Awesome in what way?
To me there's no difference between a Vauxhall Chevette and an Austin Princess.
They were crap back then, and they're ultra crap now.
I always had you down as a bit of a driver, but if you think there's no telling a Princess from a Chevette..... no matter where you are on the scale you should still be able to differentiate between the way cars drive. A Mk5 Escort is pretty rubbish and so is a Mk3 Astra of the same vintage, but I can still tell the difference
Anyway that isn't what we're talking about!
Alfa Romeo. Well, I've never had a long term relationship with one but I have had a few flings over the years
My first experience with Italian cars was a big old Alfa 75 that some eccentric guy I delivered papers to owned. I never got to look under the bonnet, but he regularly used to fire it up and rev it on the drive (he was too mad to drive) It barked like something out of the intro to "Grand Prix" and I was bewitched on the spot.
As I got closer to the magical driving age, there was a guy down the road who had a Fiat Strada Abarth 105TC. Now, he was a bit of an idol at the time anyway (shady history, played electric guitar, been in a rock band, hinted at past glories of wild group sex) and the car was the finishing touch. It had been parked up against his hedge for about 2 years and was seriously past it's best, bodywise. One day I convinced him to fire it up. So he did.
He fired it up , it wouldn't idle, so he took it out up the driver blipping the throttle like a 1950's F1 car. Inched out onto the road, dumped the clutch and smoked the tyres for what at the time seemed like an unbelievable distance. There were huge black lines up the road for months afterwards. The car disappeared from view, over the crest of a hill, then he turned around and came back. Over the crest at what must have been 60 odd mph on the redline (no insurance, no tax, no MOT, single track residential street with no pavements
) whacked on the brakes, locked a front wheel and left another black line down the road.
"Got a sticky caliper but she's still pretty lively man"
This cemented my early thoughts on Italian cars. I was mortified when he refused to sell it to me.
A mate of mine has had a few Alfa Spiders, and a 146. All great fun to drive. Sharp, responsive, not the best by any means but all had a little bit of "something" about them that you can't quantify.
It's the same as anything. Do you pick the shirt off the rack that is the most neatly or acceptably styled, or the one you feel coolest in?
Do you go for the textbook model girlfriend or the one you fancy the most?
Do you buy the most suitable house for your needs, or the one that FEELS right when you walk in the front door?
We humans are fickle and emotional things and sometimes it's deeply unsatisfying to just rely on pure statistics and technical excellence when making choices like this.
That's one reason I bought the Manta. The guy nextdoor had one when I was a kid and every time he got in it you'd think he'd just done a bank job. At 9 years old I thought "I gotta have me some of this"
Stuff like that stays with some of us
