ALFISTA
Introduction: Alessandro Marrone
Words by Paolo Ghia
Photography: Photos Lisbeth
Some have an extra gear. They are the ones who have petrol in their veins, who as children instead of a lullaby preferred the roar of an engine and were eager to grow older only to actually sit in the driver’s seat and give shape to their dreams.
If then this passion born by chance or handed down from generation to generation, it does not matter – that spark marks the infancy of a child, it’s the target of a teenager and the ambition of a grown man. You have to live your dream and we must never stop chasing the desire to enjoy those strong emotions that tighten our stomach, that make your knees trembling every time like the first one. Driving some cars is like daydreaming, or maybe even better, since the smell of petrol invades the nostrils just like the roar of an engine without filters asks you to hold down the right foot, daring more and assume the role of the ideal hero, yourself. The mechanical relationship man-machine was different, sometimes you had to come to terms, and on occasion you would come out defeated, but in addition to having learned a new lesson you returned home with what over the years would become experience – a wealth of stories that would be enough to fill a book and not a simple article. Paolo, friend, gentleman driver, a true Alfista, houses a collection of cars with so much history and a true soul. Among the many interesting things to tell us, we have asked a question that has catapulted him back in time, just where it all began, and within a few minutes it seemed to live his own feelings, as we were back beside him, aboard cars that have written important chapters of the beautiful Italy and beyond. Cars that have written the most beautiful chapters of Paolo’s life and his family.
When passion has born.
“To find the origins of my passion for cars, especially for Alfa Romeo of the 60s and 70s we have to go back almost fifty years!
It was the spring of 1965, when Giovanni Negri, a close family friend (so intimate as to be called Uncle Giovanni), showed up with a brand new amaranth Giulia Super with white cream leather interior – he took me on his knees while moving the car in the backyard. It was a dazzling emotion, never forgotten, and since then the seed of passion took root in me indelibly.
Driving a car, hearing the roar of the engine, watching the movements of the instruments, the operation of the controls – it all had a fatal attraction that made long trips seem shorter and made the movements that dad or mom were doing while driving seem so extraordinary. So much so that on Sundays, when we wasn’t using the car, I was spending hours sitting in the driver’s seat and dreaming to drive: accelerator, brake, clutch, gearbox, indicators, steering wheel … how many beautiful trips I’ve done this way! And how many cars collected, disassembled, lined up in the hallway waiting for Dad’s return from the office to show him and describe them all by make, model, features and everything else. Finally I turned 18 and two days after I was ready to take the driving license and eventually transform dreams into reality.
Glorious! Less for my mother, who since that day almost lost the chance to drive her 500 first, and her A112 then – all because of me! Upon graduation was time for the first salary, and soon after, for my first Alfa Romeo. A shiny Alfa Romeo Duetto 2000 – drying completely my bank account and so the car had to be stuck in the garage because I had no money for insurance and petrol. But meanwhile, the treasure was home.
When my family, after a few years, welcomed the arrival of our first child, the Duetto had become too little and then was replaced by a metallic beige 2000 sedan, with 17 years of age but with only 21,000 km on the clock. You could not resist to that twin cam engine. Absolutely not. The joy for the birth of Matteo was huge, but the displeasure to give up my beloved spider was real too. A cocktail of emotions that vented in a high fever at 39 the day I left to the new owner the “no longer mine” Duetto. Why, you ask, the brown Duetto is still in the collection? Simple, because after a short time, a good friend who bought it and kept it jealously for over 20 years. Just as long as it took to convince him to sell it back to me. Now the Duetto gives me the same strong emotions of a long time ago and safe to say, it does that for my children too for whom years ago I had to give it up.
The same fate has befallen the sedan that I mentioned above you. After a while it was replaced by a more modern 1.5cc 33 and took other roads that led it to drive over 200,000 kilometers in various parts of Italy, to suffer the indignity of a gas system and a lot of rust over the years. Until 2002, when I saw it for sale in Tuscany for only €350! How to resist the idea to bring it home, restore it and have it back in the garage? Unfortunately the operation was a blood bath for my wallet. But now, the sedan is reborn to a new life, and it rests in my garage, even more beautiful than before. So how many fans can boast of having bought twice the same cars, I think only a few – perhaps because to do so, you have to be a bit ‘crazy.
The evolution of the whole thing.
With time, around the first Duetto and the sedan, many cars have followed, some for a short periods, others for longer ones, ranging from the Balilla to Ferraris and feeding that passion gradually transformed into a real “sickness”, but at the same time in a “cure” thanks to the good times this was gaving me. Looking for a car to buy, deal with it, fix it, use it, show it to the friends – it is a great pleasure and keeps me as a little child even if I’m almost 60.
But back to the central theme of this article, an Alfa 2000 could not fail to complete the triptych and my eyes fell on the GTV version. In fact, over the years some GTVs had stayed in the garage, but for short periods maybe because not perfect enough or because replaced with something more appealing at the time until about a year ago, the gray coupe with just 49,000 kilometers and only one previous owner you see in the pictures entered the band alongside the sedan and the spider sisters, creating a perfect and now inseparable trio!
The twin cam and racing
Ah, those memorable names such as Giulia GTA, Giulia TI Super, GTAm, Autodelta, Monzeglio. Yes Monzeglio! Who remembers those fast yellow GTs with brown checkered roof that often gave a hard time to the official Autodeltas or far more powerful cars? Prepared by a group of competent mechanics led by a man as robust as his passion for cars: Renato Monzeglio. Then it happens that Renato was born in the hills of Monferrato, in the province of Alessandria, just where I live and where his nephew still lives – and by the way he is the cousin of my wife (absolute destiny). How many nights we spent listening to him talk about engines, races, trials, disappointments and victories. And how many wonderful cars we brought to the countryside when he returned for the weekend from Turin where he managed the Alfa Romeo dealership at the time. And what about those transporters filled with yellow and brown GTs leaving for the circuits in Europe and returned almost always victorious? How many photos depicting me, still a young boy, close to those jewels.
Gradually, the desire not to settle for the photographs was born in me and in my very close friend and so we wanted to have one of those wonderful GTAm all for ourselves. But where to find one? And at what price? And above all, do they still exist? Unable to give an answer to all these questions, one day we took a crazy decision (one of the many taken during our relationship with cars). Let’s build a replica identical to the original and so we gave life to the one you see in this article.
I could go on for hours, many years have passed for achieving it, a lot of patience and skills made available by the Workshop of F.lli Ottone in Occimiano (AL), and let’s be honest a lot of money too, but in the end the result has paid off of everything and it is a joy to wander through the hills of Renato Monzeglio with an identical copy of his winning cars.
Paolo’s passion is contagious, his words reflect an irresistible urge to transmit those sensational emotions that he grew and lived as a child. And now, just as before, he only asks to sit in the cockpit, start the engine, check water and oil levels and you’ll see him soaking into the green hills of Monferrato, roaming like a kid who just got his license, when in reality he has become a true keeper of an exceptional collection. A real heydays’ Alfista.