Bewitched

This stunning right-hand drive 1963 Giulia Spider cast such a powerful spell over its owner that he had it restored to Ferrari standards. We tell the story of a 2000-hour, two-year job.

- Peter Nunn

Two thousand hours. Michelangelo might well have spent less time painting the Sistine Chapel. But that’s how much effort and love has been invested in the restoration of this stunning 1963 Alfa Romeo Giulia 1600 Spider.

If you think 2000 hours’ worth of work is a tad excessive for an Alfa Giulia, you may well be right. But sometimes passion simply takes over and proportionality goes completely out of the window.

To say that this Giulia underwent a complete, ground-up restoration to return it to factory-spec, concours conditions doesn’t even begin to tell the story of this remarkable car. As we will discover, the restoration was far from conventional. Over time, it became a total, whatever-it-takes rebuild by a company more associated with concours-winning Ferraris. Hardly surprisingly, the restoration costs far exceed the Alfa’s actual worth.

For both the owner/collector, James Needham, and the Ferrari specialist that rebuilt that car (Barkaways of Tonbridge), the project took on a life of its own and became a painstaking labour of love, taking a good two years to complete.

The car’s uniqueness is helped by the fact it happens to be a rare, original right-hand drive 1963 model (when the bulk of cars Alfa built in that period were naturally LHD). As you can see, the end result is spectacular, with authenticity the driving inspiration behind the rebuild. Try imagining driving a brand new Giulia Spider off the line at Alfa’s Portello works in Milan in 1963. This must be as close as it gets.

Alfa Romeo has built many seductive open-top sports cars throughout its long and illustrious history. The Giulia 1600 Spider ranks as one of the most desirable of all, and certainly helped to maintain Alfa’a reputation as a prestige sporting marque in the 1960s.