On the rare occasions when Shed has been struggling to find a decent car to tell you about, he has never really been concerned because he knew that there would be an old Alfa lying around somewhere to come to his rescue. 147s, 155s, 156s, 164s, GTVs, 166s, OK not so much 166s, but decent examples of all the others were always out there tempting buyers with £1,500 and sometimes considerably less to spend.
Where are all the cheap Alfas now though? Comb the classifieds and you’ll do well to find any models mentioned above that aren’t six-pot GTAs at five-figure prices. Even the humble 156 hasn’t put in an appearance in SOTW for over five years.
There seems to be one exception to this slightly depressing shortage of throwaway Alfas and that is the GT. We had another of these JTS Blacklines in SOTW sometime in 2022. With 102,000 miles on the clock and a £1,495 price tag, it generated plenty of admiring comments. We’ll skim over the fact that it failed its next MOT in Jan ’23 with a raft of suspension, brake and tyre issues plus a side order of front subframe corrosion. To the owner’s credit, they got it through the retest but nobody bothered trying that again this January so its current fate is uncertain.
The history of this week’s Blackline looks a lot more hopeful with one previous owner bar the supplying dealer, 16 stamps in the service book, a clean MOT pass just over two months ago and nothing alarming in the years leading up to that. It’s currently standing at 88,000 miles and looks, well, good. That’s what Alfas want you to think of course but with those teledial wheels, at least one Michelin tyre and no obvious bodywork besmirchments it’s hard to find a bad angle on this car. The Carbino Black that Alfa used for the GT Blackline suits it very well.
Apparently black is still the second most popular paint for cars in the UK, ahead of white in third but behind grey in first place. Ah, what an exciting breed we are! Those three ‘colours’ constituted nearly two-thirds of all the new cars registered in 2023, with red – once favoured by many an Alfa buyer – dropping from 7.3 per cent in 2005 to 3.9 per cent in 2023. Mrs Shed’s favourite nightshirt is an ex-RSM’s ‘Hereford Boathouse’ tee in oil-stained black. Her Rayon baby doll nightie that she keeps for special occasions, ie when Bob the Binman is within binocular range, is a mixture of maroon, pink and cream, which are the UK’s three least popular car paint colours. It doesn’t add much to the story but it should give you an eyeworm at least.
Inside, our Blackline has its correct red-stiched black leather on the steering wheel and seats (sadly they’d moved on from the classic pleated style by this point), plus a pleasingly chunky gearstick topped by a chunk of aluminium. Blacklines also had Bose audio, satin silver mirror caps, door handles and lower bumper trim, chrome exhaust tips, those 18in ‘Lamborghini look’ alloy wheels, and aluminium pedals.
Performance-wise, the 165hp and 152lb ft gave you 134mph and a 0-60 of 8.7 seconds. Not exactly blistering but enough to cause some light skin irritation. Today’s VED is also lightly annoying at £415pa. Combined fuel consumption was 32.5mpg.
Before 2006, Alfa’s 2.0 petrol engines had fragile injectors and sensors which could bung up your valvegear, but by 2007 they’d sorted that out. You messed with the oil change intervals at your peril though. Them as knew their Alfas reckoned you were better off using 10W60 oil rather than the thinner manufacturer-recommended 10W40 if you wanted to minimise cam lobe wear.
Other areas of weakness to be aware of were the door handles and hinges, ABS rings and rear suspension collapses caused by rust in the cups, something Mrs Shed used to get in her bras before she switched to whalebone. We’ll leave you to enjoy the ad copy in your own time. It’s worth a read and Shed doesn’t want to spoil the ending.
Now that summer looks like it’s finally here in the UK, spring having apparently taken the year off, it’s a shame that there was never an open-top version of the GT. Bertone tried to flog the idea of a GT Cabriolet to Alfa in 2003 but they decided to go for the Brera-based, Giugiaro-designed Spider instead. If the PH gods are kind they will indulge Shed with a link to some pics. If they’re not, this whole para probably won’t appear, in which case it was a waste of Amstrad printer ink.
Blacklines cost £20 short of £20k in 2007. This one will cost you a fiver short of £2k. If that’s not cheap enough for you, here’s a GTV that’s MOT’d to November. Shed wasn’t feeling lucky about it but you might.
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