By 1981 I had owned the Alfatross for 12 years, during which time it had morphed in my consciousness from a hot date to an old friend in need of some serious TLC. It was getting harder to remember what the original fascination was.
When I first laid eyes on it--and became infatuated the way only a teenager can--it was sitting forlornly in the parking lot of an apartment complex in Chapel Hill, home of the University of North Carolina. I had come to try to enroll and the only person I knew there was my older cousin Bo, who owned the car. But the car was what I saw first. It drew me with a kind of fatal attraction. It stood out from the familiar, drab, utilitarian assortment of student motor vehicles like a nugget of gold in a gravel bed--not that I knew what it was! I approached for a closer look.
It was Spartan in its appointments. No fancy chrome do-dads, emblems, or embellishments. It was painted a deep Italian racing red (not that I knew what that was either). The windows were strangely hazy. I realized they weren't even glass, just some kind of transparent plastic. Through the driver's window I could see that the speedometer went up to 220! (Only later did it occurr to me that the calibration was in KPH, not MPH, but that's still 132 mph!) And the door handle was some kind of weird recessed contraption that didn't even look like a door handle. What the . . . .? I didn't notice the defects, the chipped paint, the dirt, the crazed windows, the rusty wire wheels, or the fact that the dented rear end didn't even have a bumper. All I could see was that it was different in a way that didn't just appeal to me, it ate me up.
It wasn't love at first sight. More like a fatal attraction!
When I first laid eyes on it--and became infatuated the way only a teenager can--it was sitting forlornly in the parking lot of an apartment complex in Chapel Hill, home of the University of North Carolina. I had come to try to enroll and the only person I knew there was my older cousin Bo, who owned the car. But the car was what I saw first. It drew me with a kind of fatal attraction. It stood out from the familiar, drab, utilitarian assortment of student motor vehicles like a nugget of gold in a gravel bed--not that I knew what it was! I approached for a closer look.
It was Spartan in its appointments. No fancy chrome do-dads, emblems, or embellishments. It was painted a deep Italian racing red (not that I knew what that was either). The windows were strangely hazy. I realized they weren't even glass, just some kind of transparent plastic. Through the driver's window I could see that the speedometer went up to 220! (Only later did it occurr to me that the calibration was in KPH, not MPH, but that's still 132 mph!) And the door handle was some kind of weird recessed contraption that didn't even look like a door handle. What the . . . .? I didn't notice the defects, the chipped paint, the dirt, the crazed windows, the rusty wire wheels, or the fact that the dented rear end didn't even have a bumper. All I could see was that it was different in a way that didn't just appeal to me, it ate me up.
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| How many speedometers go up to 220?! |
