Bored and looking.

When I was younger it meant the same thing that it does now- I’m looking for cars, and like most teetering on the edge of sixty types, I’m looking for the cars of my youth, which in my case weren’t the obnoxiously omnipresent tri-fives of Boomer car show infamy:

No, I was never a fan of the mid-century car for the masses, my tastes running more to the glorious land yachts that were manufactured by Grand American Brands like Cadillac, Lincoln, or Imperial, brands that have changed so much now as to be meaningless, simply another name in a corporate lineup.

I liked Fiats. I lusted after Alfas. My uncle’s Datsun Z-cars were another introduction to the world of attainable, exotic machines with sporting pretensions, a close, dark comfortable cocoon of speed so dissimilar to the ’69 Z-28 Camaro or ’55 Chevrolet 210 sedan that another uncle favored. I liked the idea of the ability to carry speed through corners as opposed to raw acceleration and little else.

I don’t know how I arrived at tastes antipodal to those of my immediate relations, but I suspect a latent gene, an odd flip of the taste switch that led me to favor modes of transport/entertainment that were eccentric as far as the conventional tastes of the time were.

So to the looking: As I’d written about before, Craigslist was my go-to for things Italian and cheap. It’d been a while , so I clicked on over to the place and entered the parameters- 250 miles away, $1 to 15k range for price and finally, Alfa Romeo.

Here’s what landed:

10.5 K for a fixer-upper. This would have been maybe half that five years back. 7K tops. I copied the ad text:

1969 Alfa Romeo Duetto 1750 Spyder convertible, needs floor patches, rockers, I have all new metal replacement panels in box, clean title on non op, car needs restoration, and is not running, stored inside since early 90’s, have a stack of receipts and records, receipts include motor rebuild, trans rebuild for trans, etc,$10500,

All I can think of is this is a 50k car, easily. Payable over time, only 10,500 starts your journey.

Typing in Fiat brought this, after scrolling through the ubiquitous Nuova 500s:

This particular rust heap is available in Monterey, Ca, at a place that specializes in interesting old crocks scoured from the nearby hills and valleys. Need an oddball car? Go to Monterey.

$500.00 is also a lot less expensive than 10.5 k, and while Alfa parts are available, so are Fiat parts, as long as you know where to look. Maybe 20K tops. Far cry from 50k.

But is it worth it to me? I’m finding as I approach my sixties, I’m more interested in writing about cars and maybe redeveloping my drawing hand that I’ve let lay fallow too long, a result of nagging perfectionism that told me to lay my pencils down when I was in my 20’s, because I perceived myself as no good as far as drawing went, when it turns out that I was at a point in my development where instruction would’ve improved things.

Say I bought the Fiat. My temptation would be to make something else out of it, using the engine and transmission to build something akin to an Abarth 1000 Bialbero, or an OTAS . The downside is that in the last forty or so years since I earned my driver’s license traffic has become busier , faster and unforgiving and these cool microcars are quite unsafe in these modern flows, and if I were to build something, I’d want to use it everywhere.

I looked at a Datsun/Nissan or two, but my interest in traveling down memory lane was waning, as was my desire for the acquisition of a project. These trips down memory lane keep me here in the present, and somewhat focused and appreciative of how good the cars are nowadays.

I say “Somewhat” because every now and again, something strikes my fancy…