== Alfa Romeo's American Orgasm == by Mark Morford

[madokie]

============= MARK MORFORD'S NOTES & ERRATA =============
SFGate.com - Friday, September 1, 2006


Will the hot Italian brand's U.S. homecoming mean more sex for you? The Alfa Brera says, Hell yes
(By Mark Morford)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2006/09/01/notes090106.DTL&nl=fix

I never owned an old Alfa. I know almost nothing about the renowned Italian brand's heritage or their politics or design manifesto, and hence have almost zero nostalgia for antique Alfa automobiles or Dustin Hoffman's cool little car in "The Graduate".

Truly, my modern German engineering-loving heart does not really beat for creaky old automobiles in general, and when it comes to Italian cars I still tend to refer to the great line I read somewhere: "When you buy an Italian car, you get a great engine with some other stuff thrown in for good measure." Rim shot.

Well, not anymore.

To my mind, there is but one reason for celebrating the news that Alfa Romeo will finally be returning to the U.S. auto market in 2009 after a nearly 15-year absence: the Alfa Romeo Brera. A.k.a. the sexiest coupe ever. A.k.a. an orgasm on wheels. A.k.a. another precious reason to live, to pray that the world's petroleum reserves hold out just a little longer, to blithely ignore the fact that we all really should be turning our national attention to alternative fuels and Earth-friendly transportation and that we are ruining the planet with our gluttony and our oily wars and our Bush. I know. ...

Read the rest:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2006/09/01/notes090106.DTL&nl=fix

[crikkett]

1. dated a guy once

who owned an alpha.

My clearest memory is of spending a day on the telephone locating a "brain box" or something (it was pre-Internet) and then trying to drive more than 100 miles to pick it up from a junkyard. A used part saved him $750 or more, if I remember correctly. I ended up at a rest area on a pay phone having it shipped from wherever the heck the junkyard was, because snow had traffic at a crawl and I wasn't going to make it before closing.

Ah, for the free and fun days of my youth when phones were expensive, gas was cheap and I could get by on no sleep...