A sad tale of a pile of rust and broken dreams
It started, for me, with a phone call last week. Well, a two phone calls, a text, a voicemail and two emails. My stepmother kept saying the same thing: “David, help. A friend of mine is in trouble.”
If you’ve never had that call, you will. Someone needs bail, needs a ride, needs to get out of a bad situation, is in the hospital, or should be. It’s just that the call doesn’t usually involve a 1980 Alfa Romeo Spider.
My stepmother’s account was a little jumbled. Her friends, Mr. and Mrs. L, were the Alfa owners, a car which had some special meaning for Mr. L. But according to the story, Mr. L was in moderately declining mental health and had sent the car to a family friend for work.
Now, it had been a few years and Mrs. L had just discovered that her husband had sent around $100,000 to this friend for the car. That did sound like trouble. I called Mrs. L in Tarrytown, a town 30 miles north of New York (where Benedict Arnold’s plot was uncovered).
Mrs. L. was frantic and it took some time to untangle her problems. It wasn’t $100,000, that was a total that involved other things Mr. L. had got himself into. But he was out $49,000 for the Alfa and it had been at the shop for several years now.
What should she do?
She already had a police detective involved, and the car was apparently in pieces. At some point I had to drop the bad news on her: An Alfa spider is worth maybe $15,000. On a good day.
We talked on and off all day. Another problem she was having was that she couldn’t find storage anywhere under $300 a month—30 miles from NYC, remember—and she really didn’t want to be in any deeper than she already was. I put out a call to all the New York area friends I could think of, and gave Mrs. L a plan:
1. Sell the car as it is. If it was apart, maybe she gets $1,000 out of it, but she doesn’t spend any more.
2. Have it put back together somewhere reputable. More money would go into it, but she’d have an easier time selling it, or they could keep it.
But no one had seen the car yet. There were ever shifting stories from the mechanic, who in between our phone calls told her she could access it, also that he’d just ordered two new carburetors for it. Unless you remove the fuel injection system, they don’t use carburetors.
I was trying to figure out if I could get to Tarrytown without costing her a fortune when my friend Jamie stepped up. He not only knew a 50-year-old Italian car shop literally 10 minutes away from where the Alfa was, but he also has a car storage garage across the Hudson river, and charges $200 a month. Mrs. L was thrilled.
A couple of days later they’d been to see the car, and it was worse than anyone had thought. Of the $49,000 there was no sign, just an old Italian convertible, missing its engine, that had been sitting outside for two years through Northeastern winters and was falling apart. The only thing Mrs. L wants it for now, is evidence.
She says she’s still finding check stubs, as far back as 2014 now. $49,000 would have bought the two best Alfa Spiders in the world. Maybe three. Or a half-dozen perfectly good ones for their own little used Alfa lot.
Mrs. L and the Alfa are both in Jamie’s good hands now, but neither are likely to be made whole. Maybe someone will restore the Alfa, but not them.
The car Mr. L loved so much will be gone forever, and all he’ll have left is a pile of rust and broken dreams.
David Traver Adolphus is a freelance automotive researcher who quit his full time job writing about old cars to pursue his lifelong dream of writing about old AND new cars. Follow him on Twitter as @proscriptus.