Classic Car Mart - Spring 2016_

192 Classic Car Mart Spring 2016

S

ome cars have made an indelible

mark on the soul of the car

enthusiast, and for me the fi rst one

to really do that was the Alfa Romeo

Alfasud. I’d always been aware of

them as a kid but it wasn’t until 1983 as a

car-mad 15 year old that my fi rst brush with

the rusty Italian occurred. We’d moved from

Somerset to Bucklebury Slade near Newbury

and the fi rst thing I did was fi nd out where the

scrapyards and garages were.

I chanced upon an old forge in Lower Bucklebury

where I found a very sorry 1975 Sud 1200 four-

door, as rotten as a carrot. Mine for 40 quid,

eight years old. But it was missing the wings and

bonnet... and where was the local Alfa dealer?

The Yellow Pages revealed that Black and White

Garage was only three miles away in Cold Ash.

The fi rst guy I spoke to there was the mustachio’d

Alan Lindsay who gave me both a 1983 Alfa model

range brochure and pointed me towards a mauve

coloured 1200 Sud four-door on a 1975 P-plate.

The clutch had gone and it had already gone

ten rounds with the welding equivalent of Mike

Tyson but the wings were good and it looked

TAILGATE

SOUTHERN

SOUL

Andrew Everett remembers the

lure of the Alfasud.

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(^100) s
OF CARS
FOR SALE
BUY A NEW
CLASSIC FOR
SPRING
Incorporating
BIG
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Vol.22 No.05
Spring 2016
'
5050
MINI COOPER
MG METRO
solid and tidy – mine for 60 quid. Everett Senior
vetoed that idea as a car to learn to drive in –
something about ‘insurance’.
But the following year, Alan – who remains
a friend after 30-odd years – gave me a job
cleaning cars and this developed into a day-
release apprenticeship at college a year later.
Alfasuds were my main passion, and one sticks
in my mind. YYN308T was a dark blue 1300Ti on
the pitch that I spent a lot of time on, turning it
from a very fl at and dejected-looking thing into a
car that you could literally shave in.
A local guy bought it and I was sad to see
it go, especially when he was trading in his
spectacularly rusty ’74 model, GPG42N.
However, a local blade bought a black ’77 Ti
and when he replaced that with a slightly newer
one, I was on it like a tramp on hot chips. Fifty
quid changed hands and RYL243R was mine.
Originally Cilento Brown (brick red), it had already
been fi tted with GRP wings, rear arch cover
panels and been painted black. It polished up
well but it was so rusty. I smoked it about with a
very approximate take on ‘road legal’ but it did
eventually expire and that was that.
“I had one fi nal hurrah in the form of a Kermit
Green 1979 1.5 Super, the one Clarkson drove
in Top Gear a few years ago”