Half the engine... twice the car

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@domain.elided>]

In another posting to the Digest about why I have and keep Alfas, I
mentioned that the 1300 GT Junior participates in another myth from my
childhood.

After my sports-car epiphany in the Jaguar XK-120, I took to reading
everything I could find about sports-car racing, including Denis
Jenkinson's incredible account of his participation in the 1955 Mille
Miglia with Stirling Moss, in the Mercedes-Benz 300SLR.  Reading *that*
story at about age 8, I was overcome by the sense that the two finest
things it was possible for a human being to aspire to was either a
racing driver or a writer.  I re-read just that account a year or so ago
after ordering a reprint from a British Web site; it still has the same
effect on me, even after having been both.

In the same book ("When Engines Roar" edited by Charles Beaumont and
William F. Nolan, and I'd pay a reasonable premium for anyone who
chooses to part with a copy of that today) as the Jenks story, there was
an article (I believe by Ken Purdy) from the late 1950s discussing the
ever-popular question of who is the greatest racing driver of all time. 
He did a classic compare-and-contrast essay, looking at not simply
Nuvolari and Fangio (the obvious choices for 1958-59, when the story was
written), but at two specific races they had won, both on the
Nurburgring (the *real* Nurburgring, die Drache, 14-plus miles of Eifel
forest racetrack), about 20 years apart.  

The Nuvolari account was by far the most stirring to me, but then
Fangio's victory was merely a race.  Nuvolari's victory was an epic,
containing more Jungian archetypes than a weekend marathon of George
Lucas movies: a once-great power possessed of grace and beauty, in
danger of falling to the soulless machines produced by masters of the
relentless march of technology, finds a Hero who can overcome impossible
odds to defeat ultimate evil, in Evil's own heartland no less.  The
year, I think, was 1937; Nuvolari was driving a two-year-old Alfa GP
car, competing against not only the legendary Silberpfeile of
Mercedes-Benz, but also the lethal yet incredibly powerful Auto Union
cars, with their revolutionary architecture that placed the engine
behind the driver.  Making matters worse: many of the Benz and
Auto-Union drivers had defected from Scuderia Ferrari in the past two
years, as Portello found it more and more difficult to produce power to
match the Germans', so Nuvolari found himself pitted against former
comrades who had gone over to the Dark Side.

But Nuvolari possessed the kind of driving skill that today is only
found, in humans, among 9-year-old slaves on Tatooine.  He worked his
way through the grid not once, but twice -- the second time after a
burly mechanic, in an excess of Italianate zeal, snapped the filler neck
during refueling and the car had to be filled by jerrycans.  Nuvolari is
said to have torn his hair and rent his garments, but when the tank was
filled he returned to the fray and caught the leaders yet again.  On the
final lap, he saw the telltale white stripe of a tire down to the cords
on the leader's car (I can't now remember if it was Caracciola, von
Brauchitsch, or Varzi driving); he harried the first-place car so
utterly that the tire blew within sight of the finish line, sending the
erstwhile leader to the side of the road and Nuvolari to an impossible
victory.

Even then the odds were against him.  The German domination of motor
racing in those days was so complete (and Hitler, Goebbels and the rest
of that crowd were even present at the track to see their certain
victory) that no one had even brought a copy of the Italian national
anthem.  

Except Nuvolari, who kept a recording in the trunk of his personal car
for just such eventualities.  A runner was sent, a record player plugged
into the public address system, and Nuvolari wept on the central step of
the podium as Hitler and the Third Reich gnashed their teeth in
unanticipated dismay.

So that's part of why I have Alfas.  It's one thing to talk about
tradition, heritage, engineering excellence, design originality,
timeless styling, and stirring performance.  It's quite another to drive
something, on a daily basis, that partakes in the celebration of a
moving victory against hopeless odds and the forces of ultimate evil (at
least as those forces were most vividly represented during the century
that is about to close).

And in particular, it's something I think of when the Alfa 1300 crosses
that magic 5000-RPM mark and changes from an interesting small engine to
something glorious and exotic.  It's the same David-and-Goliath conflict
that calls to mind the motto of the Texas Rangers: "A little man'll beat
a big man every time, if the little man is in the right and keeps
a-comin'."

- --Scott Fisher
  1974 Spider Veloce
  1967 GT 1300 Junior

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