I actually have a pretty vivid recollection -like watching a home movie almost, of walking into that Dodge dealership and looking at the cars they had. For example, I can distinctly recall seeing a green Plymouth Duster on display outside of the show room and feeling particularly unimpressed with the fact that it looked like a Dodge Shadow/Plymouth Sundance with a different badge and a spoiler. I guess that’s not such a horrible thing though, considering the original Duster was just a fastback version of the Plymouth Valiant. At the time, it just didn’t sit well with me, and even today, I don’t find the cars to have much appeal. In light of the fact that there was a used Dodge Daytona sitting outside, and a brand spankin’ new Dodge Stealth sitting inside the showroom, the Duster just couldn’t hold a candle to the cars it was surrounded by.
The Stealth is a car I’d like to profile sometime if I can find one to take a picture of for you these days. It’s really just a Mitsubishi 3000GT, but was made for a shorter period of time. Hey, remember there was that Viper TV show that was basically like one big product placement ad and the Stealth featured prominently in it as second fiddle to the Viper? No? Well, it didn’t last long, but it did exist and I remember watching an episode of it and thinking the cars were cool but the show sucked.
I should probably just get to the point of this all already. So here it is. Back when I was in high school, Dodge dealerships sometimes doubled as Alfa Romeo dealerships, and back in 1992, Stew Hansen’s sure did. The one thing in that show room that I kept gravitating toward wasn’t the Stealth, certainly not their minivans, and not a Plymouth Duster, either. What I saw, and what I wanted, was the cherry red Alfa Romeo Spider. The car was beautiful, and aside from a casual longing for the far-too-small-for-Tom Selleck Ferrari 308 that Magnum P.I. used to cruise around in on TV with his head sticking out the top, the Alfa Romeo Spider was the first Italian car I can recall really admiring as something I’d like to have for myself someday (cars like the Testarossa were certainly cool, but too overblown for my tastes at the time) . Later that year, I went to Des Moines’ rather pitiful version of an auto show and made a point to track down the Alpha Romeos to gawk at. Somewhere, my parents have a picture of 14 year old me sitting in the driver’s seat of an Alfa Spider with a huge, stupid grin on my face.
What I saw at Stew Hansen’s and the auto show were 4th and last generation versions of the Spider… though word has it that earlier this year, Alfa Romeo struck a deal with Mazda to develop some new spiders based on the Miata (MX-5) platform –Yay! Anyway, the nice thing about the Spider is that in all the years it has been made, from 1966-1993, it changed very little in looks. It’s nice because the Spider features beautiful design work by a certain car design firm in Cambiano, Italy known as Pininfarina –after its founder, Battista Pininfarina, who opened up shop in 1930, though Battista’s son, Sergio did the design of the Alfa Spider. This firm does absolutely fantastic work, and ranks up there right next to Giugiaro’s Italdesign in my estimation of what constitutes a top notch car design firm.
As a side note, I did realize that an Alfa Romeo Spider was quite out of my league when I was a kid who didn’t even have a license yet, but I did make an earnest attempt at talking my dad into picking up another of Sergio Pininfarina’s designs in the form of a junky little Fiat 124 roadster that was sitting out in the elements at a farm where my dad’s friend Joe lived and built dragsters. That little car was in really rough shape. Poking around inside the Fiat, I was quickly fascinated and a bit disgusted when I discovered a mummified toad had curled up and died on the floorboard on the driver’s side of the vehicle. In retrospect, it’s a good thing my dad thought better of dragging that little Fiat home with us, or I’d probably still be fixing crap on it and hauling petrified wildlife out from its nooks and crannies.
Anyway, back to the Spider and its good looks. Over the years, things changed only slightly for the Spider. Initially, they had more of a rounded rump, which was later resculpted to what is known as a Kammback, (named for Wunibald Kamm, a German Aerodynamicist) which features a rather abrupt chop-job at the rear end of the car instead of rounded out lines flowing from the sides, around to the tail end. Due to safety standards, the chrome bumpers were for a while, replaced with black rubberized ones, and later with color keyed bumpers, and the signature triangular Alfa grille went from all chrome and a bit rounded to more plastic with chrome-like appliqué and more angular shape. Still, all spiders are nice looking cars.. some are just nicer looking than others.
The Alfa I’ve got for us today is a 3rd generation spider. It’s a 1989, and it’s top of the line, too. In its day, the Alfa Romeo Spider could be had in various trim levels. In the late 80’s, the base trim package was called the Graduate –named after the 1967 Dustin Hoffman movie in which a gorgeous little red Alfa Spider stole a number of scenes. MSRP on a 1989 Graduate Spider was just shy of $17,000. Next up the scale is the Veloce (think velocity to get its translation –it means rapidly) with more bells and whistles and better/more options for just over $20,000 brand new back in 1989. Then, of course there’s the Quadrifoglio (AKA “four leaf clover”) which was the top level trim package, and featured an optional hard top (which our example today is wearing), special side skirts, special chin and rear spoilers, 15” rims with a design exclusive to the quadrifoglio package, and buyer’s choice of 3 colors –red, black, or silver. All for about $23,500. In 1989, there were 3,950 Spiders made by Alfa, and I don’t know what the breakdown is of Quadrifoglios vs. Veloces vs. Graduates, but what it does mean is that while these cars aren’t particularly rare, it isn’t common to see them either, and probably less common, I would guess, to see a Quadrifoglio.
All Spiders featured the same mechanical bits, however. Under the hood is a 2.0L inline 4 cylinder engine that produces 115 HP and 122 lb-ft of torque and is paired with a 5 speed manual transmission. This set up will get drivers about 21 MPG in the city and 27 on the highway. No matter where you see one, whether in city traffic, on the highway, or in the driveway, these are dashing little cars and always a pleasure to look at. Here’s some good news, too. This one I’ve got pictures of today was sitting out at Ellingson Classic Cars and is for sale for $7,950, if anybody is interested.
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