Always Looking For Another

Jeremy Clarkson of BBC's Top Gear on what an Alfa Romeo is.

This last weekend was almost the perfect weekend for a car guy, if you overlook the traffic and the fires in Orange County. It was warm and a bit breezy on the drive up to Tom Hollfelder's collection. There were about 7 cars in convoy from San Diego. We joined up with the LA Alfa group, including a member from Santa Barbara in a gorgeous 85 GTV6. Tiger Racing website.

It was announced earlier today that Phil Hill, the first American to win the Formula 1 World Championship, passed from this earth. Phil was 81. He was hospitalized while attending the Monterey Historic Races weekend. I actually had the pleasure of meeting Phil, his wife Alma, his son Derek, and his daughter Vanessa when Derek was racing karts. My memories of him were that he was a genuinely friendly guy who was always willing to talk about cars and racing with an enthusiastic fan. He will be missed in the automotive community.

The marque is on the rise. An Alfa Romeo 8C2900 won this year's coveted Best of Show at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. According to an Autoweek posting, the owners actually drive the car on tours and will continue the practice in the future. We could possibly see this car in the "wild" some time in the future. Congratulations to Jon and Mary Shirley.

Top Gear in the UK just posted a new review of Alfa's new model, the Mito . In addition to explaining the derivation of the name, Mi for Milan and To for Torino; but also that mito is Italian for myth.

An ultimate Italian hot rod. Brera GTA

I’m sure that many of us share the same situation with regards to our Alfas. We love the cars for the handling and general good feelings that they convey to us when we are driving them, but we don’t really get a chance to drive them as often as we would like under ideal driving conditions. One of those times happened to me recently. I try to run my GTV6 regularly to keep it happy, but I haven’t been able to give it a good “Italian tune-up” lately, so after the President’s Day holiday (and the rain storm that whipped through), I decided that it might be nice to take a drive up SR-76. I jumped on Champagne Blvd. at Deer Springs Rd. and headed north, keeping off the busy freeway. It was a really nice morning, crisp clean air, blue sky dotted with only a few puffy clouds. As I turned eastward on 76, there wasn’t even much casino traffic, this being a Tuesday morning. It just felt great to be carving the curves passing Rice Canyon, Couser Canyon and then the Pala Casino was in the re

Alfa Romeo is ramping up the campaign for the Mi.To; their model to compete with the Mini. Check out their new blog at Mi.To . You might even win a trip to see the car in Italy or a tour of the factory! The article in Autoweek, Alfa Blog Chats up the Mi.To mentions the possibility of four turbocharged engines !

I wish it was me in this 8C!

Alfa Romeo is definitely taking the Mi.To to the forefront. Check out this video interview with two of the designers of the Mi.To. The interview is done in Italian with English subtitles.

This video was said to be playing at the Alfa stand at Geneva above the display. From the looks of the footage, the two 8C's were on the West Coast filming.

The 2008 Chili Cook-off was a great success. We had more and better chili than ever before. Pictures will be posted soon. March 29 is the 2nd Annual Alfas at Cars and Coffee exposition at Ford Motor Company's West Coast Performance Auto Group HQ in Irvine. AROSC Cars and Coffee

Readers of this blog may know that I recently distributed a link that urged the Italian design firm Bertone to continue with plans to exhibit the B.A.T. 11 concept Alfa Romeo commissioned by Gary Kaberle. Gary was the owner of B.A.T. 9 , which was the last of the Berlina Aerodinamica Tecnica. It was first rumored that Bertone was in such bad shape financially that they would not be displaying anything in Geneva at all. It turns out that they snuck B.A.T. 11 in to a special design show. Car Design News . Way to go Gary!!!

Winding Road reports that Alfa is bringing a new model to the U.S. It was revealed at the Geneva Auto Show. Winding Road This looks to fill in under the new 147 and will be a "barn burner". I can hardly wait!!!

Desert Classic Concours d'Elegance Jennifer and I went to the Desert Concours with high hopes that there were going to be more Alfas in the Car Club Corral, but our 164 was the only one! There were only 3 others in the whole show, one of which is pretty significant. Symbolic Motors was showing the 6C2500 Villa d'Este Touring. It was magnificent. We had fun all by ourselves. Misha came along for the ride also. We had several people stop by and talked about Alfas in general as well as 164s specifically. Hope to see more people at the Cars and Coffee on March 29 in Irvine.

This is unreal. It's probably good that we don't have this here, yet.

It's almost time for the new Desert Classic Concours d'Elegance in Palm Springs. It's going to be March 1. Maserati is the featured marque, but the news is that the first Ferrari chassis built as a single seater, Formula 1 race car will be on display for the first time in decades. San Diego Alfisti will be driving up through the coastal mountains to the Palms to Pines Highway and then down to Palm Desert and up SR 111 to the O'Donnell Golf Course . There will be a Car Club Corral so we can pitch our lawn chairs and picnic, if we so desire.

Well, the trip to Philadelphia fell right in between two weather systems and they were having some very unseasonable warmth in the city. I got to go to the Reading Terminal Market as it was literally across the street from my hotel. I had the absolutely best pastrami sandwich I have ever had at Hershel's East Side Deli. Wow was it good. The conference was great. I learned a lot in the tutorial on IND in eCTD format and got a lot of good information from the sessions on document control. Now we're involved in the implementation of the eCTD publishing tool.

Well, it's off to Philadelphia today for the annual DIA ( http://www.diahome.org ) Electronic Data Management conference and show. A lot of geeks getting together and talking about things like, eCTD and document management systems -- Open Text ( www.opentext.com ) versus Documentum or who did the best implementation and a lot of schmoozing with vendors. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the AROCSD 2008 Kickoff Meeting is this Wednesday at Filippi's, Mira Mesa (AROCSD.org) . DavidL will be presiding in my absence. Ciao!