BARGAIN ALFA

I’m a relatively new reader of your magazine, but seeing the request for bargain buys I couldn’t help posting my experience.

I worked under a supervisor at a retail store, when one day we were talking about cars when she mentioned that she did have a car for sale, of which she didn’t state its name but simply called it a “spider full of spiders”. Intrigued, I asked her about the price and whether I could come inspect it. We agreed to a time and I went over to check out this ‘spider full of spiders’.

When I arrived with my father she walked out of her house with the garage keys and told me the car hadn’t been moved for four years, I told my father to pull up the family car as we would possibly need to jumpstart it since a f lat battery was more or less confirmed.

Imagine my surprise when the garage door opened revealing what she meant by spider full of spiders.

An Alfa Romeo 1998 Spider soft-top Convertible. 1.8lt Twinspark, manual transmission. Eagerly I rolled the car out in its dust covered-cobwebby glory and popped the hood to check if anything looked odd, I had a list of things to check for from some mates who wanted to help. This was followed by vigorously searching for wherever the battery would be. Turns out it’s behind the driver seat in its own special little compartment. That’s the Italian engineering way of doing things for you.

All this time my supervisor friend was explaining that the car might not start properly because of a spark plug issue, I mentioned it would be no problem as I could just replace them if I chose to buy the car, but that would depend on pricing, I mentioned to her.

The car started up right away when the leads were hooked up, without any issue. Wow.

I eagerly, did a quick odo check and jotted down the total kilometres, only 78,000km or so, it’s done basically nothing considering its age. The car needed a blue slip safety check as it was no longer registered anymore, so that would extra cost on top of whatever the car would cost. I inquired about a price.

“Truth be told, I just want to get rid of it, it’s taking up space and I need the garage space for my new Saab, so you can have it for $1000.” Me and my dad’s jaws basically fell on the f loor followed by a quick stabbing pain in the back caused by him jabbing me constantly saying “buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it”. So after she signed over the (old as hell) rego papers I paid a copious amount of money for my line of work and me and my dad drove the car to my local mechanic (I would’ve driven, but I am still on my Ls and can’t drive a manual). He promptly passed the blue slip inspection and said there was “very little wrong with the car”. This wasn’t

bad for my first car!

Ever since then, I’ve been taking good care of it and doing some of my own fixes on the car myself to try and avoid costly mechanic jobs, especially in relation to its electrics. For whatever reason, the front grille fan electrics had burnt out completely so I had to replace the connector for that to get it working again, I also had an Alfa enthusiast come and look at the car and when I told him the price he too couldn’t believe that I got it for such a price. He also mentioned that these cars in the community were called “Pocket Rockets” for being a small car but with plenty of power when you needed it and mentioned that these cars were ver y close to hitting “vintage” status.

I treat the car kinda like a parent treats their child, regularly washes, and I polish it when I have time off work, and I try to drive it as much as I can to understand how a manual works before I go for my red provisional license test. I’ve only managed to stall it once! So I reckon I almost have the hang of it and should be ready for a full red provisional licence soon. Hopefully I can get it.

I think this is going on for a bit too long now, so I’ll end it here. Hope you guys enjoy this !