Let's hear a little bit about the driver - What's your name and where are you from?
I'm Anthony Randazzo from West Islip, New York.
What got you into modifying cars and what kept you in it?
I've been into cars my whole life since I grew up around my dad's shop and all of the race cars he's had. I started modifying cars when I got my turbo Honda Civic eg at 16 years old, and it cascaded into building cars from the ground up from there. I'm a mechanic at my dad's shop now so I really have no choice but to eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff.
Ok ok ok... Tell us about your ride, what is it?
So onto the Alfa, basically it's a 1987 Alfa Romeo Spider I bought from a dealer that I've worked with for the past few years. It had been sitting out front for a decade, slowly getting picked apart. I had jokingly asked if it was for sale quite a few times until one day, it was. Naturally I bought it right away. So I brought it to the shop, tore it down quite a bit and got to work. I had initially built it to be a track car, starting right off with adding a turbo to the otherwise stock, original engine. After about a year, I finished the car, taking it to track days and autocross events in addition to daily driving it.
Exterior and Engine Mods?
After a while I started to care a bit more for aesthetics. It was already beautifully painted and showed off well. About a year ago I built the wheels which are currently on the car. They are 1986 Jeep Wagoneer wheels that I converted to 3 piece with BBS lips, barrels and hardware. The clover center cap was designed and machined by me as well. At the same time I also changed the rear end of the car around by adding the Ferrari F50 tail lights. Earlier this year, the front end of the car was the victim of a hit and run in front of my shop, but I took this as an opportunity to remold the front end to fit the earlier body style Carello headlight covers. A few months ago I decided to further lower the car, which was already lowered with a set of 2" lowering springs. I ended up with about an inch of ground clearance to the oil pan, which spurred me to engineer an air ride setup for the car. Pretty much everything had to be custom made since there are no air suspension kits for Alfa Spiders. I used some universal double bellow bags front and rear, plumbed up with 3/8" air lines to a set of massive 3/8" solenoids, which allow the car to air up and drop ridiculously fast. Other than that, the exterior is relatively tame with the factory option Quadrifoglio body kit and hard top, and some hastily but tastefully added side skirt extensions.
Under the hood, it's a stock engine, with a TD05-20G turbo, an intercooler from a Hyundai, throttle body from a Jeep, and a custom intake manifold I designed housing 8 fuel injectors. This frankenstein of an engine works pretty nicely, pushing 237whp at 18psi of boost on e85, and has been doing so reliably for the last 2 and a half years.
Interior Mods?
The interior of the car has been refurbished with factory replacement black seats and carpet. I added a Sparco racing wheel, and a few digital displays that interface with the Megasquirt ECU and allow me to view any data I want and make on-the-fly tuning adjustments.
What are some things you've done to your car that others might not notice?
One thing that really catches people's eyes is the gated shifter(looks OEM now), which I had done spontaneously one night after tearing the original shift boot.
Photos by Garrett Humphries (aka GDH Films)
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