they’re like, “Really, Dad? You’re going to sell it?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I think I’m done with it.” So I just sat there one evening. I put it on eBay and sold it that night. Actually turned out that it was a local garage who bought it to raffle. They put it in one of these raffle competitions. They knew the person who’ done the work. They’d seen the quality of the restoration that was on it and they and the guy just phoned up said, “Yep, that’s the one we want. We’ll have it.” And he just came and paid me cash. All of a sudden, I’d got no car, an empty garage, and a and a envelope full of money. So, that’s the background. That’s the first bit of the story, I guess. Then I’d got I got this empty garage that I decided, well, what am I going to do? And I started looking around and I kind of had this little inkling that I wanted to combine my my work, my bicycles, and my passion for cycling with the cars. And I’d always had a hankering for a an old team car, the a tour to France team car. I thought I love the kind of the stories behind them and the and the stuff going on around them. They’re just interesting to look at. And I’d been to Belgium that year and seen outside the cycling museum in Udinada. There’s a Volvo 244 in orange and black in the Maltini Italian Maltini colors of Eddie Mks and that’s probably the most famous one. Now I kind of I’d been looking at Volvos and I’d found a couple online. I thought shall I shanty? Shall I? Shant I showed my wife and a picture of a Volvo and she goes oh it’s ugly. Like what do you want one of them for? I’m like yeah but it’s cool isn’t it? can do that. And she was like, “No.” And it was really blunt. She was just as blunt as that. She was like, “So, you know, apologies for anyone that’s got a Volvo 244, but my wife doesn’t like them.” So, she was I was under no illusion. So, then I started looking around at other stuff and I thought, “Well, I could do a VW Bay window. They use those quite a bit.” And I thought, “No, I didn’t want a van cuz I’ve got a T5 van that I drive around in.” So, I was just trying to look around for a suitable car to do a team car. And the obvious ones are Peugeot um as well. They were used in the tour to France. Peugeot 404s and 504s, but the 504 is too big to go in my garage. So that that was out even without bikes. Yeah. I’ve only got a normal single garage and most modern cars or most most cars don’t fit in normal garages. So and I didn’t want to keep it somewhere else because half the fun is being able to just go outside at home and tinker with your car. So it had to fit in the garage. So I started to get this criteria of it. It had to be something that was used or would have been used as a cycling team car. I knew I wanted to do that. It had to be interesting and it had to be small enough to go in the in the garage. So, it kind of limits it quite quickly. And I’ve got a friend who comes into the shop, Jamie, who’s got a little um 105 Junior, and I’d always really like that. And every time he came around and I thought, “That’s a fantastic little car. It’s really good.” And I spoke to him and I was chatting to him about cars and he said, “Oh yeah, yeah, these are really good.” And I said, “Well, I think I want four seats though cuz I like to be able to take friends in them and that.” And I think he showed me a picture of a of a Julia um 105. And I thought, “That’s quite cool though. I quite like that.” And then I started looking around for pictures. And I found I found a picture online of Phelis Jamondi, an Italian cyclist who was one of the only cyclists who ever won the World Championships, the Jirro Dalia, and the tour to France. So he was a big deal in Italy. He was very, very wellknown. And he was the rival for Eddie Merc, who was the guy with the Volvo 244. So I thought, “This guy’s quite interesting.” And I kind of had a little look and suddenly found a picture of a Alfa Romeo Julia um 105 saloon in the colors of um Jimundi’s team which was Salvani an high-end um Italian kitchen manufacturer. And I thought that’s really cool. And the car was in the Celeste blue of the Bianke bicycles. So it’s a very famous color, very Italian color. A lot of Fiats and um I think some of the earlier spiders were in that Celeste blue. It’s a very 60s color, but quite a rare one. I thought I quite like that. So, I thought so I went on to eBay that night and um this all happened within about a week of selling the um the Morris. And I went on to eBay and there was one for sale. It was a 1966 105 four-door saloon in Celeste blue leftand drive, which I was happy with cuz it kind of feels more Italian. And it was for sale for exactly the same price as I’d sold the Morris for. I don’t mind saying it. It was for sale for £10,000, which I thought, well, that’s about right money. It’s It’s not cheap. It’s not too It’s about right. And it looked pretty solid. So, I phoned the chap up and found out a bit more about it. And it was um it was a running car that needed some work. It was pretty much it was all original, so it hadn’t been messed around with. There was no nobody had done any work to it, which was important to me cuz I was thinking, well, I didn’t want to start having to unpick something everyone else had gone. However, it came with the original engine and um axle, but it had had a 2 L engine popped in it and the 2 L axle. And I thought, well, I live in Suffuk and that’s a long way from everywhere. So, whenever you want to go, it’s a long old drive down a dual carriageway. And I thought, well, the 2 L is pretty useful for that. So, I had a little look, bit two in and throwing. Didn’t really haggle over it. And I I just went and bought it and that was that. I was suddenly a proud owner of a 1966 Julia um saloon in Celeste blue. The thing I didn’t realize at that time was just how rare the Celeste blue ones were. I’ve seen two in the UK. That’s it. And also I didn’t realize just how lucky I’d got in getting a car from 1966 which I hadn’t quite appreciated was a little bit of a cut off year. So the 1966 is the the earlier design. It’s the flat dashboard with the umbrella handbrake on the dash. It It’s a little bit of an earlier model. It’s got the the split bench seat in the front and a few little quirks, but um and I think there’s a few shows like Goodwood. It’s pre 1966 parking and the ‘ 66 is nice cut off year for vintage cars that I hadn’t quite appreciated. So, I’m pleased I got that date. But also turns out that 66 was the year exact year that Jimundi won the Pay Rebe and it al and it all tied in with a lot of the pictures that I found now that actually matched that date. So when I started designing the the graphics to go on the car that 66 year just everything fell into place and it’s just been wonderful. And now I know that I couldn’t change it for a 69 or a 72 car cuz it just wouldn’t match. I do appreciate that. That’s a little bit geeky and it sounds a bit geeky and um and there’s about two people in the whole country that probably will appreciate those little details, but but they mean quite a lot to me. I I kind of like all of those little things that link together. So, there we go. So, I’ve suddenly got a 1966 South Romeo Julia um 1300 Ti, but with a 2 L engine in it and sitting in my garage. So, with lots of links to a team car, but a long way from being a team car. A long way. So yeah, it was just a plain blue one. So I started um having a look at it. So that’s where the the restoration begins. So this is all happened in September last year. So I think it was in my garage at the end of end of September, beginning of October. Beginning of October, I think it was. And and so that’s the first part of the story. The second part of the story is the restoration starts. So I kind of went in, there was three things going on, I guess. The first one was the research into how I wanted the car to look. And I knew what I wanted to do there. I didn’t want to copy a team car in 1966. Firstly, because they were actually pretty boring because all they did was they grabbed a car, put a couple of stickers on it, used it for that race, took the stickers off, and it went back to being the person’s car. The teams didn’t have the money in those days really to have a dedicated team car. It didn’t It wasn’t a thing. Well, it was a big commitment as well, was it? Cuz it was it was paint if you wanted to do it properly. You couldn’t these days you can wrap it and you can’t. Yeah, it was it was literally just some So they’d normally put like a big board on the bumper and things like that. Saying that, they did used to cut a massive hole in the roof so they could stand up out of it. But these cars didn’t you haven’t done lack of commitment. No, I knew I didn’t want to do that. So I didn’t want to copy a team car. I I have a very simple philosophy which I’m I’m an avid vintage bike collector as well and I have a kind of philosophy which goes that if it’s the actual car that was used in a race or historically or if it’s the actual bike that was used in the tour of France then that bicycle should be preserved 100% and and kept as close to the original condition as possible. If it’s not the actual bike, do what you like. Yeah, it’s a tribute to rather than a replica. And I don’t like using I don’t like using the word copy or even replica is kind of replicas are okay, but when people build a replica and they try and make it exactly the same as the original and then get a little bit overstressed by it, I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing because if it’s not the bike, it’s not the bike. So, just kind of make it how you and we’ll talk about the reaction to the car later on. M but you just we took some photos this afternoon which will be in the next issue of the magazine and just driving to and from the location. Everybody’s looking at the car as it goes past. Again, we’ll talk talk more about the engine later. And part of that is they they look before they even know what it is cuz they hear it coming. But I don’t think anybody’s ever going to look at it and say, “Oh, that sticker that Bianke sticker is in the wrong place.” Well, like I say, there’s there’s there’s probably about there’s probably less than half a dozen people in the country who would be able to spot that difference anyway, and a few in Italy maybe, but I think once that once they appreciate what you’re trying to do, it’s all quite reasonable. And and if they don’t like that, well, they’re probably not my type of person anyway. So, like I say, if it’s the original, then it stays original. If it’s a tribute, then put some of your own flare on it, something that identifies it as yours. So, what I wanted to do was to build this tribute and bring in elements of the riders and the teams and do everything correctly. So, everything on there needed to be correct to the period. It’s what could have been on there had they chosen to or actually a celebration of something that happened that they wouldn’t have had time to put on. So, so for example, I’ve designed a round on the bonnet which celebrates the fact that Jimi won the tour to France, the Jerro ditalia um and the world championships. Now, he would didn’t win all of those things in the same month. That happened over a period of a few years, but I can actually put that on as a celebration to that. They would have never had any reason to put 1966 on the bonnet because that was the year. I mean, why would you put 1966 on the bonnet? But that’s you you wouldn’t put 25 on now just for and I think having the 66 on the on the roundall makes a wonderful badge. It celebrates the year. People say, “Oh, what what year is that?” And you say, “Oh, it’s 1966. This is a 66 car and 66 is just one of those really goodlooking numbers that just looks great on a badge. It’s just it’s very the symmetry is really nice. So, I just I like that. So, those sorts of things and the stripes and so I I designed it how I wanted to have it, but it’s all the correct colors, the right panones, the right logos, the right names. So, you’ve got nice things like we’ve got the Bianke logo on the side of the car. We’ve got Bianke bikes on the back which would have been correct. The Bianke are in Celeste and the car’s in Celeste. The 66 refers to the races that are listed on the car, but that’s also the age of the car. I’ve got Pirelli tires on it and Pirelli make bicycle tires. Campagnolo made the gears for the bicycles. So, Bianke bikes would have had Campagnolo gears on, but a lot of people also know that Campagno made wheels for Alfa Romeo. So, there’s some really lovely links that all work. And you said you’re a vintage bike collector. Were they Biancis that you had already or you bought them to go with the car? So, I had the bikes before the car and the bikes that’s on the um on the back of the car is 100% period correct late 1950s Bianke champion of the world Campion Dondo and it’s lovely, beautiful. It sits on there and that worked really well. So, that was part one. Part one of the restoration was designing what I wanted it to look like. Part two was, I guess, was just then trying to see what it was I’d got and trying to plan and schedule a restoration that I could do that wasn’t going to break the bank because you could do it. And then kind of decide how far to go because the easiest thing to do would have been to just strip the entire car to a shell, send it off to a body shop and get it back completely painted and looking perfect. And I just didn’t want to, having had a concourse car, I didn’t really want to go down that route of having something that just looked like it come straight out of the factory. It had been completely resprayed and I didn’t want to use it. But it was not going to be quite as simple as that because as anybody will know, if you decide to buy an old car and you then go on to eBay and buy the first one you see and the cheapest one you find, you’re going to have some work to do. That’s probably not the best advice, but then you get lucky and you get little gems like the one I’ve got cuz I’ve never seen another one. So, I started stripping it apart in the garage. Started to assess what was what was wrong. Worked out pretty quickly that the front floor pans were gone. So, I was going to have to replace the floors. They were thinner than a crisp packet. There was a little bit of rust on the front seal and round the rear light. But actually, other than that, that was it. So, and all relatively easy bits to get for a 105. So, ordered a couple of new front floor pans, rear floor pans, sorry. uh one new jacking point and then phoned around a few body shops that I knew and booked it in to have the floors done. Um it stripped and undersaled at the B underneath and a little bit of work around the rear lights, but decided not to respray it, not to fix anything. It had got some dents in the roof where it had someone had stored stuff on the roof and I thought, you know what, actually bikes going on and off the roof. It’s going to work. So, we actually decided to do a sympathetic restoration. just fixed the rust, get rid of any um holes, but not repaint it. And I’m really pleased I did that because it actually looks like it’s being used rather than something that’s just come out of a body shop. So, I booked it in to be done in December and this was by now we were in middle of October. So, I had a little window to strip the car completely and decide of all the other mechanical parts what was going to be done. And for anybody that’s really got nothing better to do, they can follow all of that on Instagram and see what um material. It was quite a nice journey of discovery. But it was always going to be do this and have it ready for next year. There was a schedule. So I had a deadline. Told the body shop that you know they could have it in December. I wanted it back by February because I booked the car into the local IPS switch to Felix Classic car run which is in um beginning of May and that had to be ready for then. So, there was quite a lot to do. Um, and I literally stripped the car to every last nut and bolt pretty much. Didn’t take the suspension apart. That was okay. It was working. I left that alone. So, kept it on its wheels, but everything else came off. All the right down to things like I had to take the um instrument panel apart, fix the gauges weren’t working. little silly little things that took far longer than they should have. Like um I wanted to recchrome the bezel around the speedo. So I took the instrument panel out of the dash, took the little chrome bezel off, send that off to the chrome plers, and then I got the the glass front which was kind of free and I thought, well, that’d be silly not to clean that before you put it back in. So I thought, I’ll give it a clean. So, I I think it must have been about half 11 at night and I just thought I’d just give that a quick clean before I put it back in cuz the chrome bezel had come back and I just wandered over to the sink and ran it under the tap. Oh, perfectly sensible thing you’d have thought till you remember that all of the de all the numbers on the glass are water slide transfers and I turned the tap on and I just stood there and watched all the numbers just slide off the glass and down the plug hole and I was just like, “Oh, you are kidding. What have I just done?” and you’re just like silly things like that. So, but when you look back at them, they’re part of the story of it. And uh so then I had to um kind of get straight onto eBay, find some Airfix decals, try and find a font that was the same, and then try and work out where they had to go. So I had to kind of put the glass on, then get a white marker pen and draw around it. And then it was just like one of those extra jobs that ended up taking a week to get the numbers back on just because you’re just like a little bit tired and you just I think every mechanic in the world on this one. Well, I think every mechanic in the world has done that thing where they just go, “Oh, just check that bolt.” And you just go and tighten it and it’s like it was perfectly all right and you just snap it or round it off or do something silly. So, I think we’ve all done that. The big one though, so this was just as the body shell had gone off was the engine knew it was in a bad way. It was the So, I didn’t mention so come back a little bit. The car actually came with a 2 L engine fitted. Um, it was an Alfetta engine that the guy put in it. It came with the 1300 as well, the original engine and axle, but the engine that was in the car was a 2 L. Now, it ran, but it didn’t run well. It was It sounded rough, and it wasn’t terrible, but it just I knew it wasn’t right. So, I took it up to a local garage who’s got a rolling road, and we were going to put it on there and see if we could get it running any better, but they pretty much straight away realized that it had got a pretty bad air leak from the carb inlet. Um they the rubbers had gone so it was running super lean anyway and it was starting to rattle a bit. So I we we didn’t put it on the rolling road. We left it. I was driving I driving it back home and all of a sudden there was a big bang, a big pop and a big lump of smoke came out the back of the engine and that was decision made. Um the engine was gone. Took it apart. Well I did a compression test on it. Found there was absolutely no compression from cylinder one. So that was like that’s decision made. So the engine had to come out which was good because it meant I could tidy up the engine bay anyway. So that really is silver lining in the cloud stuff. I think Oh yeah good engine. So I’ve got I’ve got an engine crane. I took everything. So it was just part of the the job. So I and this was this was still um towards the end of October before the car went off to the body shop. So I thought right well it can go to the body shop without an engine in it. That’s fine. So the engine came out. It went off to a local engine builder, James Wright. I think a lot of people know him. He’s a regular on the uh on the race circuit with his um John West. James took it apart. Um I went over to have a look at it and yes, we’ve got a hole in piston one. We’ve got a bent valve and looked like something had gone through the engine. A random nut or washer, I expect. So, something happened there. But also, there was a lot of wear on parts. The chain tensioner was in the wrong place. Had been fitted right. So, it was just full rebuild for the engine. So, that was fine. James got on with that while while the car was being stripped. So I carried on stripping it. It went off to the body shop to have the the floor pans replaced and those bits of pieces done and then came back to me in mid January. So mid January I had a car back in the garage, an engine that was being rebuilt that was due back to me by the end of January. I think it was maybe February. Um I just had to crack on with it. So I I started rebuilding it. redid all the interior local trimmers fitted some new seat covers that I’d ordered and then just tackled everything. So, it was it was um everything from the seat belts to everything in the engine bay, rewired it, put all new electrics in, new fuse box, new lights, ordered a a new front grill from from Italy. Um I’ve decided to go down the super front end with the twin headlights because um that matched all of the pictures I’d got. And for some reason, I was obsessed with having yellow inner headlights. And um I I don’t know why, but it just kind of looks cool and I quite like it. So that’s where we went with that. So that was busy busy time. Lots and lots of late nights. I work full-time. I I run my own shop, so um I work, you know, half 8 till 6:00 every day. So um all the stuff was done in the evenings. So it was quite nice. It was good. You could It shows you can rebuild an Alfa Romeo in your garage in the evenings. But um my wife managed to watch a lot of Netflix and box sets cuz I was out the way. So, she was quite happy for the winter cuz she she said she’d never managed to watch so many things uninterrupted or without me flicking over to Bangers and Cash or Shed and Buried, which was she she was over the moon with really. So, that was that. So, we cracked on. That’s all on Instagram. You can see uh all the pictures of that. And in the meantime, I got busy designing the the graphics for the car and figuring out how I was going to put some bikes on. Originally, I’ve got pictures of how the bikes being used in the um the bike races and the bikes sat off the back of the car on the boot. The front where you take the front wheel out, the front forks go on to the just behind the rear windscreen and the bikes sort of hang off the boot by about 3T, I suppose. And I knew I didn’t want to do that because I think modern traffic, I didn’t want the bikes hanging right off the back. And also, the reason they did that was because they used to cut a massive hole in the roof so you could stand up. So they couldn’t go any further forward. No. And so they could stand up and shout at the riders. So I thought, I don’t want to cut a hole in the roof either. I’m not that obsessed. I want to be able to use this car when I haven’t got bikes on it as well. So had to figure out how to do that. And I found um that you a standard roof rack won’t fit the 105 because it’s got quite curved roof. The the gutters are quite low down. So I I tried a few I ordered several different ones off eBay and then found one that a lot of people buy for minis. It was advertised as a a mini roof rack, but it’s a 1960s roof rack, Swedish one, I think, made by JS or something like that. But I found one in really good nick and it fitted absolutely perfectly. And then two weeks later, I found another one, a new old stock one on Facebook Marketplace. So, I managed to buy two two of the matching roof racks for about 50 quid each and made one good well made what I wanted out of two roof racks. So, sort of bolted a few things in different places, added some reinforcers, made them that. Once I got it how I wanted, then I sent that off to the powder coaters to get it done in old English white, and it came back looking absolutely amazing. It just fitted the car. It looks so different to when it was just galvanized metal, which looked really rough. So, did that, had to figure out how to put the back wheels onto the boot, and found um an MX5 boot rack fitted perfectly. So, an MX5 boot rack. used a couple of rubber suckers to kind of make it look like it was stuck to the boot and then used some channel, some sort of V-shaped channel from um some old bike fittings I’d got at the shop. Some some just some old display fittings. Bolted it all together and it all looked absolutely smashing. And so many people have come up to me and say, “Where’d you get this? This looks really just a collection of bits and pieces.” But it’s one of those things that you just kind of you kind of have to make it up as you go along. You have to hold the bike up, work out where it’s going to go. I wanted it as low as possible, tucked in so the pedals were kind of the bike were just behind the rear windscreen, but kind of I’ve got it low enough so I can still drive into me garage with the bikes on the roof, right? And you’re less likely to hit a car park barrier as well if you forget. So it kind of all worked really well. So designed that, got the car back, got it all put back together again, and yeah, made it in time for the switch to Felix run in April. So that was your kind of milestone event. Yeah. Wasn’t the only event you’ve done this year, was it? No. So, I’ve probably overdone it a little bit. So, apologies to anyone that’s listening to this that is just kind of gone, “Oh my god, it’s that car again.” Because I’ve had a whale of a time. I’ve had so much fun. It’s been absolutely brilliant. I’m trying to remember where I first saw it, but it was probably I don’t think it was the April event, but it was probably Mayish time. I saw it somewhere. It could be. Yeah. Or or if it was on social media cuz it seems to have taken a life of its own on social media. So we did IPS switch to Fel well actually I finished the car the week before IPS switch to Felix run which was my deadline and the week before that there was a car show at um Kery Mill just outside Lavinham where the magazine’s printed. Yeah it’s a lovely place and there was a little so that was the first show. That’s probably where I saw the photos actually. Yeah that was the first show I did and and the reception I got to that was fantastic. Then I did it Felix Dan and from there on done a whole bunch of local shows done the locals in been fantastic. But the nice thing about this little car is I’ve managed to mix it up and I’ve done as well as car shows I’ve done a lot of vintage bicycle shows retro bike events. So I went to the Cotswwell’s retro ride which is a celebration of vintage cycling which is held at Prescott Hill Climb. So they start and finish there. Cotswwell’s such a beautiful area. So I went along there and led that ride and the reception from the cycling guys was incredible. It was wonderful. They appreciated the detail of the the races. But that was on the Saturday and then on the Sunday just down the road the Cotswwell’s Alpha Day, right? So I took the opportunity to nip to there. So that was my first Alpha show that I’d ever been to. And I drove along there and the guys there would I think genuinely just shocked because no one had seen that sort of car there anywhere. And there wasn’t too many older alphas there. I think there was probably only two or three of us. And the reception I got there was amazing. And when and it does it brings three kind of threads together. I mean, not everybody who listens to the podcast will know this, but before I got involved in the magazine, I was a cycling photographer. So, I’ve got a cycling background as well. And there’s lots of people who are into cycling who because of Campola and Bienki and Konago and all of those things are kind of italophiles as well. And there’s lots of alpha drivers who are also Italophiles. So, you bring all of that together in a an alpha with bikes on the roof that are Italian. And yeah, you know, I mean, you know what? This is this is one of the things that I I think you know you can go on about how the press decides to pit everyone against each other and and all the rest of that but putting all that to one side I know from the world that I’m in without any exception everybody that’s into classic bikes and vintage bikes are also into something else. Nobody’s just very people are just bike riders they’ll be into classic cars or race cars or something like that. If you like mechanical things, you like mechanical things when and if you race bikes, you you like speed. So you like you like that whole atmosphere and nobody starts out being a car mechanic really. You start off by taking things apart. You start off by taking your bicycle apart or your washing machine or building a go-kart. That’s how you learn what you do. So everyone’s got these fond memories which really come together nicely. But I was so grateful to the the guys at the Alpha um show at the Cotswwells because they were so friendly. all came up and had a chat. I just turned up by myself. So, first ever alpha show and the guys were wonderful and they gave me classic car of the show. So, it was just such a pat on the back cuz it that was it literally its first kind of show out and I was so chuffed. That was on the Sunday. And then on the Monday, I went down to Bath to the offices of the Global Cycling Network, GCN, who create lots of online content. Um, they’re a big YouTube channel. And they did a a video of the car um or produced a film on YouTube, but you can find it on there, which was fantastic because that was from the cycling perspective. But all of the comments, I mean, thousands of comments on that video. It’s had I don’t know 60 70,000 views on there and all of the comments pretty much go along the same lines. Vintage bikes, vintage cars. Alfa Romeo, what’s not to like? Love the Alfa Romeo. The Alpha, it’s just that shared passion is really good. So, it’s been fantastic. Done a few other bike events, done a few other car events, did the National Alpha Day, had great fun driving around there. I had got this kind of hope that I was going to end up going to Italy this year. that wasn’t going to happen cuz I realized that the suspension did need doing even though I put it off. So that’s the PL plan for this winter. But as a consolation, I thought I’d take it to Zanfort. So the sprint the sprint track at Bista Heritage Ba Motion as it is now wasn’t enough for you. No, Zanfort was was great. So where we I am in in Suffukk, it’s literally a 30-minute drive to Haritch and Harage to Hook Holland crossing. So actually it was a really easy decision just 30 minute drive in the evening to Haritch on the overnight ferry and it I think it was an hour’s drive to Zanfort. So it was actually closer to me than Bistister really. Well, apart from the 8 hours on the ferry in the middle, you can just have a have a beer and go to sleep on that bit. That’s quite nice. Then at Zanfort, absolutely dyn I I stopped once just outside Zanfort to pop the bikes on the um roof rack cuz the great thing I didn’t know was was going to be true. Had no idea how big the boots are on a 105 Gulia. They’re fantastic. I can actually get It’s a mafia car. So, there’s got to be enough room for a body. You can get you could get two bodies in there cuz I can get both of the bikes off the roof in the boot with the wheels. It’s incredible. So, people can’t believe it cuz you open the boot and pull two bicycles out. The the series one spider is the same. You open the boot and you It’s um I I never knew that was going to be the case. It’s just so practical. It’s brilliant. But when I just outside Zanfor, I stopped to put the bikes on the and then immediately got collared by about four cyclists who were riding by who wanted to know everything about the car. And eventually I had to just go, “Guys, I need to go cuz I’m I’m like supposed to be going to this show.” Then got stopped again just at the gates by some people who wanted to take pictures before we’d got in. And then we got in and had a great time there. The reception was fantastic. Another chap who’s in Belgium who’s got a 105 who’s also into cycling but had never put bikes on his car had seen that I was going so he put his couple of bikes on his car and we parked them up next to each other. Just friend. But this is the nice thing. Instant friends, instant connection, shared interests, shared passions. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? It’s all about just being able to just go somewhere unfamiliar, but have something familiar to share and talk about and people that you’ve never met before in your life and you can just have that conversation and interesting time. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? It’s fantastic. So, met up with him and then I thought, I wonder if I’m allowed on the track and I went and asked him the thing. I said, “No, not the fast laps. I just they do a like a a parent and child one.” And I’ve got my daughter with me. I mean, she’s 25, but she’s still my daughter. So, I said, um, I said, “Could you parent and child parking spaces at the super?” And I said, “Could we do this um this parent and child lap?” And they sort of looked and I said they said, “Yeah, that’s no problem at all.” I said, “What about the bikes on the on the back? Is that is that all right?” And he just sort of looked and he just said, “Well,” he says, “Did you drive here with them on?” And I said, “Well, half the way.” Yeah. And he said, “Well, did they fall off?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “Well, that’s all right, then.” And that’s Dutch health and safety. That’s fantastic. So, um, yeah, the marshals all looked a bit confused and didn’t quite know what was going on. But, um, I’m reliably informed that I’ve got the only Julia 105 that’s been round a Formula 1 circuit with bicycles on the rig. Yeah, I’m sure that’s true. So, I’ll take that. But all in all, you the shows have been fantastic. We’ve, you know, I’ve done far more than I expected to do and the reception has been incredible and I love the Alfa Romeo scene. I love how welcoming all the people are. I’ve loved chatting to people about the cars and um yeah, now I’ve got to rebuild the suspension this winter and maybe do a few little tweaks and maybe some surprises to make it look a little bit different next year cuz I think I’ve got to kind of Yeah, it it deserves like a little a little twist to make it look um a bit different again. But next year the hope is Italy. So you said I think 4 and a half th000 km in it this year. Yeah. I know it’s crazy. Is the plan for that to maybe come down a bit but maybe a couple of longer trips rather than lots of maybe maybe. Yeah. I mean I can’t Yeah. It’s nuts really cuz um James who built the engine said to me, “Yeah, pop it back when you’ve done like 300k or something and we’ll we’ll adjust it all up.” And that and um I saw him at a show and he said, “How far you been?” I said, “Well, I’m talking about 2,000 km now.” He’s like, “Yeah, that’ll be worn in then.” So, I need to get it over there to get get it adjusted up because um that’s quite a lot of mileage really. But how good is that? How much That’s good fun, isn’t it? Oh, we talked about the the car shows, but you have done a few fairly significant cycling events as well. Tour of Britain. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, Tour of Britain. They asked us to go and um be a part of the media launch for the tour of Britain that came through Suffukk. So, that was good fun. A retro festival, as I say, in the Cotswwell. Another one up in near Doncaster that was a fair old track as well. That was the Tom Simpson memorial ride. So Tom Simpson was a famous British cyclist who died halfway up Mont Vonau during the tour to France. And there’s a ride every year that remembers Tom. He was say one of our best ever um cyclists. But he had already signed for and was due to switch teams from Peugeot who he was riding for. and he had signed to ride with Felicia Mandi for the Salvani team in 1966. That was his team that he’d already signed for and was due to to ride with anyway that team. So again, what a fantastic little link up that I wasn’t expecting but just came about and there was a chat there with a 404 team car and a um Peugeot 504 and a couple of others. So again, another little So I kind of got there. There’s a little group of us with team cars. There’s the people who into retro bikes. There’s people into the cars. It’s been really nice to have so many combined interests to to have a bit of fun with and then just telling the public about them cuz they’re just so interested. You laugh when you saw the car. You see I’ve got little cycling figures on the dashboard and stuff like that. The kids love that. I mean that’s just I actually quite like that because the it draws the the interest of the public. They they kind of see these little little bits and pieces and oh look at the little bikes on the dashboard and then they sort of back off and say actually why are they there? and what is this? And then they want to hear what it’s all about. And you tell them and show them a couple of the old pictures. I’ve got some old pictures in the car of of what of the car being used. And it really sparks an interest. I like that. I kind of like that little bit of just showing people what it’s all about, which is very different to my old car, which was just a concourse kind of as it would have come out of the factory kind of no story. It was just like, well, there you go. That’s that’s the car. I I like I’ve worked out that I like stuff with a story, stuff with a bit of a bit going on. There’s a great tradition in the magazine. We um pretty much every time we have an editorial meeting about what’s going to be in the next issue, it’s kind of what’s this issues Italian road trip. So, if you do make the Italian road trip next year, I think that’s a story we definitely want to be amazing. Well, I’d love I want to do it and it would be lovely to do it with some other people. Maybe maybe one or two two of us or few of us will get together because this is the other nice thanks to social media these days. The cars got an incredible following already in Italy and in the Netherlands and in America. I had to post a t-shirt to someone in America who wanted to uh represent Alphabeti and apologies for the name. Alphabeti just came. I needed a name in a hurry for social media and yeah, Alphabeti spaghetti was the first thing that came to mind and it kind of just stuck. So Alphabeti kind of Alphabet 66 was was what it was called. One of the biggest fans I’ve got at the moment in Italy is Giovani Salvani of the Salvani team. So, of the Salvani factory and he runs a um a Facebook page as a tribute to the Salvani team and uh he’s been very gracious and complimentary about the car and he’s he’d love to see it over there. I know we’ve got lots of people who have invited us to events in Italy. I’ve got an open invitation to go and stay in a hotel on the Stelvio um to go and do the Stelvio Pass where there’s um lots of cycling events as well and some very big cycling festivals called Leroa and and other ones which I hopefully combine with a trip to the Alpha Romeo Museum and a few other trips. So I think there is there’s a Bianke Museum as well. Yeah, there is. And I think if we can do a a little Well, it won’t be a little road trip, will it? It’s going to be a big road trip. It’s going to be a big road trip, but I think that’s definitely got to be on the cards. The car’s got to go. This car got to go to Italy and and it’s a bit of a personal pilgrimage as well, a separate story, but my father had quite an interesting life. He was born deaf and dumb and he was one of the first people in the UK or the first deaf people in the UK to pass the full UK driving license. So, he passed it with an interpreter sat in the car with him. Um, that would have been in the 60s and it made national newspaper. I’ve got a press clipping of him in I think it was the Daily Mirror or something as as you know deaf man passed his driving test and everyone was amazed by this and he passed his driving test and two weeks later he gathered up three of his deaf friends and they drove their Ford Anglia to um on the ferry to France put it on the the auto train what’s it called or the motor rail here motor rail motor rail put it on the motor rail it took them all the way down to Milan, I think it was, and they did a tour of Italy 2 weeks after he’d passed his test. Four deaf guys who obviously couldn’t speak a word of Italian. They could couldn’t really make themselves understood in English and and you know, back in those days. Um, but I’ve got some wonderful photographs of dad doing that, going around um Pisa, Milan, all the main um cities all around Rome. To be able to follow some of that would be amazing. I have got one picture of him where they couldn’t find a campsite to stay. They couldn’t find anywhere to stay. So, they ended up pitching a tent in the middle of a roundabout and uh the police came to try and work out what they were doing. Couldn’t make themselves understood. Um I think the police worked out very quickly that four deaf teenage or deaf guys from the UK were far too much trouble to bother with and ended up just having um something to eat with them and then left them to it and they spent the night camped on a roundabout in the middle of Italy. So to be able to kind of honor that a little bit and the honor of the spirit of that and take the car down to Italy, I think has got to be got to be on the plans, hasn’t it? Really, I can’t think of a better way to end. Brilliant. Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure, guy. It’s really nice to see you. Well, that’s it for this episode. We’ll be back in 4 weeks time on Sunday the 2nd of November. We’ll have a preview of the following week’s classic motor show at the NEC, plus something which is currently top secret, but which we’ll announce over the next couple of weeks. Episode 114 will be available to download from 1:30 p.m. from the club’s website, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Podbean, Podcast Addict, and everywhere else good podcasts are found. Episode 115, which drops on the 7th of December, will be another in our series of No Such Thing as a Breera Quadrifoglio. And we’d love to hear from you if you have an obscure fact for us to research and share on the show. Send your ideas to me at editor arocyenuk.com by the 2nd of November. Until then, stay safe. [Music]