Mito (Type 955) 2008 - Current

Welcome to my 2012 Etna Black Mito QV which I purchased from Alfa Aid in Maidenhead back in February 2019, it was a very fine example with a couple of bonus factory upgrades namely the stunning Sabelt carbon fibre seats & the Bose speaker/sub package & the car had clearly been very well looked after with full service history & low mileage.

This was to be my second Alfa having previously owned a 156 1.6 TS with Momo leather & the large rear spoiler, the 156 gave me a somewhat shakey introduction into the world of Alfa ownership due to ongoing & expensive mechanical issues so we eventually parted ways but I'd got the bug & always knew I'd own another.

So, back to the Mito, when I purchased the car I was absolutely over the moon with it & promised myself I would keep it as original as possible but then soon after I joined the Mito Register FB group (swiftly followed by joining AROC) & I was blown away by some of the creative modifications that fellow owners were doing to their cars & I had been totally inspired.

What follows is a list of my modifications & some pics & descriptions of some of my favourites, hope you enjoy.

Wanting to lower the car I was faced with two options, replace the entire suspension unit all round with coilovers & lose the adaptive dampers which actually work extremely well or just fit lowering springs & keep the adaptive dampers, I opted for the latter & after much research I purchased the Eibach Pro 30mm lowering Kit & never looked back, they work excellently with the dampers & with such a subtle but satisfying drop the ride isn't compromised in the slightest.

Also by this point I had the rear windows tinted & replaced the bee sting areal for a shark fin.

Originally the car came with the brushed aluminium trims & like Marmite you either love it or you hate it & I wasn't a fan so I set about painting them & the colour I chose was 'Dark Bavarian Anthracite' which complemented the Etna Black & it was to become an ongoing theme eventually.

I really liked the honeycomb grille found on the newer facelift Mito but fitting one to my car would require either a whole new facelift bumper or a lot of butchering of the existing bumper so I had a go at modifying a spare grille & of course painted the trims & also the lower grille fog light trims.

Rumour had it that if you wanted the holy grail of exhaust systems for your Alfa then it had to be a Wizard so I got in touch with Laurence at Autolusso in Bournemouth & the wheels were in motion, it took some time as they are made to order but to an exquisite finish so well worth the wait. A number of weeks later I received the call to make my way down for fitting & I was buzzing with excitement & the plan for the day was to have the cat modified to have a new 2.5" exit flange welded in place of the original 2.25" (this would make the entire system 2.5" throughout, up from the stock 2.25"), fit the freshly fabricated Wizard & then have a performance remap installed to align everything & get the most out of the car as it sat.

Finally arrived in sunny Bournemouth having driven down from Bristol (some 80 miles away) & was greated by Laurence who said to leave it with them for the day & handed me the keys to his 156 GTA sportwagon to get about in...... what a result! Come late afternoon it was a bitter sweet feeling as my time in the GTA was coming to an end but I couldn't wait for the long drive home to see how different the car drove & sounded & boy it didn't disappoint, firstly the sound is perfection, quiet when just teasing the throttle but really throaty when putting your foot down with the occasional pop on aggressive gear changes. The cars performance had also improved dramatically with the remap & in Dynamic mode it was a ball, throttle response & exceleration is now next level, to this day whenever I take a new passenger out they have a hard time believing it's only a 1.4L engine.

The wheels I replaced during covid lockdown & it was an absolute nightmare trying to get what I wanted but eventually found a supplier who had a new set of Bola FLB's. I wanted to go down in size from the 18" QV alloys to 17" to get a bit more sidewall on tyres for extra cornering grip, the 18"s had a tendency to understeer a little bit & these are mega lightweight from their flowforged range so significantly reduced the unsprung weight on the car but were only available in silver due to supply issues with the lockdown so I had them powder coated metalic anthracite to match the colour scheme of the car. I married them up with Mitchelin PS4's at the time but the fronts have now been replaced with PS5's with rears to follow soon.

The wheels are spaced out with 16mm Sparco hubcentric spacers & I also upgraded the discs to the Brembo Extras.

More weight saving (28.7kg with the Bola wheels) by getting rid of the rear seats that never got used, also very handy for lugging large 'stuff' around as the cargo net & bar (non structural) slot in/out in seconds.

This was another covid lockdown project that came about because I just couldn't get the DNA K-brace I really wanted, they had temporarily shut down their manufacturing & had no idea when it would be operational again so I bought myself an arc welder from Screwfix & plenty of steel plate & tube to practice on & shut myself in the garage learning how to weld from YouTube videos & the like.

Many weeks later & after a trip to the eye hospital to have a metal shard gouged out from my eyeball I had learnt two things, how to do passable welding & to always wear fully enclosed safety goggles when cutting metal.

Anyway the result of my hard lesson was I had a K-brace fitted & the rear end of the car felt much more planted on long fast corners.

In no particular order here are a few things I've done under the bonnet:

• Intercooler replaced with a much larger Airtec intercooler.
• Air filter & box replaced with a K&N57s fully enclosed cone filter.
• Forced cold air intake thanks to Elliot Mitchell & his remarkable 3D printing skills, acheived via a funnel (EM) in place of the fog light on the front bumper attached to a RevoTec silicone hose to the airbox intake via an oval to round 90 degree adaptor (EM), a completely enclosed feed avoiding any potential heat soak.
• TBF Performance silicone intake.
• TBF Performance coolant hoses.
• Forge turbo blanket.
• Mishimoto carbon oil catch can.
• Short shifter from Totally Alfa.
• Powerflex exhaust mounts, upper & lower engine mount inserts & gearbox mount insert.
• DPMD alloy intercooler & boost pipework beautifully crafted by Davie Peddie.

Whilst the front bumper was off the car again to fit the DPMD pipework I thought I'd cut & trim some vents into it, mainly because I just can't leave things alone but it was an idea I'd been toying with for some time & the opportunity presented itself.

This is purely a cosmetic upgrade, I'm not daft enough to think I'm going to get another 20bhp from any consequential cooling.

Starting to feel a bit more adventurous now so I decided to fabricate my own rear spoiler extension & front splitter from some 3mm dark grey transparent perspex. Both started as cardboard templates to get the right shape & then once happy I cut the sheet with a jigsaw (perspex cutting blade so as not to shatter it), smoothed all the edges with sand paper & very fine grades of wet & dry, heated them up with a heat gun until flexible enough to take the curves of the car & then fixed into position with TigerSeal & a few small countersunk self tappers.

They're both quite subtle (which I like) but noticable & of course unique.

Even with the Eibach lowering springs it always appeared the the rear of the car sat higher up than the front so I purchased these AutoPerforma sideskirts from a small company in Holland which are slightly deeper at the rear giving a much more consistant gap between the underside of the car & the road & they have a lovely profile to them that follows the existing lines perfectly giving that oem+ look. They were quite tricky to fit as there's very little bonding surface at the top edge but I got there in the end with some tips from the very helpful guy who runs the AutoPerfoma company & I had some paint made up by a local company who matched the Etna Black brilliantly (not the best picture to show the paint off but hey). I'm very pleased with finished look.

I've always wanted a Cadamuro diffuser for the rear of the car, more so after fitting the sideskirts to get that more consistant ground clearance gap all the way around the car but the problem was that the particular one I wanted was geared up to fit a two sided exhaust system & I didn't want to leave one side looking like it was missing some pipes so I bought one anyway & using various filling methods (plastic plate, expanding foam, fibre glass & filler) modified it to look as if it was built to fit my Wizard exhaust.

Before fitting it I painted it Matt Black (I like the contrast with the Etna Black) & added a little Tricolore detail.

In no particular order here are a few things I've done to the interior:

• Pioneer touch screen.
• Alfa logo puddle lights.
• LED cabin lights.
• Mercedes vents.
• Nero S carbon gear knob.
• Sabelt seatbelt pads.
• Fire extinguisher.
• Facelift steering wheel with red stitching & perferated thumb pads, GTAm style badge & 3k carbon bottom detail.
• Rear seat delete.
• K-brace.
• Alcantara finish to interior door handles & centre console.