‘World’s Fastest’ Alfa Romeo Spider Is Up For Sale

Most of us are familiar with the Alfaholics name. The family-run UK outfit is best known for its stunning restomods based around Alfa Romeo’s 1960s Giulia coupe.

But as these pictures show, the Alfaholics recipe works just as well on the little Giulia-based Alfa Spider made famous by its appearance in the 1967 Dustin Hoffman movie, The Graduate.

This one, which is about to go live on the Collecting Cars auction site, started life as a 1977 Series 2 Spider, whose most obvious point of differentiation to the earlier Duetto cars introduced a decade previously is a slash-cut Kamm tail.

But beyond the overall body shape, there’s not much of the original left now. Starting in 2011 the car underwent a massive program of upgrades that has turned it into an alternative to an Alfaholics Giulia GTA-290 for people who want to feel the sun on their, er, helmet while they pound round a track.

Specifically one man, a keen trackdayer who commissioned Alfaholics to build him a seriously stiff Spider, but one with no visible roll cage, to use on circuit days. So the AH team fabricated a special cage hidden below the waistline, and then custom-built a lower floor pan to enable the customer’s preferred (though not ours) bucket seats to fit correctly.

Other modifications include a 216 hp four-cylinder Twinspark engine running on throttle bodies and mated to a six-speed sequential transmission and a limited-slip differential.

And to make sure it stops and steers as well as it goes, there’s a full Alfaholics GTA-R adjustable suspension package and a big brake kit including six-pot front calipers. Alfaholics claims it’s the world’s fastest Spider, and while it’s possible the odd modified Spider out there with a crazy engine transplant might beat it in a straight line, you can be fairly sure that none will go faster around a circuit.

It’s a great fusion of old and new, and while not everyone will love the choice of modern seats, and or agree with the decision to switch the twin-cowl dash gauge cluster for a digital screen, it’s hard not to love the pearl-white finished that comes from Alfa’s 147 hatch of the early 2000s.

We’ve no idea what it will fetch at auction, and the same car is advertised on Alfaholics’ website with no price. But it does say it would cost around £150,000 ($205,000) to replicate.