Charcoal (?) GTV6, VW Bus

[Chris Kane <branzck@domain.elided>]

Indeed Octopussy did screen in NZ on Saturday night, which meant that the
diehard Alfisiti were glued to their screen until just before midnight when
the GTV6 made its appearance. Problem is, and I've seen this scene about 10
times, the car looks like the brown metallic colour Alfa offered for a
while, and not charcoal. Or is it just my TV on the blink (or even my mind?)

Jeremy Clarkson has a bit of a thing for GTV6's - he used to write for
"Performance Car", and in the space of two months (in the late 80s) produced
two superb columns, one about the GTV6 that he bought ("Alfa Costa"), which
apparently had a "damp" gearbox and porous wheels (hence the flat tyres) and
which used to stop running when "Boys of Summer" came on the radio. The
other column ("Spaghetti Junctions") was about driving in Italy, where he
described in glorious detail the Italian driving procedure - "Engage gear,
engage horn, move off. If anybody drives his Fiat into you, get out and
plant one in his teeth, and if anybody drives his Ferrari past you, stop
immediately and lick the ground where his tyres passed." He also introduced
the two rival Milanese gangs: the Fiat Philharmonic and the Alfa Romeo
Symphony Orchestra (see Driving Procedure above). I couldn't resist drag
races away from railway crossings after reading that - it just seemed like
the natural thing to do!

As for AlfaBill's Combi, why not (seeing as he's an Alfa dealer) stick a 1.7
Alfa Boxer in there? It substantially gruntier than the 1.8 Scoobydoo motor,
and it says the right thing on the inlet manifold. In fact, if memory
serves, it is related (via Rudolf Hruska) to the VW engine anyway! And don't
dredge up the old excuse that there are no Alfa boxers in America - if it
worth doing, its worth doing right.

Right?

Chris Kane (Wgtn, NZ, with Graham hilder and Les Singh)
76 AlfaSud Ti
85 Alfa Sprint QV
90 Toymota MR2 (not for much longer...)

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End of alfa-digest V7 #1204
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