She also obtained a rare engine because she longed for a racing model 2000GTAm
Kenichi Sasaki, organizer of “The Italian Job,” has an Alfa Romeo 2000GTV as his favorite car. He has been posting information about his car on his blog since around 2005, during the blog boom. He has even organized a place where fellow Italian car enthusiasts can get together. We asked Mr. Sasaki to introduce us in detail, from his first encounter with his beloved car to what kind of specifications it has.
The popularity of blogs has made it possible to find fellow owners worldwide
The advent of blogging services such as Hatena Diary, livedoor Blog, and Seesaa Blog led to a huge boom in blogs that allowed individuals to easily disseminate information, and “blog” was chosen as the most popular word of the year in 2005. The blogging craze also brought about a major change in the historic car hobby. The analog approach of finding like-minded people at events and other real-life venues, and then playing together, was replaced by the ability to find friends around the world, not just in Japan, who share the same car models and tastes, without being restricted by geographic location.
While disseminating information on cars since the first blog boom, Kenichi Sasaki, organizer of “Italian Job” (hereinafter referred to as “ItaJob”), has created a real place for car enthusiasts to meet.
“In an attempt to create a gathering place for the people I knew from the blog I started in 2005, I renamed the Alfa Romeo friends’ club I started in 1999 to Club Motherhead (henceforth CMH) and held the first Italian Job, which then sort of continued for the next 20 years. ”
Although CMH is a loose group, with each member trying to run ItaJob with the members who are available at the time, it is not uncommon for members to become friends through participation in ItaJob and naturally become members. He says that the events held at CMH have become his greatest pleasure, and he continues to run “ItaJob”.
Miraculously, we got a real GTAm engine
Mr. Sasaki’s favorite car is an Alfa Romeo 2000GTV. Until he acquired this car, he was driving a 1300cc “Giulia,” but his admiration for the racing model “2000GTAm” led him to acquire the car 23 years ago, which belonged to an 82-year-old female owner who had cherished it since new.
The car was then painstakingly modified to Toine Heyman specifications, which won the European Touring Car Championship in 1970. Not only was the styling called “Otafuku” in Japan because of its distinctive appearance, but it was also built with a narrow-angle twin-plug engine made by Outdelta, of which only 40 were ever made.
“Miraculously, we were able to get our hands on a real GTAm engine, but after being abused so much in the races, we had to rebuild most of it just to get it to work. With the help of many professionals, we were able to complete the project and transform it into an engine that could pass vehicle inspections with ease while producing 169.1 hp at 6500 rpm and 19.96 kgm of torque.
translated by DeepL