I’m just back from the 18^th annual Oregon Festival of Cars, in Bend, OR, and this year’s event was as much about the journey as the car show itself.

For the past year, our 1967 Alfa has defined reliability. Built by engineer Dave Rugh as a daily driver for his wife Colleen, who used it for twenty years that way, it simply goes and goes.

In fact, weekend before last, Alex drove it to Tacoma and back (over 300 miles) without a hiccup.

But all that changed on Saturday.

Old cars can be a pain in a lot of ways, but some of mine give me a headache. A real headache. And I’m wondering if I’m the only one who suffers from this, or if someone else has figured out how to solve it.

I know, the first thing that comes to mind is carbon monoxide, how old cars run rich, and the bad sealing around trunks and windows, and all the holes, large and small, that have developed in the body structure over the years.

But with some of my cars it is more than that – and, I’m the ONLY one driving them who gets the pounding in the temples, slight heartburn, etc. – everyone else drives them and doesn’t notice a thing.

Chess Pieces in the SCM Garage Are About to Get Shuffled

As my daughter, Alex, pulled out of the driveway this afternoon in our 1967 GTV, en route to a 500-mile Labor Day weekend road trip, her parting words to me were, “Don’t buy too many cars while I’m gone!”

Last week she referred to me as the Cat Lady of Collecting. My feelings were hurt, so the only way I could make myself feel better was to post on Facebook that I was in the hunt for a vintage BMW 6-series (aka a Shark). With each new listing my enabling friends sent me, I felt a little better.

The “duckling imprint” theory of collecting continues to rear its billed head around the SCM offices.

Many years ago, I had an Alfetta GT as my daily car. While it was a profoundly poorly-constructed vehicle and cost me thousands of dollars in my short period of ownership, nonetheless I was always taken with its rakish lines: the way the front edge of the hood protruded like the eyelashes of a sultry Italian vixen, and the curious placement of the instrument cluster between the driver and passenger. That it has a transaxle confirms the link between my car and the famous racing Alfetta GT monopostos of the 1950s.