This Reborn Alfa Romeo Lives To Sing In Tunnels

Story and photography by Héctor Álvarez

My first words after ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ were ‘car’ and ‘tractor’. I was always obsessed, and I always drew cars at school—finally, I went to Italy to study car design in Torino, and later for my automotive design Masters in Coventry.

I started to work, designing an electric car, and with that money bought an iconic Alfa Romeo GTAm. I drive it to every kind of meeting, and I always imagine how would be a beautiful video in the streets of Madrid at night by Petrolicious…

In the middle of the research for my first enthusiast car, I saw a GTAm advertised in Spain for 30000 euros, I couldn’t believe it. So I went to see it. It was a car of an Alfa Romeo collector who died a few years ago. He a had an SZ Zagato, two Giulietta Spyders, Brera, and the GTAM. His daughter was selling this one, the favorite of the father, and she was going to keep the SZ, because of the value.

This ‘GTAm Evocazione’ was, at the beginning, an 1740 GTV MK1 (with the very rare taillights), white with Bordeaux Red seats, and was abandoned in the frontier between France and Spain. A farmer bought it, put a boat motor into it, and later abandoned it in a barn. The last owner bought it and restore it. He did many rallies, like the Vienna-Marrakech, and finally he transformed it in a GTAm. The car wasn’t perfect, maybe I paid more than the real value…but who cares. I just rebuilt the motor and tune it, and got two vintage racing seats.

I’ve always wanted a race car for the street, a care very pure, with a great sound, without modern controls, with a roll cage…something to make car enthusiasts happy when they see it. I love to drive it at night, when the biggest and most famous streets of Madrid are empty and quiet. Of course, I love to drive it on the way to my family house in the mountains.

But most of all, I love the sound. I love to enter a tunnel and rev it—the best sensation to have.