In 2018, after 35 years of owning my beloved GTV, I sold it to a collector who lives on the east coast. It was not an easy decision, but the time had come. Why, you ask? When I bought it I was in my 30’s and loved nothing more than to take fast drives on winding mountain roads. I was good at car control. A favorite thing was to enter a curve at speed and, just for the sheer fun of it, kick the tail out, drift the car through the apex, feel the tires bite and then shoot forward out of it. As the years went by, I put a lot of time and money into modifications that improved the Alfa’s power and its ability to stick to the road. Yes, it was restomoded. Except for being a little lower to the ground and having fatter tires, it looked stock, though it was far from it. The mods enabled me to drive the Alfa even faster than before. Rev matched heel and toe downshifts came so naturally, I didn’t realize I was doing it, including when driving around town. As a result, even my Sunday-best right shoes had odd wear marks on the side.
As the car aged, the originality and rust free nature of its body made it more rare and more valuable, and I became uncomfortable leaving the Alfa parked on city streets or in parking lots, especially when traveling. And then there was the “me” factor. When I got into the Alfa I could not make myself drive it like the old guy I’ve become; it always brought out the hooligan in me. So, after finally deciding it was time to let the car move on to its next caretaker, I made sure to give all the grandkids rides, which we recorded on video. After one last wash, it went on a transporter and headed across the country.
It’s not all sad, though. I still need a manual tranny car, just to maintain some semblance of my lost youth, so the Alfa was replaced with a 2008 Porsche Cayman S. I then switched out the Porsche’s cheap plastic gear shift tower for an all aluminum custom unit from Numeric Racing. The sloppy Porsche shift is cured now, but I’m still learning to heel and toe the Cayman.
Numbers matching original engine and tranny. The original paperwork went with the car, as did its entire life history, from the time it was ordered by Brian Lamb, the first owner to when I sold it to the third owner in New York.