Ich Bin Ein Berlinista

[Scott Fisher <sfisher71@domain.elided>]

So, why did I buy this Berlina?

It presents itself really well.  With the exception of
four small rust patches, the car's paint is very nice,
in that dark burgundy that has always been a favorite
Alfa color.  (I almost painted the Junior that color,
but everybody needs to own at least one red Alfa to
get it out of their system.)  Looking inside, I could
hardly believe that this wasn't the "good" interior --
three cracks in the dash, but the wood is straight and
unchecked, and the door panels are reasonably un-wavy.
 The driver's seat had a fabric cover over it, and
looking under it explained why; well, I've got the
money, let's buy the spare interior (which is
gorgeous) while I'm down here.  

Driving impressions: first, the negatives, all of
which are wear/maintenance issues with this particular
Berlina, the result of its age and life before Andrew
acquired it.  Worst: the dampers have clearly stopped
damping; while this makes for a fairly pleasant
"big-car ride" on the freeway, it makes the car a bit
of a handful on bumpy corners.  If you keep the rear
end compressed by giving it throttle coming out of the
turn (and if the road is smooth), it's clearly an
Alfa, but the first major purchase I'll make for this
car (apart from fluids and cleaners) will be shocks. 
I may also get some of AlfaBill's whiz-bang bushings,
at least for the big center link above the diff, as
it's hard to believe that the amount of rear-end
wobble I feel is solely due to bad shocks.  But we'll
start with the shocks.

When Andrew first described the car to me he mentioned
that the Spica light came on from time to time, mostly
at high RPM and throttle positions.  He went on to say
it got about 50% better after changing the main (tank)
filter and replacing a suspicious looking section of
fuel hose.  I noticed the fuel light come on precisely
once in the first, still-fairly-cold drive up and down
the block, but after the car warmed up, the light went
away and hasn't come back.  Italian tune-up clearing
the system?  Either way, the order for shocks will
probably include the rest of the filters and some fuel
line, just in case.  (Oh, and don't forget -- we're
towing this back to Portland, not driving it.)

There's surprisingly minimal rust, just two patches at
the bottom corners of the windscreen, one of which has
holed through, and what I understand is the
ubiquitous-to-late-Berlinas cracked windshield. 
(Andrew seems to think he's seen this on most of the
glued-in windshield cars, and that the solution is to
replace the windshield with the slightly smaller,
early style, plus gasket.  Digesti with spare early
Berlina windshields, within reasonable
shipping/hauling distance of Portland, Oregon or San
Francisco, California, are invited to respond.)  I'll
probably replace the windshield and weld new metal in
the rusty sections at the same time, with luck before
winter.  (Jeff knows a good body shop in Portland that
understands good work on cheap cars at a price; they
do a lot of race cars, and the owner is an Alfista to
boot.)

The car idled at 1500-1700 RPM for the first few
minutes, and then as the needle came off the peg the
idle dropped to 800 or so.  The TA works, clearly. 
While the first crank of the morning has been on the
slow side, the car starts up strongly, and subsequent
starts throughout the day (at lunch, going home, etc.)
result in instant ignition, probably in part due to
the Marelliplex.  

If anything the engine feels stronger (or at least
smoother -- though perhaps just quieter) than my '74
Spider.  And what I put down to completely absent
synchros on second and first gear on the first drive
now seem to be merely very gummed up synchros; I can
now make graunchless downshifts into both second AND
(at a lower speed) first gears while moving.  We'll
drain whatever's in there now and replace it with
Spirax when we get home.  Oh, and the brake pedal is
soft, with a longish travel, suggesting it's time to
flush and bleed the system, but it seems to work fine.
 (Again, we're towing it home.)

But what's it like?

Well... I have to start this by saying that I love
convertibles, have done since my dad's best friend
from high school took me for a ride in his immaculate,
ten-year-old XK120 roadster on a summer day outside
Sacramento, California when I was five years old.  It
just seemed that this was the only fit way for men to
travel, top-down in a truly distinctive motorcar.  I
still feel that way when we get a sun break in
Portland, and I can drop the top on my Spider with two
clicks and a reach.  (And after decades of British
roadster ownership, where raising or lowering the top
involves a team of draught horses, an act of
Parliament, and a deckload of tars singing sea
chanties to get it all shipshape and Bristol fashion
-- being able to put the top up or down, or up AND
down, while waiting to pay a bridge toll is not
something I'm tired of yet.)  I am not a whole and
complete human being unless, somewhere in the
entourage, there's a car on which I can throw some
latches, move some canvas, and be out IN the world
instead of peering at it through a hole in a piece of
metal.

Having said that, the Berlina -- barring the wind in
the hair -- has all the good things I love about
driving my Spider, with none of the bad.  No cowl
shake.  No top rattle.  No struggling to insert myself
into the car with the top up (I've learned that it's
best, for my frame at least, to point myself in
headfirst, pull my feet in, and then right myself; I
barely fit if I put my hips in first and then try to
swing in my extremities -- my head hangs up on the
roofline.)  

But the Berlina is comfortable, solid, with only a bit
of wind noise and a very muted version of the familiar
Alfa song.  It's a car I could easily see myself
driving between Portland and San Francisco
semi-regularly, either when the weather is dicey or
when the lure of top-down driving makes me forget
that, after ten hours of being buffeted by 70-mph
winds, my head feels like a punching bag after a day
at Gold's Gym (but I'm too much the pukka enthusiast
to put it up, don't you know).  Driving the Berlina is
almost like driving an ordinary car, except that the
engine, steering, and transmission are all Alfa.  (I
suspect that the handling will be all Alfa too, once I
get new shocks installed.)

What am I going to do with it?  Who knows?  It will
almost certainly see some track time, the roof
rendering questions of roll-bar installation moot for
AROO track days.  It will without fail see some AROO
tours, hopefully with new shocks before we do the wine
tour in a month.  And Jeff is seriously after me to do
some Friday Night TSD rallies with the Cascade Sports
Car Club, which just sounds like a hell of a lot of
fun -- as do the AROO Sunday rallies.  And since the
speedo and odometer work on this car (my Spider's
cable is still broken, and Jeff's Junior is metric),
it's the Right Choice.

But one of the first things it'll be used for,
probably even before the shocks get installed, is to
take all the kids out for gelato at the local
Trent'uno Sapore (or is that Basquini e Robini?  Hey,
the 5-year-old's favorite restaurant is Les Arcs d'Or,
where I understand he thinks the clown's name is
McRonny.)  Every really good car needs to have a
chocolate milkshake spilled on its interior at least
once.

--Scott Fisher
  Tualatin, Oregon
.
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