You Can Go Home Again

Hartman and Martin

If knowledge is power, SCMers are about to become an even more formidable group of collectors. The information on all 40,000 cars in our database will soon be available to you 24/7, from anywhere in the world, via your handheld devices. Starting at the Scottsdale auctions in January, anyone with a Treo, Blackberry, or similar device will be able to query our database by sending an e-mail to search@scmgold.com. If you enter “1967 Jaguar XKE” in the subject field of your e-mail, you’ll get recent sale results, including VIN and condition information, along with the price. If you put “1E33466” into the subject field, and that VIN is in our database, you’ll get back the information we have on that car. Through the Scottsdale weekend until the end of January, this service will be free. After that, it will be included as a part of the SCM Gold package, which is $60 a year or $7.95 a month, and will include unlimited queries and on-line lookups. Our Web team, headed by Jason Glaspey, and assisted by Matt King, has been beavering away on this for some time now, and we all owe them thanks. For more information, go to www .sportscarmarket.com.

WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT, ALFIE

Our 1965 Alfa Romeo Giulia Spider Veloce is now sitting in the SCM garage. Long-time SCMer Doug Hartman and I picked the car up from Alfa guru Conrad Stevenson at his shop in Berkeley. I last saw this car, S/N AR39020, in 1990 when I sold it to Ken Metzger in Belvedere, California. Metzger recently offered the car back, and I took it, handing it over to Stevenson in October to work his magic. He focused on the mechanicals, overhauling and straightening the head, rebuilding the carburetors, renewing and improving the suspension, and a host of other things, with parts coming from Jon Norman’s Alfa Parts. The refurbishment came to just over $14,000. That’s a lot of money to spend on a car that I had already paid $22,000 for. But as I pulled into my garage two days and 846 miles later, there was no question I got a magnificent return on my investment. We took Highway 101 to Cloverdale, then followed the California Mille route onto Highway 126. The Veloce pulled strongly to redline with more torque than I remembered, surely a function of the Pittatori intake cam and 1750 exhaust cam Stevenson installed. Highway 126 is a series of sweeping turns posted at 35 mph to 45 mph, which in Alfa talk is somewhere around 60 mph. With Rugh front springs and sway bar, the Alfa bit into the corners and scooted out of them. Arriving at Booneville, a fortunate thing happened. Hartman discovered he had left his wallet at the Mauritson vineyard, www.mauritsonwine .com, in Healdsburg. Perhaps the generous pours of the 2001 Zinfandel had something to do with his memory lapse. This gave us an excuse to take Highway 253 to Ukiah, the fastest way back to Healdsburg. For those who rate roads the way Robert Parker rates wines, you’ll know we had just been given a generous goblet of a 98-rating two-lane—full-bodied, complex, and with an exuberant finish. But while I was busy rowing the shifter through the gears, the brake pedal got very soft and squished to the floor, and smoke started pouring from the front left brake. A quick call to Stevenson resulted in a diagnosis. “Welcome to 2006,” he said. “You’ve got what I call ‘California organic break pads.’ They probably smell like marijuana when they’re smoking, don’t they?” He told us to take it easy. We followed his advice and the brakes came back.

HOWDY, MR. BUNYAN

We left Eureka as the sun came up, slicing through the morning coastal fog at 80 mph. The Alfa was in its element, cruising at 4,000 rpm in fifth gear, pounding out the miles, stopping only for obligatory photos at the Trees of Mystery and the Prehistoric Gardens. At Reedsport, on the Oregon coast, we took Highway 38 toward Drain and Interstate 5. A stop for a “Logger Burger” in Elkton (pop. 170) led to our discovery of the Brandborg winery, www.brandborg.com, and another round of tasting. The resultant case in the trunk was our fourth. Missing wallets aside, no gearhead adventure is complete without a mini-drama. And 30 miles from home, the Alfa delivered. Pulling out from a rest stop, the headlights failed. The 41-year-old switch had decided it was time to die. With the sun setting, we had a thirty-minute window to get to Hartman’s home in Portland. As darkness descended upon us, he resorted to blitzing down the freeway with the left blinker flashing. “Maybe that’ll keep the Excursions from running over us,” he said. We made it to his house, the stealth-Alfa sneaking from block to block without headlights. Hartman solved our problem in a most Alfa way by running the headlight wires through a home wall switch. With an outside temperature of 29 degrees, I took my daughter Alex to school this morning. She said she felt like she was on a “sports car theme park ride.” I told her she was right. Everyone else on the road was just going to work. We, on the other hand, were having an adventure. Which is about as good a reason to own an old Alfa, or any old car for that matter, as I can imagine.u

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