These Two Automotive Mutts Are Perfectly Irreverant

As is the case with dogs, there are many different breeds of cars, but only two kinds: the purebreds and the mutts. An example of the former doesn’t necessarily have to be high-falutin’—a factory-spec Camry, the golden retriever of the automotive world, counts. But enthusiasts of either canines or cars love to get together and sort out which purebred will go home with a best of show trophy. Whether it’s a pampered pooch or a polished prewar classic, there’s a certain amount of snootiness on hand, which makes it all the more fun when a couple of ill-bred terriers crash the party.

Here are two mutts of the automotive variety that bounded into Monterey Car Week 2025: An Alfa Romeo Giulia that never existed (in the factory’s eyes, anyway) and a Honda-powered center-seat Mini that smokes like a Belfast shipyard worker. Fresh off a thousand-mile trip from the Vancouver area to Monterey, these pint-sized scrappers burst into the flock of preening supercars with yips and yaps, reminding everyone that deep pockets can’t always outbid handiness with a wrench when it comes to having the most fun on tarmac.

If you’re sitting there wondering when exactly Alfa Romeo made a two-door sedan version of the Giuila—well, it didn’t. This primer-gray machine started out as a Giulia Berlinetta, and roughly nine inches have been sectioned out of its frame so that the Alfa could be fitted to the chassis of a first-generation Mazda Miata.

Such a combination should work about as well as sushi bolognese, but this thing is fantastic in the sheetmetal. The Alfa donor was an old touring-car racer, chock full of Bondo and, in the eyes of some, best off sent to the scrapper. Instead, both it and the lightly battered Miata donor chassis have been given new life, with more details still to be ironed out.

The Mini is the genuine article, but fitted with a Honda engine and with a center-mount seat up front. Why? “The beat poet Allan Ginsburg said: first idea, best idea,” says its owner, Marco Lii.

More like, “A good idea can’t hold a candle to a bad idea plus follow-through.” Lii starts standing empty cartons of oil on his Mini’s hood to show just how much the carb-swapped Honda D16 four-cylinder burned on the way from British Columbia to California. Answer: a lot.

The MiatAlfa is owned by Phil Ogilvie, who also hails from Mini world. Nearly 10 years ago, he co-founded Steveston Motor Co., in Richmond, British Columbia, a historic fishing and cannery village where the Fraser River pours into the Strait of Georgia. Lii came on full-time six years back, and longtime Mini owner Krys Le rounds out the team.

The workshop is the kind of place Michael Caine and his cohorts might have selected when planning The Italian Job. Now situated in a busy industrial area, it’s nestled among scrapyards and lumber stacks, partially shared with master machinist Adam Trinder. Trinder once stuffed a liter-bike engine in the back of a 1990s Mini, and at the time of my visit was working on a 12 individual throttle-body setup for a Toyota Century V-12 that’s been shoehorned into a Datsun 260Z. Plenty of his work went into marrying the Alfa to its Miata chassis.

An Alfa(ish) Giulia chasing a classic Mini back and forth all the way to California does have a whiff of Cockney cheekiness to it. Even if it’s relatively reliable Japanese powertrains under the sheetmetal of both, there’s a certain UK-style Man In Shed ethos to hurriedly building two machines on deadline for Car Week and then heading out. The Alfa didn’t even get a proper test-drive, says Ogilvie. “First drive was to the gas station, then straight to California.”

The impetus for the trip? Two free tickets to The Quail, one of the most exclusive events on the calendar of Monterey Car Week. The shop was showing one of its latest builds at The Quail, and as its owner already had a ticket, the two extras went to Ogilvie and Lii. They could have, of course, just flown down and rented something beige and boring, but where’s the fun in that?

The fact that Steveston Motor Co. had one of its Mini builds on display at The Quail should tell you pretty much everything you need to know about the quality these guys are capable of putting out. That car, a 1967 Morris Mini Cooper sourced from Portugal, is running a Honda D16 with quad individual throttle bodies and a side draft radiator (about 170 hp), Bilstein dampers, and has the most delicately beautiful shift linkage imaginable. On an episode of his YouTube channel, Harry Metcalfe seemed very taken with the little car.

“Beautifully, beautifully engineered,” he says, “And yet, you would hardly know.”

That’s work: Properly bespoke commissions that whisper when appropriate. One of SMCO’s more recent builds is destined to be parked up next to a Ferrari collection, and it has the feel of a finely crafted watch, which delivers small-scale theater and craftsmanship. When it’s your own machine you’re putting together, the rules are whatever you want them to be. Miata gauge clusters or small-diameter Mini alloys machined to look like steelies? A build doesn’t have to fit the-customer-is-always-right rule. It just needs to tickle the builder’s fancy.

Ogilvie and Lii report that Monterey attendants responded to the Mini and Alfa’s punk rock aesthetic with reflected delight. The center-seat Mini got a delighted laugh from a valet, and the Alfa was cleanly executed enough to have an older Italian gent wondering if it was a factory option. Onlookers shouted “McLaren F1!” at the Mini, and applauded the MiatAlfa. After you see your twenty-sixth late-model Lamborghini, these two hit like a sorbet of automotive enthusiasm.

The road trip was an adventure of the best sort. Border guards shook their heads. The drivers sought out the twisties on the way up and down. Earplugs were required to stave off the rawness of a fresh build.

Ogilvie ticks off his plans to sort out the suspension on the Alfa: Get some of the details right, fix the ultra-aggressive rear camber—in general, create a car that never was but could have been. There’s a certain reluctance as he lists his checklist, a sense that you can sort out a car but lose a bit of the fun in flying by the seat of your pants. The slogans on Lii’s patina’d Mini and t-shirt strike the same chord: “Mo’ Mini, Mo’ Problems,” and “Never Really Finished Club.”

You can give these two cars obedience lessons. You can train them to sit up and beg, roll over, fetch, stop chewing the metaphorical legs off the metaphorical table. A little fine-tuning, and they’ll be far better behaved. But will they be better to drive? I’m not so sure.

Monterey Car Week has long celebrated pedigree, class, and poise. The automotive mutts, though? They’re having the most fun of anyone.