GTV Spider (Type 916) 1995 - 2004

Back in August 2018 I had been prowling online for many months, looking for a mint Alfa Romeo GTV 916 in Japan. The 24v 3.0 V6 Busso engined version, no less. It had to be a Japanese car as they're almost always rust-free and far better looked after than their European cousins. I'd got really close to securing a red GTV with beige interior, the colourway most people go for, but this unexpectedly (in the end, happily) fell through.

Then another car came on the market, with just 19,000 miles! Barely run-in. This was via a company called Goo-net Exchange (Kings Autos) a sort of Japanese agent and aggregator for all domestic sales that included export. Now this car had the beautiful Grigio Eclisse paint, with a stunning red Momo interior. Really quite flamboyant, but subtly so, if such a thing were possible?! Plus, far less predictable than the red and beige version.

So, I set about securing it and shipping it over. In my head I wanted to do a 'restomod' with subtle but smart updates - almost as though 'if it were a factory option, what might it have been'. And really bring such a low mileage example up to showroom spec. That was the plan as it rolled onto the ship 'TULANE' on October 6th 2018, from Yokohama. Due to arrive at Southampton docks just before Christmas.

However, this was the Christmas we'll all remember for different reasons, just before the global pandemic that was COVID-19 hit the world, and everything took an unexpected turn...