Manufactured on May 19, 1965
Delivered to Frankfurt Germany on October 26, 1965
Original qwner unknown at this time
Bought in Tucson,Arizona October 8, 1970, Sun-West Porche-Audi, 4155 Speedway Blvd., Tucson, AZ. I put down $10 and financed the rest for 2 years!!! The car was 4 years old.
Factory hard top #13814
This is my one and only Alfa, I bought this car in 1970 when I was 21 years old. I was in the Air Force and stationed at Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, AZ. When driving down one of the main streets of the city one day, I saw this bright yellow car in a Porsche dealership in the front row, shining in the desert sun and smiling at me as I drove by. I immediately remembered my first and only experience with such a car. It was Mario Staccone, an Italian-born Alfa mechanic who had only been in the US a short time, who "turned me on" to Alfa. Mario worked at the Alfa-Fiat dealer in town, "Carlo Noce's Foreign Cars". When I was around 15, surely before I had a driver's license, I happened to be hanging around the garage behind the dealership, talking to Mario. He asked me if I would take this car down the block and get some gas in it. Being a 15 year old, I said YOU BET! That car was an Alfa Spider, an early '60's car. I didn't know what I was driving, but I knew I liked it. So when this bright yellow Alfa smiled at me that day in Tucson, I pulled into the lot and took it for a test drive. I still remember the powerful lunge forward after shifting from 2nd gear to third, at over 7000 RPM. I was sold right then and there! I paid $1395 plus tax for the car. Not long after I bought the car, I made a console for it that comes from the underside of the dash to the transmission hump, behind the shifter. I admired that type of flat console as found in MGB's of the '60's. In the console I mounted the switches which are normally under the dash, added a couple extra so I had a nice row of them at the top, also I mounted an aircraft 7-day clock (after all, I was in the Air Force, this one came out of a C-130) and an amp gauge to make the symmetry. I finished the console in crinkle paint to match the dash. About a week after I bought the car, the gearbox froze in third gear, I could not even move it with my foot. I knew absolutely nothing about Alfa mechanicals at the time. Luckily for me, I had a 30 day warranty, they re-built the gearbox for free! In 1971,I unfortunately rear-ended a Pontiac and later that year had a serious engine fire, I had to rebuild the entire front end and then painted the car red-orange. In 1972, upon my discharge from the Air Force, my parrot Max and I drove from Tucson to New York to attend college, 2500 miles, I averaged 31 MPG with the car FULLY loaded. While in college at Syracuse, I had to drive it for 3 months without a starter. Couldn't afford the $25 for a new solenoid so I just parked it on hills, which Syracuse has many of! I have driven the car many miles over the years, but it had to sit outside most of the last 27 years and sat idle for about 10 years while I was building a house, a family and a career. Now it sits in the garage, with a newly acquired PininFarina hardtop (#13814), and a nearly completed floor/frame structure. The original drive gear is still in the car and running, without smoke. I rebuilt the engine after the fire destroyed the entire front end in 1971 and again "refreshed" things in 1976.