They say that when you’re restoring an old house on a limited budget you should spend your money on the things that you touch rather than the things you simply look at. So, best to invest in really good light switches and door handles, and when it comes to bathrooms or kitchens, spend your money on the taps, not the tiles. These small but important items will (it’s argued) convey a sense of luxury and pleasure for their owners, even if the rest of the place is relatively shonky.. This is an interesting theory and one that of course touches on the heart of how we interact with our immediate environment.

This mantra can of course be applied to cars. An awful lot of effort has always gone into the way our cars look from the outside, but when it comes to the interior, the place where we physically interact with our pride and joy rather than just gawping at it, the ball often seems to get dropped (into some inaccessible cubbyhole down by your shin).

Modern car designers have long since woken up to the importance of a well laid out and well made interior, but we’ve all read period reports from the ’60’s and ’70’s complaining loudly about the shocking quality of the switchgear (often borrowed from parts bins in the bizarre hope that we won’t notice that our 308GT4 Ferrari has Fiat X19 door handles), or of unergonomic driving positions, or of poorly labelled controls strewn randomly across a dashboard.

On the flipside, a beautifully crafted steering wheel or gear change can offer years of simple pleasure to the average enthusiast – especially if like me, you’re a sucker for a nice detail.

I’ve long had a hankering for an Alfa Giulia Spider, for any number of obvious (to me anyway) reasons that I won’t bore you by listing here – it’s just a great little car. And it’s an Alfa, so clearly no further justification is required.

One of the things I really like about the car are the door handles – handsome, sculpted affairs no doubt designed by some (handsome and sculpted) junior footsoldier at Pininfarina; someone who could actually get away with saying “Ciao bella!”, whilst almost falling off the back of his Vespa due to excessive louchidity (OK, not technically a word, but it should be). Our 20-something lothario, despite being only a couple of pay-grades above the guy drawing up the pressings for the inner sills (thinks: ‘How can I trap the maximum amount of damp in here?’) still managed to create something as truly beautiful and functional as this:

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I’ll accept that the above aren’t the only reason I love these cars, but I’m visually driven (and shallow) enough for them to be a major factor. A few weeks back I took delivery of my very own Spider, a restoration project I’ve imported from  Illinois, and here’s a picture of one of mine in situ  – or almost in situ, as (perhaps inevitably) it was partly torn from the door whilst in transit in it’s shared container – presumably one shared with an angry bull, or a loose wrecking ball. Thanks, shipping company that I won’t mention here although I’m tempted.

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Anyway, what does all this have to do with that gorgeous 250 SWB that sits at the top of this blog? At the London Classic Car show last week I happened across another SWB (very common, these things) and noticed that it has exactly the same door handles as my lowly Alfa.. Now every time I open my door I’ll be enjoying precisely the same visual and tactile experience as a SWB owner! I bet my door handle opens doors just as well as the Ferrari item, and I’ve a feeling it’ll be just as proficient (if not more so) at closing them.

Let’s face it, it’s pretty much exactly the same as actually owning a 250 SWB without the annoying running costs or the needing of a couple of million pounds up front. I’ll be writing up what it feels like to operate this exotic piece of kit just as soon as the Alfa is restored, in the meantime I’m going to take them off the car and keep them under my pillow.. Plenty of unscrupulous Ferrari owners out there who wouldn’t think twice about pilfering from my exotic to keep their old runaround on the road.

With this in mind I couldn’t resist a quick google on relative prices and am happy to report that a pair of 250 SWB door handles from a Ferrari parts supplier will set you back an appropriately eye-watering £790. By comparison, the exact same items (or probably better) can be obtained from Classic Alfa for £240.

That’s still quite a lot for a pair of door handles, but these things are all relative of course, and (speaking as the part owner of a 250 SWB – and therefore as a man of wealth and taste), money spent on the details is always money well spent.