So, should everyone really buy an Alfa?
THE COMMON VIEW, helped along by Jeremy Clarkson, is that all motoring journalists will have possessed an Alfa Romeo at some point. The occasional punchline is that said motoring journalists only like Alfas because they can hand them back to the manufacturers when they break them.
Well, we at Octane own our cars, they’re not borrowed from manufacturers, and sure enough most of us have indeed possessed Alfas, which on the whole have proven to be as reliable (or not) as any other classics. I’m afraid I let the side down here, though in my defence I did nearly buy a Giulia coupé once.
Fortunately we have a true Alfa Romeo disciple on Team Octane, and that’s art director Mark Sommer. He drives a 2005 Alfa GT as an everyday car and has owned all manner of other modern-ish Alfas – though never a true classic. As you may have gathered from recent Octane
Cars contributions, Mark (known in the office as ‘Mk2’, to distinguish him from deputy editor Mark Dixon ‘Mk1’) recently treated himself to a 1969 Giulia saloon, bought and restored remotely via contacts in Milan.
When it came to collecting the finished article, what else could he do but embark on one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences of flying out to pick up the car and drive it home – in this case over 1000 miles via the Alps.
Of course, this is magazine feature gold, and the two Marks travelled together to enable Mk1 to photograph Mk2’s epic journey.
Along the way they became ever more immersed in the charms (and troubles) of Alfa Romeo, and emerged determined to delve deeper. Hence this issue, with a triple-treat of Alfas: Mark’s Giulia saloon; the story of the Spiders used in The Graduate; and, to tie it all together, a piece by John Simister on the Giulia coupé that explains how it is that the sum of relatively normal parts can result in something so much better than it should be.
As for me, I’m once again left wondering why, of the 40-odd cars I’ve owned, none has been an Alfa Romeo.