Why I love Alfas

["Matt Swartz" <swartz100@domain.elided>]

My love of Alfas can be traced to a local cultural festival I attended in 
the mid-80's.  The featured nationality was Italy and they had a small 
display of vintage as well as new Italian autos. I would guess I was about 
12 years old and had little exposure to any automobiles of the non-American 
variety.  Amidst Ferraris, Fiats, Lancias, etc., two vehicles stand out 
above all the others - a Lambo LM002 (the only SUV that has ever excited me) 
and a beautiful little Alfa Spider Graduate.  I never forgot about that Alfa 
(or the LM002, for that matter, although I'm enough of a realist to accect 
that ownership of a LM002 will likely always be out of reach).

Flash forward to 1992.  Shortly after reading an article on buying used 
Spiders in ec magazine I found an '86 Graduate for sale in the local 
newspaper.  Well I had to take a look so I summoned my dad to go with me.  
Well to make a long story somewhat shorter, my dad ended up buying the car 
and drove it a couple of summers before parking it in the garage where it 
remains today.  I never had the opportunity to drive the Graduate and in 
fact the only Alfa I have ever driven was an early Alfa Milano 2.5 but I 
still find myself hopelessly smitten with the marque.

So began the saga of the 'no-start spider' with which many of you have 
offered suggestions.  I desperately want to get this car back on the road 
and am currently awaiting shipments from iap and APE and hope to soon find 
the time to install the parts.  So hopefully it won't be long before I get 
to take my first drive in a Spider.

As you can see my love of Alfas began somewhat unusually but is none the 
less very, very strong.

Matt Swartz
currently Alfa-less but hopefully not for long

One other note of interest, my wife has recently expressed a fondness for 
the Duetto Spiders so perhaps someday...


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End of alfa-digest V7 #969
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