Surprisingly Germany has some very competent and internationally respected specialists not focusing on VW, BMW, Audi or Porsche, but doing everything possible to bring and keep Alfa Romeo’s in perfect shape. When Matijs Jutte moved to Munich in 2013 he soon got to know OKP as the best adres for all sorts of parts for his GTV6. The place to go for mounting these parts however is Formula GT.

Where OKP focuses on sales and reproducing parts, they don’t have a customer workshop. That’s why Praller founded Formula GT, using his experience as an engineer to keep his beloved Italian beauties on the road. In the past twenty-five years Formula GT earned itself a thorough international reputation. When in 2014 I sold my GTV6 and bought me an Alfa 2000 GTV Bertone it stopped running properly once it got of transport from Holland. Since I own practically no tools nor the capability to change even a few oily spark plugs, my first reflex was a ride to Formula GT. That first visit didn’t even last twenty minutes. The right spark plugs were put in and the car ran like a dream once again. These measly twenty minutes showed me the hands-on mentality of this firm and gave me the opportunity to look over the cars they were working on. There were two GTA/M’s, just having competed in a Langstreckencup, as well as several Ferrari’s like a 512BB in Le Mans spec. I never took my Bertone anywhere else since.

In the winter of 2015 the complete front end got a haul over, including the front stabilizer, replacing all rubbers and bearings. Everything was presented to me in great detail. The parts that needed to be changed were shown and parts redeveloped in house by Formula GT were offered. I used to visit the workshop a lot in these days, documenting the work done and admiring the other cars in the place. The Formula GT team themselves also documented the progress on this, for them, relatively small project. Since I’ve taken it to Formula GT the car has only gotten better.

When CineCars launched the idea of promoting garage videos in the spring of 2016, I got a hunch. Since my passion for film has been a long treasured dream, wanting to one day make one myself, I had been admiring the production of CineCars and the likes for quite some time. After an initial contact with CineCars founder Mirko Cocco and several further conversations on Skype, I presented Peter Praller at Formula GT with the idea for one of these videos. His reaction was, although he didn’t know CineCars, extremely positive. Peter himself brought up the idea of documenting the reconstruction of a GTAM from rags to racing monster. When I suggested it would be far more interesting to shoot a car like that on a track, he simply answered ‘it will be ready for testing on the Red Bull Ring come next May’.

And so it was. It took quite some effort and perseverance not to have the project being put aside, but thanks to Mirko’s professionalism, for this project assisted by Tejo, and the growing enthousiasm at Formula GT, who in the meantime discovered the CineCars website themselves, this weekend at the Red Bull Ring became one never to forget. I hope the result pleases you just as much as it does us and will be the start of many more of these great projects to come.

text: Matijs Jutte

translation: Marc GF Zaan

pictures: Mirko Cocco, Teejo Renaud