Poor college student should NEVER buy a GTV-6...TRUE STORY!

[JeffreyOlson@domain.elided]

Here's my 'first Alfa' story:

Way too long ago when I was in college, I blindly and passionately bought 
a 'beater' rusty red NON-running '81 GTV-6 from a local import repair shop.  I 
absolutely had to have it.  I mean, it was an 'Alphalfa Romero' for God's sake, 
a rare 'Eye-talian' exotic.  What if someone were to purchase this fine 
mistreated thoroughbred gem before I have the unique opportunity to do so?  
Yeah, right...  

I was sold to me for $1,600 (EVERY penny I had!) to pay off the mechanic's 
lien.  Previously owned by a 'private detective', it had been abandoned years 
ago with the unpaid repair bill for a blown head gasket.  

Fortunately, at the same time a REALLY nice '81 had been totalled and was sold 
to me for $200 as a parts car by the now suicidal owner.  The poor guy was 
obviously hoping for some sort of spiritual resurrection of his GTV-6 as a 
donor to the cause. 

Unfortunately and unknown to me until later, the repair shop had only replaced 
ONE of the cylinder head gaskets on MY nightmare.  Over a semester, I ended up 
swapping the transaxle, interior, and everything and anything that was 'nicer' 
from the parts car into mine.  The repair shop guy was cool in that he let me 
use his tools and work on the car in the back of his shop, most likely out of 
guilt.  Of course, I did this crap instead of studying...

I struggled with that DAMN GTV-6 for two years but insisted on coping with it 
with typical Alfa-martyr stubbornness.  Since I had NO money, I did everything 
myself, learned a lot about Alfas, myself, and patience/frustration at 
previously unknown levels.  Years and several Alfas later, I'm NO smarter... 

Best of all, the damn thing NEVER let me down UNTIL something REALLY important 
came up, i.e. booty call, job interview, big exam early the next morning, 
middle of nowhere/middle of night/raining, etc.!  

Try finding a driveshaft guibo at the one and only local service station in the 
Outer Banks of North Carolina!  It was ALWAYS either fix it myself or abandon 
it and hitchhike back to school at the end of the summer.  Always managed to 
fix it BUT I should have torched it!  It was an endless cycle of shut down, 
melt down, busted, dusted, and rusted.  Got a lot of speeding tickets...

After two years(!) of chronic overheating, It FINALLY blew the OTHER headgasket 
at about 90+ MPH on I-26, venting EVERY single drop of coolant out through the 
exhaust in a HUGE superheated trail of smoke and steam that looked like a JATO-
assisted take-off.  I kept my foot in it until she ground to a halt.

Had to leave her on the side of the road in the redneck wilds of South 
Carolina.  With NO money to fix and graduation pending, it was towed away to 
certain demise.  I got $300 for it, enough to pay for a bus ticket back to 
school and lots of beer for my roommates.  

Years later, I once even tried to track the damn thing down at the junk yard 
that towed it away but no one remembered having seen it.

Man, I miss that car...
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