Too much nostalgia is very seldom a good thing. That being said, it’s all too easy to be won over by what MST continues to produce. You may well have seen the Mk1 Sports already, a freshly built celebration of perhaps the most loved of the old fast Fords. Using new methods to reimagine the old school (and now at a slightly more accessible price as well), the appeal is plain to see.
Especially as Fords mean so much to so many. If there wasn’t one in the family, friends would have had one. If you couldn’t watch them race and rally live, they would be in magazines. And in those circuit images, you could guarantee a racing Escort would be going wheel to wheel with an Alfa GTV. Similarly sized, similarly powered road cars made for perfect motorsport adversaries, and many a titanic touring car tussle was waged between Alfa and Ford-badged two-doors. Now, with the first Mk1 Sports complete and this GTV recently listed in the classifieds, having them both on the homepage was irresistible. The good old days don’t half look great sometimes.
While the 105 and 115 Series of Alfa Romeo coupes have always been notable classics, they’ve undoubtedly gained an extra significance in recent years thanks to Alfaholics ground-up rebuilds. When they’re of sufficient quality for Gordon Murray to commission, there’s inevitably going to be a lot of interest. People who never really knew much of Autodelta, Junior Zs and GT Veloces are having their algorithms serve up these glorious carbon-clad coupes, faster and wilder than ever could have been conceived back in the day. So there’s a renewed interest in old Alfas.
This one isn’t the full GTA-R, but then that also means it doesn’t cost hundreds of thousands and there isn’t a waiting list of several years. This GTV does have some recently fitted Alfaholics goodies, though, including exhaust and wheels, plus a big brake conversion. An Ian Ellis Twin Spark, complete with forged pistons and rods, racy cams and a ported head, should bring 190hp to the party. Or just 10hp more than the MST. When new cars are so overweight and overcomplicated, both sound like perfect B-road blasters.
Importantly, plenty of the modifications for this Alfa have been done recently, so the next owner can properly appreciate the benefit. So often classic car adverts will speak of restorative work, only for it to have taken place 20 years ago. This Alfa, on the other hand, has had tens of thousands spent just this decade. It’s a dream scenario, really, a car that ‘isn’t a concourse show pony’ but which does have ‘some very tasty mechanical upgrades… so it can be used and enjoyed by real enthusiasts for a fraction of the cost of a full Alfaholics build.’ Persuasive, right? Enjoy as is, with the money spent on the oily bits, or lavish some money on it to make a proper show stopper. Because if this is how good Le Mans Blue and tan looks now, imagine what it could be…
With a mighty service file and Alfa Owners Club correspondence to accompany it, this appears a real gem of a classic GTV. Obviously this isn’t quite the blank canvas that commissioning something new from MST would be, but this also isn’t a perfectly preserved, standard example. So as the previous owner did, you’d be free to improve and tinker as desired. Perhaps it’s time to take another look at the Alfaholics website to see what comes next…
1 / 4
![](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 4 3"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
![](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="https://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 1 1"%3E%3C/svg%3E)