Category: Drive Time

Car&Driver magazine took the hotter-than-fire Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio for an extended 40,000-mile test, and it broke their tiny little hearts.

Why so?  Well, to anyone who’s ever owned or driven an Alfa Romeo for any length of time, it’s quite simple, really:

Of course  the electricals were going to fail — and of course  the hoses weren’t going to be properly clamped, and of course  the indicator lever was going to snap in your hand like a piece of raw spaghetti, and of course  the door-handles  and gear knob were going to come off in your hand — wait, the last three didn’t happen?

Actually, by normal Alfa Romeo standards then, the little Giulia QF is quite reliable.

Here’s the thing:  the more complicated cars become, the greater the chance that things will go wrong.  (Hell, my rock-solid-reliable VW Tiguan has a faulty tire-pressure sensor, and a dicky coolant sensor needs replacing as well — granted, these after 85,000 miles, but still.)

Now add that greater complication to an Italian  car — especially  any Alfa Romeo — and the chance of things breaking will increase exponentially.  All those electrical- and electronic doodads are simply begging to fail, and the more of them there are… well, clearly Car&Driver  didn’t get the memo.

Read the linked article for the testers’ comments, which are priceless.  My favorite:

Just a prediction:  Nobody is going to buy this car when we are done with it.

Wrong.  Serious Alfa Romeo fans will read the critique and see that in just over a year, the car was in the shop for a total of three months.  Then they’ll shrug and say, “I wonder if I can get it in green?”  (Answer:  no.)

Silly rabbits.

This week as promised, we’ll look at the smaller U.S. car companies and their 1954 offerings:

DeSoto Firedome

DeSoto Powermaster

Hudson Hornet

Kaiser Special

Nash Metropolitan

Packard Caribbean

Studebaker Commander

I know the “Studdy” has many fans, but it’s only the best of a very bad bunch.  By popular demand, here’s the 1954 Corvette:

Thanks, but if we’re going to do 1954 sports cars, I’ll still take the Mercedes 300SL, thank you:

Which brings to the end of the 1954 Birth Year series.  Thank you all for playing along.

…and even though I don’t do Hallmark holidays, here’s one for all us dads, today:

And for the record, here’s Your Humble Narrator and the Son& Heir, each pic taken at age 23:

Didn’t even bounce.

I never saw any of these cars while growing up in South Africa, and I might as well be talking Sanskrit as about them and their characteristics — nor am I that keen to learn much about them either — so I’m counting on my GearHead Readers to step up to the plate and add their thoughts in Comments.  All I can say is that as far as I’m concerned, pretty much all of these behemoths are as ugly as a boil on  a pretty girl’s face.  And just remember:  it’s not a complete catalogue, just a list of cars that came onto the market in 1954, and that caught my eye for one reason or another.

Cadillac Eldorado

Chrysler New Yorker

Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight

Ford Crestliner

Pontiac Star Chief

Chevrolet Bel-Air

Plymouth Belvedere

Lincoln Capri

Mercury Monterey

Ye gods.  And I thought that modern car design was Clone Central.  If someone were to tell me that I had  to pick one of the above for a daily drive, I think I’d go with a Colt 1911 Single Bullet model.

Next week we’ll be looking at the products of the smaller car manufacturers of the time (none of which have survived till today).  Maybe there’ll be some design differences there… but somehow, I’m not optimistic.

I think I’ll just revive my artistic aesthetic with a look at the Mercedes 220A of the period:

Ahhh… that’s better.

In my yoot, I never saw many of the 1954-model European cars featured below, which may have been a Good Thing.  Let me start off with the ones I did  see on the streets of Johannesburg:

Mercedes 300 S

Citroen Traction Avant 15

Renault 4CV

And the reason I saw the Renault at all may have been that it was assembled in Britishland from French parts, and imported into South Africa.  The following, however, could have been seen on the roads of Euroland back in the late 1950s and early 1960s:

Peugeot 203 

Renault Fregate

Simca Grand (“large”, not “grand”)

…as opposed to the small  Simca DV:

Lancia B20 GT

Hotchkiss Gregoire

…although fewer than 300 of these monsters were ever made, so you might NOT have seen one.

Even Alfa Romeo got into the “touring” groove:

1954 Alfa Romeo 1900C SS Touring

Of all the above, only the Alfa (because Alfa), Lancia (because Lancia) and Mercedes 300 (because engineering) would have my vote in the “old cars Kim would want to own because birth year”.

There was one more, though, that would definitely make the list because it had the first V8 engine ever mounted in a German car:

BMW 502

Except that I’d have preferred the rag-top model:

BMW 502 Baur Cabriolet

Oooooh, yummy.  Kim likes.

Next week, we’ll be looking at the 1954 Murkin cars.  Try to contain yourselves.