This is a facility offered by www.Zagato-Cars.com; if your car is registered in the On-Line Register and you wish to show your car and the story behind it to other people on the Internet but do not have a homepage of yourself, please let me know and I will draw up a page for you. Please try to write the story behind it yourself so that no mistakes are made!

1300 JZ # 488

About to be released from its lock-up in Geneva

1970 Alfa Romeo 1300 GT 

Chassis# 488 out of a total of 1,108 produced Born on November 2, 1970, Milano, Italy, baptized on November 27, 1970 in Messina, Sicily, Italy According to the factory records, 1800448 was completed on November 2, 1970 at the Terrazano di Rho factory of Zagato, in the Milano Area. On November 27, 1970 it was delivered to Ms. Giuseppa R. (privacy protection) in Messina, Sicily, Italy. The car was delivered in "Zagato Blu" livery (Resonal 328) with tan colored elasticpel seats, black carpets and beige headliner. Real seventies! All is confirmed by the factory records. Next thing known is that, probably in 1984, the car had ended up in a garage in Messina, called "Officina 2000". This is confirmed by the export document that came with the car; it shows this and the next owner. It is unknown if there are any owners in-between the first owner, Ms. R. and this garage. Taking the complete rust-free condition of the car into consideration, it could be a plausible explanation that the car has seen very little use and was probably used as a second or maybe even third car. The tachometer reads some 42,000 KM (ca. 26,000 Miles) is believed to be true but there is no hard evidence for that. On February 23, 1985 the car was exported to Switzerland, again to a garage, Carrosserie Andreatta Rexa in Geneve. This is confirmed by the afore mentioned export document.

The car as it had just arrived in Amsterdam.

The verbal story that came with the car says that at this "body shop", the car was stripped to be re-painted; again not uncommon for a, by that time, 15 year old car that spent those years in a hot, sunny, climate like Sicily. Rust was no issue but probably the quality of the paint had let go. The car was indeed repainted, using minimal amounts of filler, I checked with one of those super magnets! The car was put together again for ca. 65 - 70% when, again according to the story, the owner ran out of money to have the job completed. The parts that were not yet mounted at that stage were "shoved" in a cardboard box which was put in the trunk of the car. This leads me to believe that this body shop had bought and imported the car on this owner's behalf. Partially mounted, the car was put in a corner of the workshop where it spent some 10 years sitting idle. Over this 10 year period, it got glue leaked on it, slightly dented and the expensive and hard-to-get- grill completely disappeared (probably sold) and other miscellaneous other parts disappeared out of the cardboard box. After this period, the car ended up in the hands of yet another classic car dealer, again in Switzerland. This time it was "Garage Sport" in Corseaux-Vevy. It is unknown when he got it exactly but he sold it to a German dealer, Stefan S. (privacy protection) on September 6, 1996 who in turn delivered it to me on March 8, 1997.

The interior looked a lot rougher than it actually was.

Due to the long time it stood idle in Geneve, the engine had seized and although it can now be turned over by hand, it will probably show a high oil-consumption once it is running since I expect the piston-rings to have suffered from the surface rust in the cylinders. When I bought the car from the German dealer, I had the choice of 2. This one and a red one which had only moderate bodywork but was fully licensed in Germany which basically means that it is supposed to be a safe car to drive. The red one had had a heart-transplant and was now sporting a 2 liter engine. The original 1300 engine was still lying around and we concluded the deal as follows: The blue 1300 with the 1300 engine from the red one separately and delivery to my than home in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Once the car the was in the parking-house belonging to the apartment building where I lived at that time, I started to take inventory of the parts that I would need. I was told that a complete grill would probably cost around the DM 750,00 (US$ 400.00) in good, used, condition. Boy, was this a rude awakening.... I started to roam the country for Zagato parts to complete the car, at the same time I started out on the mechanical side of the car, overhauling the suspension and brake department. I quickly found out that trying to buy a Junior Zagato is a lot easier than buying parts for it. Being already heavily challenged financially by the purchase of the car, I had to make the decision that if I wanted to complete this car, I had better buy whatever parts I could find and see if I could swap some of my finds with people who were "sitting" on the parts that I needed. At the same time I was rapidly expanding my "hunting grounds" to entire Europe.

Before	After

Whenever time allowed, I was working on the car and around June the car was back on its wheels, meaning that I managed to put the suspension back together again. At that time, we had also bought a new old house with a garage to accommodate all our classics. Buying this house was really a two-side sword since on one side it would allow me to work on my cars more easily but on the other side also required major re-decoration (on the edge of renovation) and consequently a lot of time would go into that. We also have to change the garage a little since in theory we could fit 5 cars into it but in practice there is a rather large pole standing in the way so now we can only fit one car! This will be solved one day.. I hope... Than there was the advent of Internet at my home. Running a couple of quick searches on "Zagato" brings out a lot of information about that word but who the h*ck is that "Evil Priest Zagato"? It looks to be a comic strip character!  More sophisticated runs on "Junior Zagato" or even "Junior Z" only brings out only a couple of sites and a couple of mentionings of some kind of Hawaiian guy! This was at the beginning of 1998 and I thought it would be nice to have a home-page but how does that work? I set out on that quest with as result what you see here. I quickly found out that there basically was no site dedicated to this car so my little Zagato page developed into the "Amsterdam Zagato Exchange" which should become a center for JZ owners to meet, swap parts, exchange experiences, put up their cars on the owner pages etc.

The front suspension under attack!

Since I need my daily drive, a 1968 Alfa Romeo 1750 Berlina, but do not want to park it outside, that is the car that occupies the only spot in the garage that is accessible at the moment. As a consequence, the Zagato is still in Amsterdam (ca. 30 miles from here) so I am dying to have the garage finished so I can finalize work on the car. It still needs the engine to be swapped and general finishing. As work progresses, I will add to this story.

No warranties, express or implied are given to any information provided herein, as this information is based on what we have found in literature, the internet and other public sources and submissions from previous and current owners.
By no means do we claim this information to be absolutely correct or complete.
We also don't mean to violate any privacy rights or copyrights.
Should any information or images violate such rights, please let us know and we will swiftly remove any infringing material.

If you feel that the information listed is incorrect or have something to add to the history of the vehicle, please let us know.
We can be contacted at register@zagato-cars.com