I write this having just returned from the annual Classic Motor Show, an event which I suddenly realise I must have been attending in its various guises for the best part of 25 years. Never mind coppers looking younger, nothing hammers home the ageing process more than seeing cars you remember driving as a new model on a press launch being displayed as classics today.
Familiarity also breeds a peculiar kind of contempt, meaning it takes something particularly unusual to grab my attention these days... and sadly, even the most beautifully presented E-Type won’t do it. In fact, this year I was stopped in my tracks by the unexpected sight of a restored Maestro van before being rendered speechless by the sight of not just one but two examples of the Alfa 6 – a car which must be all but extinct even in its homeland.
Appropriately enough, the ’80s Italian executive contenders were on a club stand right next to the XJ40 club, something which seemed somehow appropriate, especially considering the blue-chip heritage both marques possess and the emotion they arouse. Many’s the road test of the latest Alfa headlined ‘last chance saloon’ by the motoring press but with the benefit of hindsight it seems the XE was in fact a ‘last chance saloon’ even if we didn’t know it at the time. Indeed, both marques have failed to make it in the volume game and are now pinning their hopes on a reinvented identity and an e
