Junkyard Find: 1981 Alfa Romeo Spider

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin
junkyard find 1981 alfa romeo spider

Prices for (non- 164) Alfa Romeos have been getting somewhat crazy in recent years, but it’s still possible to get a restorable 1970s or 1980s Spider for non-insane bucks. The proof of this is that rougher examples still show up now and then at the self-service wrecking yards I frequent. In this series so far, we’ve seen this ’74, this ’78, and now today’s ’81.

The interior is ugly, but it doesn’t show the atomic-testing-grade obliteration that Colorado convertibles get when left outside for years with no top.

Alfa Spiders love to rust, even in single-digit-humidity Colorado.

Not worth restoring, but a good parts car.

Its final parking place is next to a Mazda RX-7.






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  • Cc-rider Cc-rider on Jul 02, 2014

    The 1981 cars had the worst power of the Spica injection. The 1982 got Bosch injection that carried over for a number of years. I love the shape of the 91-94 spiders but dislike the dash changes that went along with the re-skin. The dual binnacle dash like in this one are super cool.

  • -Nate -Nate on Jul 02, 2014

    Kinda sad IMO ; I'm no Alfa lover but I grew up thinking they were special in a very good way . Oddly these from the late 1960's through mid 1970's are perennials in the So. Cal. self - service junkyards , rust & dent free , just sun baked In the first few years of the ' Charity Car Auction ' craze (when YOU got to write in the donated vehicles $ value) there were scads and scads of these from inside storage , they ran O.K. but rarely fetched over $125 at the auctions . Not worth the cosmetics needed I guess . -Nate

  • ToolGuy 38:25 to 45:40 -- Let's all wait around for the stupid ugly helicopter. 😉The wheels and tires are cool, as in a) carbon fiber is a structural element not decoration and b) they have some sidewall.Also like the automatic fuel adjustment (gasoline vs. ethanol).(Anyone know why it's more powerful on E85? Huh? Huh?)
  • Ja-GTI So, seems like you have to own a house before you can own a BEV.
  • Kwik_Shift Good thing for fossil fuels to keep the EVs going.
  • Carlson Fan Meh, never cared for this car because I was never a big fan of the Gen 1 Camaro. The Gen 1 Firebird looked better inside and out and you could get it with the 400.The Gen 2 for my eyes was peak Camaro as far as styling w/those sexy split bumpers! They should have modeled the 6th Gen after that.
  • ToolGuy From the listing: "Oil changes every April & October (full-synth), during which I also swap out A/S (not the stock summer MPS3s) and Blizzak winter tires on steelies, rotating front/back."• While ToolGuy applauds the use of full synthetic motor oil,• ToolGuy absolutely abhors the waste inherent in changing out a perfectly good motor oil every 6 months.The Mobil 1 Extended Performance High Mileage I run in our family fleet has a change interval of 20,000 miles. (Do I go 20,000 miles before changing it? No.) But this 2014 Focus has presumably had something like 16 oil changes in 36K miles, which works out to a 2,250 mile average change interval. Complete waste of time, money and perfectly good natural gas which could have gone to a higher and better use.Mobil 1 also says their oil miraculously expires at 1 year, and ToolGuy has questions. Is that one year in the bottle? One year in the vehicle? (Have I gone longer than a year in some of our vehicles? Yes, I have. Did I also add Lucas Oil 10131 Pure Synthetic Oil Stabilizer during that time, in case you are concerned about the additive package losing efficacy? Yes, I might have -- as far as you know.)TL;DR: I aim for annual oil changes and sometimes miss that 'deadline' by a few months; 12,000 miles between oil changes bothers me not at all, if you are using a quality synthetic which you should be anyway.
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