Wherefore Art Thou (Alfa) Romeo

Masarati, Lamborghini, Triumph, Aston Martin, Porsche, Alfa Romeo. Sports cars once spelled cool, and danger and excitement. In my youth I was fixated on them, building plastic models incessantly and blowing my allowance on all the racing magazines. Then I grew up, sort of.

A floor shift with four speeds was de rigeur. No self-respecting sports car used an automatic transmission. This allowed “racing changes� and forced, rapid acceleration as you powered around the track or ranged over those back country hills and dales. I downshifted and upshifted and learned to change gears without clutching (Not the brightest idea, at least that’s what the fellow at the garage told me later).

Driving to work was my racetrack as I roared away each morning in my poor man’s Porsche, better known as “The Bug.� At $1,500, or $1 a pound, it was affordable and had most of the sports car stuff, albeit somewhat downscale. My candy apple red 1962 VW had all the necessary attributes except, of course, power, speed and cool.

Of course you froze your patootie off in the winter because the air-cooled engine only sent up enough heat to trick you into thinking you would soon be warm. I never understood how a car built in a cold country could miss this feature.

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Oh yes, and that other little design flaw. On every cold morning I would play startup roulette. Leaping into the driver’s seat I would mutter a soft prayer and turn the ignition key. Damn! Foiled again.

Leap out of the car, jack up the rear wheel, turn on the ignition put the transmission in fourth gear, grip the tire with both arms and spin the wheel to crank over the engine. Then, very carefully, reach inside and put the gear shift in neutral, wait for the wheel to stop spinning, lower the jack, jump in, scrape the ice off of the inside of the windshield, and head out for my morning road race to work.

Years later I heard that the VW had been one of Adolf Hitler’s brainchilds. The man really was diabolical.

Eventually I swore off manual transmissions. It had a lot to do with the day that I was creeping along on the Long Island Expressway in a snow storm that had converted my 40-minute commute into two hours with my morning coffee making its presence known. The constant pumping of the clutch was torture. The uncool guys with their automatic transmissions were just floating along while I labored in distress. Point taken.

Eventually I got over my sports car mania. Not being a high-income guy forced choices. I opted for a family, food and clothing.

Oh well. I still have my slot car racing set.

Bill Abrams resides in Pine Plains.