Dream on: My Alfa Romeo Story Part 1

Dreams are strange things. And by dreams, I refer not to those that dance in your head while you sleep but rather those that keep you awake, enrapt in excitement. You don’t choose what they are, where they come from; something just captures your fancy and refuses to let go.

Just like the sleek, Italian sportscar on the foreign news pages of the first car magazine I ever bought when I was twelve. No, it wasn't a Ferrari and technically, it wasn't not a sportscar either, just a regular saloon so beautiful that mundane details such as number of doors and how much power the engine made ceased to matter. 

The car in my magazine. Yup 16 years on, it's still got it 

The car in my drive-way back then. Er I don't think it ever had it

The car had a suitably exotic sounding name too, Alfa Romeo, capturing perfectly the romantic world it seemed to come from. A world where car logos weren't boring monograms but pieces of art instead, containing medieval flags and coiled serpents who liked to spit fire and wear golden crowns.

So turns out it wasn't as much a fire-spitting serpent as much as a man eating serpent. Oops

Sadly in the world I lived in, the chances of seeing a fire-spitting serpent were probably higher than that of seeing an Alfa Romeo in real life.  The most exotic car you would spot in 1990s India would be the…wait for it…drumrollllllll... Honda City which had a scarcely believable 100 horsepower (phew!). They said Mercedes Benzes were available for the super-rich but that was more of a legend no one had ever spotted (indeed I was fifteen when I saw one for the first time, that too from a distance). Me, I puttered happily in my parent’s Maruti 800 (aka 1980’s Suzuki Alto) or my father’s office car the Hindustan Ambassador (aka 1950’s Morris Oxford)

The Hindustan Ambassador. Still selling, even in 2014, only in my beloved India

Nonetheless hope was not lost and a year later, I had finally saved up enough pocket-money to get my own Alfa Romeo (You raise your eyebrows but read on). I pestered my parents to take the road-trip back to the big city where I had seen it, in the corner of the really fancy store.

It was bright red, all of four inches tall and had cost me more chocolates and potato chips than I cared to count. But I was the proud owner of a perfect 1:18 scale model of an Alfa Romeo 156, the award winning design that exploded the career of a certain Walter Da Silva (who went on to also design the famous Audi R8 as well as some kick ass Leica cameras).

I didn’t know any of that then of course. All I cared about was that I had a shiny Alfa Romeo on my desk, something to cheer me up and inspire me while studying (which being a school student in India, I had to do a lot of:()

Isn't this better motivation than watching internet videos where "what happened next will amaze you"?

Fast forward a few years I made huge strides in my Alfa Romeo dream. I think it was my second week in Singapore, the country I had come to do my undergraduate studies, when a sleek shape appeared down the road. I rubbed my eyes just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things before positively screaming in glee and ran towards the first Alfa Romeo I had spotted in real life, most definitely scaring (and maybe even scarring for life) my friend who was walking beside me. If things weren't heart stopping enough already, it was a convertible and made an exhaust note more organic than Body Shop’s best effort. The driver probably didn’t notice me as he zoomed off but I stared wistfully at the Alfa’s retreating rear end longer than I would like to admit.

In my defence, that is a pretty posterior

Singapore had more treats for me too. At the end of the my first year in University, there was a car show in the city. That contained many firsts for me. The first time I saw a Ferrari. The first time I saw a Lamborghini. The first time I sat on a Harley Davidson. And of course the one closest to my heart, the first time I sat inside an Alfa Romeo. Touched the steering wheel, even twirled it a little bit. Smelt and felt the Tan leather. Photo’s of this moment unfortunately have been lost in time or more likely in the great Hard Disk crash of 2006.

It was during University as well where I discovered the TV show Top Gear. Messrs Clarkson, Hammond and May today are more entertainment than serious automotive journalism but  back in a pre-Youtube era of the early 2000s, episodes of Top Gear were all the automotive video content I had and I gobbled them up like some kind of deranged turkey.

Can a car ever be art? When it's an Alfa Romeo, you bet it can. Tell them, Jeremy!

Top Gear told me all about Alfa Romeo’s rich history and tradition of achingly gorgeous automobiles dating back almost a hundred years.  That even the great Enzo Ferrari had gotten his start as a racing driver for Alfa Romeo. It wasn’t all good news though. Alfa’s past was more chequered than the average chessboard and the reliability of their cars was a running joke.

Reliability? You don't ask if the Mona Lisa is reliable

Nonetheless, the Top Gear presenters agreed (in fact the only thing they ever agreed on) that for the brief moment that an Alfa Romeo was working properly, there was nothing better, no other car that you could form such a deep emotional connection with. They went on to state (with the air of Moses reading the commandments) that "you can never be a true petrol-head till you have owned an Alfa Romeo”. The impressionable tweenager I was, I took those words to heart obviously.

Fourth year of University saw a big leap forward in the Alfa journey. Not quite as historic as Neil Armstrong's small step but  it might as well have been. A friend had somehow managed to get himself a Singapore driving license (an achievement. Trust me) and despite being penniless students, we decided to go browse Alexandra Road, the car showroom district of Singapore. We started off small of course, venturing into the Mitsubishi showroom to get warmed up, trying our luck with Toyota and then Honda. We were too intimidated to even approach the Alfa Romeo showroom but in a mad moment, we decided to pretend that we were prospective buyers. The sales guy probably eyed our scruffy mugs with some skepticism but was surprisingly polite and even offered us a test drive of their latest offering, the 159, the successor to my favourite 156. My friend was quite overwhelmed and drove the car as if it was made of a particular fragile combination of glass and china. Thankfully shortly afterwards, the sales guy took over the wheel to show us what an Alfa could do. It was one of those seminal automotive moments that left an indelible impression. The speed, the sound, the adrenelin rush..it didn't even matter that I was not driving. I emerged from that ride, a crazed lunatic raving to anyone who would listen about the wonder of the world that was the Alfa Romeo 159, 

I'd like one in Red please. Or White. Or Black. Just give me one damn it!

After University, I took the obligatory step into the corporate world. Spreadsheets and power points littered my desktop but peeking from behind them was the triple eyed countenance of the Alfa 159, reminding me what it was all for.  Initially car ownership was not really an possibility what with fresh graduate salary levels and student loans to make one weep. I think it was about three years in, following a particularly decent salary hike, the maths told me that if I lived particularly frugally and forgot about the future, I could just about afford a car in the country with the most expensive car-prices in the world.

What I wanted was obvious. It was also obvious that the Alfa Romeo 159 retailed at well above my annual salary and even second hand the pickings were slim. That didn't stop me from going and test-driving it anyway, with a bit more confidence this time buoyed by transitioning from penniless student to 'about to make silly wallet burning decision' young office worker. But reality was that I just couldn't afford it, even I sold a kidney and an lung. So with a slightly heavy heart, I 'settled' for a cheaper car. The cheaper car, a VW Scirocco, still cost well above my annual salary mind you (yes, never take financial advice from me) and it was a lovely, lovely thing (but that is a different story)

Over the next eighteen months, a couple of things happened.
- Car prices in Singapore went up dramatically (thanks to something called the COE. If you don't know what it is, lucky you) which meant that I could sell my Scirocco for more than what I bought it for, even after a year of driving it.
-The Alfa Romeo 159 reached the end of its production run, resulting in the automotive equivalent of a clearance sale with prices slashed with little regard for mercy or profit

End Result. Well, it's obvious isn't it. Just look below

No, this photo has not been doctored. Otherwise I would have photoshopped out the beginnings of a paunch

On a bright, sunny day in October 2012, I picked my very own Alfa Romeo 159. In bright Alfa Red, what else. Complete with Tan Leather. And the fire-spitting snake on the steering wheel

Trying and failing to dress stylishly enough for an Alfa Romeo owner

Dreams are strange. But sometimes they do come true:)