Dolce Vita on Main Street: a love letter to a red Alfa Romeo Spider
Dolce Vita on Main Street: a love letter to a red Alfa Romeo Spider
She got one paragraph in the Cruisin' On Main recap. Che vergogna — my mistake. Here's the apology, in full.
A Correction, Of Sorts
I gave this car a paragraph next to a pink Thunderbird. That was never going to be enough.
Back in the Cruisin' On Main roundup I called her "red, on fire," gave her three sentences, and moved on to the next row of chrome like a man with no sense of priorities. That was a mistake I've been meaning to correct since the moment I filed it. Some cars share a paragraph. This one gets its own confession.
Rosso, top down, both hoods popped like she genuinely had nothing to hide — engine bay and trunk both, parked on Main Street between a yellow '60s Impala and whatever else Bozeman decided to shut a street down for this year. I walked past a dozen genuinely great cars to get back to her. Twice.
Amore A Prima Vista
Love at first sight isn't a figure of speech when it happens on Main Street.
Here's what I actually know, and I know enough to say it with a straight face: that's a Pininfarina-bodied Alfa Romeo Spider, part of the same 750/101-series family as the Giulietta and early Giulia — the car that basically invented the idea of an Italian open-top GT you could drive every day and marry well above your station. The fender badge confirms it before the shape even needs to: the little silver crown over the cursive f is Pininfarina's signature, not Bertone's — the same house that would go on to design Ferraris and the Duetto, cutting its teeth right here on a car this pretty. Different coachbuilder, different mission than the Bertone-bodied GTV coupe I fell for at another show this summer. Same family, two very different kinds of beautiful.
Under that long, low hood: Alfa's own twin-cam four — the bialbero, aluminum head, the engine architecture Giuseppe Busso drew up that would power half of Alfa's lineup for the next three decades — tucked into a bay lined in tan quilted carpet, because apparently even the parts nobody sees deserved tailoring in 1960s Milan. Chrome bumpers with proper over-riders, round taillights, steel wheels wearing a Biscione medallion dead center. A wood-rim wheel, period-correct Nardi style, ahead of three simple round gauges and a shifter topped in more of that same wood. Nothing about this car apologizes for existing. Nothing about it needs to.
What I'm Working With Here
- Body: Pininfarina-designed Spider, 750/101-series Giulietta/Giulia family
- Engine: Alfa twin-cam four ("bialbero"), aluminum head, Giuseppe Busso's design
- Wheel: period-style Nardi wood rim, three round gauges, wood shift knob
- Badges: Biscione medallion on the hubcaps, Pininfarina crown-and-f on the fender
- Character: built for one job — a coast road, the top down, and absolutely no hurry
This is the car I'd trade the Beat, the Lexus, and a reasonable percentage of my remaining kidneys for.
La Costiera, In My Head
This is the car for the Amalfi Coast. Not a car for the Amalfi Coast — the car.
I don't need to have driven the Costiera Amalfitana to know this is the car for it. Top down, that little bialbero four spinning out its own particular rombo off every cliffside villa and hairpin retaining wall between Positano and Amalfi, lemon groves doing their best to out-perfume the exhaust note and losing. This isn't a car built for a commute. It's built for dolce far niente — the sweetness of doing absolutely nothing, on purpose, at speed, with the top down and somewhere better to be that you're in no rush to reach.
Every proportion on this thing is doing the work Italians call bella figura — cutting a fine figure, effortlessly, because looking this good while going nowhere in particular is basically a national sport over there. Bozeman's Main Street is a fine stand-in for one Saturday morning. But this car deserves the real coast road eventually, and so, frankly, do I.
The Verdict
Andiamo. Someday, this car, that coast, no particular hurry.
I came back to a car show recap I already published just to give one paragraph the full spread it earned. No regrets. A Pininfarina Spider on a closed-off Main Street in Montana is a fine Saturday. The same car on the Amalfi Coast, top down, is the whole point of owning one in the first place — and until I get there myself, I'll settle for circling this one in a parking lot, notebook in hand, acting like I wasn't already in love before I lifted the camera.
