Erratic. Nonsensical. Devoid of any appearance of logic.
That’s how my friends have described my approach to collecting over the past few years.
But thanks to a recent temptation, my unfocused and somewhat frantic searching may be nearing an end.
An adequately powered sports car that handles well on skinny tires and weighs around 2,500 pounds is my Holy Grail. That’s an apt description of a classic 1950s-to-1960s Alfa Romeo. At the zenith of my Alfa collecting, I had seven of them.
When, due to my stroke, I was no longer able to drive a manual-shift car, my search parameters changed. As I have little interest in digital-era cars that do too many things for you, I started looking for classic cars with auto and semi-automatic transmissions that could be made to handle well. It’s a sparse field.
Fairly rapidly I cycled through a Porsche 928 S4 automatic, a Citroën DS21 with its semiautomatic Citromatic gearbox, and an automatic Volvo 122S. The Porsche was too heavy and dark inside. The DS21 was a lovely car but more suited for a weekend in Paris than a long-term relationship. Although we made the Volvo handle very, very well, its archaic BorgWarner 3-speed coupled to an anemic engine left much to be desired.
Just right
I have also made some surprising and enjoyable discoveries. Our 29,000-mile 1971 Jaguar E-type V12 coupe continues to be a delight. The suspension was freshened by Ed Grayson of Consolidated Auto Works and we have driven it on three SCM 1000 tours. It’s a keeper.
We happened across a 24,000-mile automatic 1991 Alfa Romeo Spider S4. What the Alfa has going for it is its styling, still striking after all these years. It proclaims loudly that it is “not-a-Miata” and people respond. While heavy and wheezy compared to my old Duetto, the car is still peppy off the line, and with its skinny tires you don’t have to go very fast to have fun and scare yourself.
Most recently, our 48,000-mile 1975 Porsche 911S Sportomatic has come into regular use after having been fixed and fettled by Al Blanchard and his wizards at A&P Specialties. If I wanted the narcotic of shifting a vintage air-cooled 911, a Sporto was my only choice. It’s one I am glad I made, as the car is simply a delight to drive. The three widely spaced gears give you plenty of opportunity to wind the car up in the rev range, and there’s nothing like the view over the hood of a classic 911. Plus, the steering is light and direct. As with any 911, you become one with the car the more you ask of it. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
The final member of our “core” collection is the 1972 Mercedes-Benz 250C. A tasty one-owner car (with 225k miles), it has needed the most done to it to meet the SCM standard for fun to drive. Chip Starr has been our “250 whisperer,” as he rebuilt and modified the suspension, and added Weber carburetors and a high-speed rear end. While its handling will never be confused with that of an Alfa Giulia Super, it’s well planted in turns and cruises easily at 80 mph. It’s a perfect family touring car.
Enter Raymond Loewy
I don’t recall how it started, but suddenly one day I found myself surrounded by Studebaker Avanti fanatics. While I have always admired the striking looks of these cars, I have never driven one. Or even sat in one, for that matter.
Soon enough, a likely prospect at an affordable price showed up. I had a hot flash of the sort that is usually the harbinger of needing to find more room in the garage.
Then Editor-In-Chief Jeff Sabatini took me behind the woodshed. “Don’t forget that the Avanti is a rebodied Studebaker Lark. It’s never going to handle like a European sports car,” he said. “Why don’t you enjoy the cars you have?”
He has a point. Even with “only” these four cars, I don’t drive them regularly enough. And I have already invested thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to get them just the way I want them. In short, the spritely handling automatic analog sports car of my dreams may already be in my garage.
So instead of trying to make an Avanti into something it’s not, I’ll be spending more time driving the Jaguar or 911. I’m taking a leave of absence from my Great Slushbox Search and going to spend some quality time with the cars that I already have. They are all tuned, on good tires, with suspensions rebuilt and modified to make them just a little better.
My goal is to take a different one out each week and simply immerse myself in the joys of driving a classic, analog car.
Will the cars of this new collection offer the same type of enraptured fun that my Alfas did? No. But life moves on, and there is no sense spending time wishing for something that isn’t going to be.
I do believe this. Just as I’ve moved to a different phase in my life, I’ve found different cars that can make me happy now. I want to extract every bit of pleasure they have to offer. But to do that I’ll need to take the time I have been wasting chasing more cars and use it to plan out opportunities to use the cars I have.
Road trip, anyone? ♥