Sport Sedan interiors (and other choices)

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

Christopher Boles asks "Will a Milano interior fit?" his Sport Sedan.

I haven't done it, but have seen a few Sport Sedans with Milano seats, looking
like a straight drop-in and the owners saying that it was indeed so. The
carpets also should fit (I think) but the door panels, rear parcel shelf and
molded headliner would almost certainly not without some careful fudging.

Years ago Peter Krause had a late (semi-Recaro-style) GTV 6 driver's seat in
his autocross-champion first-series Alfetta Berlina (currently Welty's track
car), but Pat Braden said that, on his experience (having tried it)
second-series Alfetta Berlina (i.e., "Sport Sedan") seats would not swap with
first-series Alfetta Berlina seats due to differences in the floor pans. So
YMMV but I will bet Milano seats are an easy straight drop-in for a Sport
Sedan.

A second straight drop-in Sport Sedan switch is first-series GTV-6 suspension,
hubs, brakes and wheels complete with your cafeteria choice of springs, shocks
and roll-bars and tires from the GTV-6 aftermarket options list.

A couple of people have recently been discussing swapping GTV 6 engines into
Sport Sedans. I have two very solid Sport Sedan hulls and an ultra-low mileage
GTV- 6 (bought wrecked at 1,400 miles) and gave the V6- Sport Sedan merger
serious thought but decided against it, thinking that the best of all worlds
would be a 75 Twin-Spark engine in a Sport Sedan, with the reasonably close
second an optimized/Ingramized Spica engine, third choice a Bosch four
transplant (which list-lurker Larry Ogle has) and a 75 1.8 Turbo a strong
contender. (Carbureted four not an option where I live). Any of the injected
fours would give one an inspectionable sleeper with a steel timing chain and
the rest of the classic engine, the relative simplicity and weight reduction
of a no-power-assists car, and the performance and handling of one of the
choicer European 75s or 90s, which I wouldn't sneeze at. The V6 alternative
would probably turn into a power-steered and otherwise optioned Milano
equivalent with the less idiosyncratic Alfetta aesthetics as the only
deviation from an off-the-shelf Milano, and that seems hardly worth the effort
- but again, YMMV.

Stock or altered, the second-series ("Sport Sedan") Alfetta Berlinas seem to
me to be an extremely nice car which in the long run may take a proper place
alongside the Berlinas and Giulia Supers as choice daily-driver classics after
the 164s and Milanos have finished loosing their luster, but that is at best a
minority opinion. Enjoy yours,

John H.
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