This isn’t really about my first Alfa Romeo. If it was, I would have started with the significance of this brand and worked my way to the specifics of the Stelvio. But instead, this is about how I got here and how that is in some ways perhaps way more significant.
My wife thinks I dramatize. And she is usually right. But when it comes to my childhood in Nashik, many including her, cannot fathom the gorgeousness of my normal middle class roots honed in a small town in India.
It is entirely true that I used to wait for my much elder brother to return from school on a horse drawn carriage! Admittedly those horses were quickly replaced by archaic British and Italian cars and buses. As India opened up with capitalism and Coca-Cola, more foreign brands rolled in and progress was swift for a nation that was craving for a different future from its past.
Model Year 82
My dad’s first car was a used Fiat 1100 and it was a hoot. As a small child I would climb up the bench seat and stand on the seat to be able to look out of the windshield. The thin black ridged steering wheel with an even thinner concentric chrome horn ring felt large, poignant and purposeful. This is where and how I started with cars, in the early 80’s. A time where an Italian relic that was cutting edge in a new India; a generation where my dad worked hard to buy a used car; a beginning of an era of a cradle of happiness that I always associate with the warm summers in Nashik.
If I were to trace my past through four wheels and the memories associated with them, it would constitute a book (Finally an idea!). It is likely, however, that my story isn’t unique since many kids like me, watched the country and their lives change considerably as they grew older. But very few loved legendary cars like I did and even fewer decided to collect them one by one.
It is an expensive hobby. It is an inadvisable hobby for those who come from middle class roots and then end up working in a salaried jobs like me. Each car that I have bought has been progressively expensive until I decided to own multiple cars. That allowed me to be ridiculously wasteful on one sports car and a be very cautious spender on the other white collar daily driver, as if to almost justify my outlandishness. Regardless, it wasn’t justifiable unless you understand what love is.
My newest possession is different. I didn’t pay for it. I earned it.
The grille that launched a thousand ships
For every other car, I saved months, years and decades depending on how badly I wanted to overreach my abilities. The used Honda was cheap. The Acura wasn’t. Until of course I decided to get the Lotus that made the Acura looked pragmatic. In Germany, I found sense in spending on a premium small rear wheel drive BMW. And while I was there I started craving for a rear engine rear wheel drive marvel. Coming back to states, I saved money and still squeezed in a few laughs with a Ford Focus ST. eventually though the dam broke and my savings account manifested in a black gorgeousness of a Porsche 911. All of these cars, I paid for them. I paid for them through my nose or through a bank loan that I paid back through my nose. Regardless, my prized possession was bought. With money, that you could argue, that was earned through years of work or through intelligent manipulation of the mind.
Column mounted paddle shifters
But this car, this Alfa Romeo, wasn’t bought, at least, not by me. It is rather a culmination of thirteen years of work at a company where I persistently chased for more. It is simply a perk. But that is a reference I find cheap. How can a perk be of an Italian marque, a legendary racing car maker, the creator of the 159 Alfetta? How could it be that I could walk out of a dealership with a brand new misano blue Stelvio with merely a signature?
Would I have ever got this car on my own? Probably not! For starters it is an automatic and thereafter a crossover. For it to have been perfect I would have wanted it as a manual rear wheel drive station wagon. But yet, it is my first Alfa Romeo, a brand that I have craved for so long. So long that I had to wait for them re-launch in the United States. And yet, a year after they did, a new one stands in my garage almost as if it were meant to be. All because I worked hard at a job I thoroughly enjoyed.
It soaks bumps as it carves curves
There is wondrous mixture of joy, immense gratitude and feeling of success today. I plan to relish in her Italian-ness. I am expecting to find her quirky design limitations as I live with her each day. Yet, that distinctive grille, that delicious turn in of the most wonderfully sculpted steering wheel and those perfectly milled paddle shifters would convince me that my mantra holds water. That life is just too short for owning nondescript brands and models. And it is entirely pointless without owning an Alfa Romeo.
But perhaps the true lesson here is that with a modicum of talent and with persistence, even an average-joe like me can reach decent heights with garages that are full of hard-earned dreams.
Wonderful. I liked you saying – “But yet, it is my first Alfa Romeo, a brand that I have craved for so long. So long that I had to wait for them re-launch in the United States. And yet, a year after they did, a new one stands in my garage almost as if it were meant to be. All because I worked hard at a job I thoroughly enjoyed.”
Your Photo handling steering wheel of my FIAT 1100 – a 1966 Model follows.