Alfa tool kits

[JHertzman@xxxxxxx]

In AD7-127 Doug Gould asked: "My 164 has a styrene foam toolkit which is
missing two tools. I am curious to know what is missing. There are two vacant
"slots" one vertical and next to the spark plug spanner and the other one
horizontal and above the two spanners.

"The tools that do exist in my toolkit are:
Spark plug spanner
Bar for the spark plug spanner
Pliers
13/17mm spanner
8/10mm spanner
screw driver
wheel wrench"

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I, perhaps terminally lacking sufficient curiosity about unasked questions
only, but often piqued by asked ones, for the first time opened that
characterless blob of styrene foam from the hollow of that foolish spacesaver
spare and found exactly that same set of tools and exactly those two vacant
slots, evidently vacant since the car came down the line on 07/06/90, unless
the dealer swiped them. Evidently Doug has the full set.

But one answer piques another memory, so I hauled in the tool kit from the bin
in the Platinum, four years older. It is gray plastic, matching the car
interior, with a discrete script 'Alfa Romeo' in red, and the form in all its
details - hinges, handle, latches - is redolent of the sophisticated
understated Milanese industrial design standards we schoolboys admired in each
new issue of 'Domus' in the university library in days of yore. The cotton
knit stretch gloves with the overcast red hems at the cuffs are still there.
The lid has a gray foam liner like a Halliburton camera case, and the tools
are elegantly arrayed in nicely formed recesses in the Alfa-red inner shell.
The tools themselves are made by the same company as the 164's - Brugnago- and
are also cheap, but not AS cheaply finished, with better formed handles on the
screwdrivers- and there are only a few more tools, but there are also four
bulbs, four sizes of fuses, and a fuse puller, all in their own neat slots. I
rummaged around the basement a bit and came up with the cardboard box the
tool-kit had come in, with the familiar pattern of cross and serpent in white
on the red ground, ALFA ROMEO, accessori, accessories, accessorios,
accessoires, zubehor, at the top labeled CASSETTA  PORTA ATTREZZI  TOOL BOX
CAISSE A OUTILS  WERKZEUGKASTEN  and the part number 10000.91502.00/00. Too
nice to throw away, as Andrea once remarked about the boxes spare parts come
in.

Sure, they are just tools, all work just as well, it means nothing, and the
164 is a better car in almost every way, and wait 'til you see the 166- but
the two kits came out of two different mindsets, and stir different
sensibilities.

Et in Arcadia ego-

John H.

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