Dear Alfasport Club’s friends,
I want to wish you a merry Christmas with some notes on a passion which you all know well: historic car collecting.
I read on a specialist magazine that vintage car lovers are increasing conspicuously and this cannot be anything else than a positive fact. Personally I think that vintage cars are a form of culture and true collecting is an expression of brains because to preserve a vintage car is like to preserve history for aftertime.
In 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti wrote: “We state that the magnificence of the world has enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of velocity. A racing car with its bonnet adorned by great tubes looking like snakes with an explosive breath... a roaring motorcar that sounds like it runs on the machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Nike of Samothrace* ...”.
This sentence mirrors what an ever-increasing number of car drivers seem to feel: an irrational enthusiasm for anything is mechanic, noisy, unfiltered.
The monotony of modern car design rouses the desire for vintage cars and it is not only a matter of voluptuous forms. With electronics more and more present in modern cars, drivers feel as they were no longer breaking in horsepowers but managing bits and bytes. Hence, as much responsibility delegated to countless electronic devices increases, as much importance of the driver decreases. Here is why driving a vintage car has got something adventurous and immediate at the same time. For most vintage car owners, a car represents more a pleasure object than a capital investment. In fact, they do not care that the valuable jewel carries them efficiently from a place to another, it can be said that for them, as for Buddhists, the real aim is the way.
And such a way is almost always spiked with obstacles: they sit caught in narrow cabins, with their feet roasted by exhaust pipes placed under the sheet iron flatcar, and breathlessly operate big wooden steering-wheels.
Burnt oil, squeaking sheets, crumpled leather, but it is worthwhile. Not to talk about thousands of work hours that such masterpieces need. To keep them in working order, more patience and tolerance is needed than for modern cars, often also a more consistent financial effort, and most of all a certain aptitude for suffering.
There is who becomes very fond of mechanics and, thus, loves to maintain a car in working order and originality in every detail. There is also who loves sport and wants to race with a car whose technical limits allow a real driving fun, even at reasonable speeds, especially when compared to limits offered by nowadays cars.
Moreover, love for the brand is also expressed through historical studies. Here is when one so starts to collect fliers and magazines dealing with the favourite model and to gather model cars and books. All this is important, as much important as to own a car.
One day, one Alfista friend showed me proudly his blackened fingernails and told me: “Who loves his own car looks after it with his hands.” Such emotional devotion is very nice and also contagious.
Who falls victim of this addiction must resign because vintage cars are a disease from which one cannot recover any more, further you can imagine if it is a matter of Alfa Romeo!

I wish you a heartfelt merry Christmas and a very happy New Year!