I'm trying to get a copy of a photo of my grandparents, my mother and
her five sisters and three brothers in two touring cars. The photo was
taken in the Black Hills of South Dakota around the late teens or early
twenties.
When was the last time you took your nine... Okay, when was the last
time you took your family touring in a place similar to the Black Hills
in your Alfa?
Well my mother thinks that driving 10 miles to church in my Alfa is a
pretty scary adventure... Seriously, I don't think I'd have a problem
driving my Alfa into the middle of nowhere. I certainly feel more
comfortable in a car that I've maintained rather than someone else's car
that I haven't worked on.
Just to throw in an additional impediment, my Grandfather Peterson was
crippled with polio since the age of seven. He drove one of the cars.
I love Alfas but am afraid to admit I wouldn't trust them enough to
attempt either of the above 'adventures' without having to worry
(unfortunately with good reason) the entire time. Yeah, the relative's
cars were newer (relative to the time) but the technology which has
become so much more advanced (tongue so firmly in cheek it hurts) makes
those old buggies seem like something from the dark ages (tongue's still
firmly there).
This is an interesting question. My GTV-6 is my only car, and I have
complete faith in it (well slightly less lately, since the oil consumption
has become completely ridiculous). If I didn't, I wouldn't own it, at
least not in a daily driver, only car sort of context. I like to think
that the Bosch analog EFI and electronic ignition (still has a distributor,
though) give me an edge in terms of reliability over carbs, mechanical
injection, and points ignitions. Then I read on the digest that some of
you use Berlinas as daily drivers, and I have to wonder if the relative
simplicity of something like Spica (simple it ain't, but what I mean is
that a hidden diode can't burn out and leave you stranded in the Black
Hills) would be more reliable than my L-Jetronic. It still seems weird to
me that anything that old could be reliable. Which is a weird thing for me
to think, considering that it wasn't too long ago that my parents had a '59
Jaguar as a daily driver, but although it was 100% reliable, it was never
the first choice to get driven out of town, and never made freeway trips
longer than a couple hours. It may have looked more like a museum piece
than practical transportation, and leaked ATF like a sieve, but when I
really think about it, the only thing that should make it less practical
than my GTV-6 (from a reliability standpoint) was the fact that its carbs
and ignition require more frequent maintanance. But I think a lot of this
sort of thing is psychological--my gut feeling of impracticality is the
same for the '63 Jag my parents had before the '59, and while it was also
100% reliable and got driven over 50 miles every day, I always remember it
as being an old car that we never took long trips in. Then I realize that
when they bought it in 1985, it was 22 years old. My GTV-6, which I don't
hesitate to drive the 300 miles between school and home, was built in
November 1981. Hmm... Perhaps the lesson I should learn from all this
reflection is that any car can be bulletproof reliable as long as it's
properly maintained.