What Should I Buy? The Italian Job Edition

In this episode, our panel of petrol heads including experts from various car magazines and owner groups discusses what Italian cars first-time collectors should consider. They explore various cars under different price categories, focusing on models from Alpha Romeo, Maserati, Fiat, and Ferrari, among others. They share insights on affordability, drivability, and the special characteristics that define Italian cars. The conversation also touches on financing options, insurance tips, and the parts market for these iconic vehicles. While they agree that Alpha Romeo offers a fantastic entry point for beginners, they also delve into high-end fantasy cars like the Ferrari 288 GTO and the Maserati MC-12, making the episode a comprehensive guide for anyone looking to delve into the world of collecting Italian cars.

• We are focused on Italian Cars… collectors, sports cars and exotics, etc.
• Our audience is the collector / buyer who has always dreamed of buying an Italian car, but has been too afraid to cross that line, maybe it’s because of bad word-of-mouth, horror stories, misconceptions on parts availability, etc. – we want to myth bust that!
• Target price ranges are always <$50k, $50k-$150k, and the $150k+ buyers based on current economic climates. 
• “bang for the buck” is always key, and don’t be afraid to think outside the box on suggestions. example: cars designed by Italians, think Volvo P1800 ES – penned by a former Ferrari employee. Or any of the Zagato, Bertone, Ghia cars that are out there. 
• The grey-market and 20+ year cars are open season, so let’s bring up things like the popularity of the Lancia Delta Integrale HF’s (as an example) which are finding their way here now. How difficult are these cars to import?
• Suggestions for good “Investment Italians” – ie: Donovan has said, the Gallardo’s are the hot ticket right now for future growth/sell potential – what else is in that space? 

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 The Allure of Italian Cars
• 01:28 The Stolen Alfa Romeo Story
• 07:32 Shopping Criteria for Italian Cars
• 09:28 Affordable Italian Cars Under $50K
• 17:07 Oddball Italian Cars and Coachbuilders
• 22:39 The Quirky and Rare Italian Cars
• 34:59 The Appeal of Unique Car Designs
• 37:25 The Underrated Fiat Dino and the Fiat 130
• 38:55 Choosing Your First Collector Car
• 40:59 The Ferrari 400 and 412
• 43:22 The Ferrari 456: A Hidden Gem
• 50:00 The Controversial Ferrari Mondial
• 55:37 Lamborghini Jalpa: A Forgotten Classic
• 01:00:48 The Maserati Indy: An Underrated GT Car
• 01:06:10 The Iso Grifo and Rivolta
• 01:08:08 The Appeal of Italian Design and American Motors
• 01:09:22 Reliability Concerns and Ownership Experience
• 01:19:43 Comparing Italian and German Engines
• 01:20:44 Affordable Exotic Car Recommendations
• 01:26:16 Dream Cars and Fantasy Discussions
• 01:42:44 Pricing and Market Trends; Evaluating Car Ownership and Investment
• 01:46:41 Modern Remakes and Restomods
• 02:02:51 Financing and Insurance for Classic Cars
• 02:06:53 Alpha Romeo: The Ideal First Italian Car
• 02:15:31 Final Thoughts and Recommendations

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Our panel of break fix Petrolhead are back for another rousing. What should I buy? Debate using unique shopping criteria. They’re challenged to find our first time collector, the best vehicle that will make their friends go, where do you get that? Or, what the hell is wrong with you? At the next cars in coffee

Crew Chief Eric: for petrolhead of a certain age, the posters on our bedroom wall, the dream car, the exotic, the temptress, if you will. Those are the cars that corrupted our souls and invited us into the enthusiast world for the first time. They are defined by painstakingly passionate craftsmen, vehicles with luscious curves, exaggerated features, spicy accents, and fiery red paint schemes from manufacturers with names that end in vowels.

But thanks to misconceptions, myths, and limited availability, it’s often not at the top of collector’s minds unless they’re willing to take that risk or make that [00:01:00] plunge into the worlds of Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini, and Alfa Romeo to name a few.

Crew Chief Brad: With the help of returning what should I buy? Panelists and Italian car owners and experts such as William Ross from the Ferrari Marketplace, Chris Bright from Collector, part Exchange, Don Weiberg from Garage Style Magazine, along with Petrolhead extraordinaire Mark Shank.

We aim to prove the naysayers wrong and find you or me the perfect Italian collector car.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. Welcome back to the show, gentlemen. It’s always good to have you. Thanks for having us. You

Don Weberg: good to be back? It’s always good to see me. I know. I look in the mirror every day and I think, man, if the good Lord had created anything finer, he’d have kept it for himself.

No godsy

Chris Bright: shall I got seat. You doing that introduction was cracking me up. It’s like when you watch the newscaster, it’s like, hi, my name’s Chris Bright and I’m down in Mexico.

Mark Shank: Maserati

Chris Bright: spaghetti,

Don Weberg: ma.[00:02:00]

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, English is my second language. That’s all I’m gonna say.

Crew Chief Brad: Clearly

Crew Chief Eric: it just killed me. It’s like you’re going along and then it’s like, don’t get me started. Right. I have no

Don Weberg: bias. I am not interested in, you know, those little Italian jobs, William, you’ll be, you’ll be happy to know. I have absolutely no ego at all.

William. You’ll be very happy to know. I have no ego at all. None.

William Ross: Oh, I can see that. Yeah, you’re very humble.

Don Weberg: Very humble fish. My father was a dictator. You know? Which side did you take after the dick or the tater?

Mark Shank: I’m the most humble. There is no one more humble

Chris Bright: than, so, you know, I own an for Romeo. Mm-hmm.

And Alfred Mayo got stolen. Oh. About a month ago, I use it as a daily driver, and some people gave me grief about that, and I’m like, fuck you, it’s my car. One, [00:03:00] two. I’d rather every now and again, have a little bad happen to it, but be able to enjoy every moment with this car, right? And let people enjoy it out on the road.

Like it sparks conversations and all sorts of things everywhere I go. I was at the airport, I came back, it wasn’t where I left it, so I called the police and they thought I was a little crazy. But it, here’s one thing I learned at the airport, and it’s probably true at most airports, they go around the entire parking garage and inventory every car where it’s parked.

Like they drive a camera car around and they know, like, I gave ’em my license plate. And they go, yeah, your car’s in uh, two F, the second slot in. And it’s like, no, I’m standing exactly right there. And it’s not. But the fact that they even knew that was a little bit surprising. My car got stolen and. It got recovered.

Uh, three days later, a mechanic at a shop that I actually go to was driving home and he saw a car that looked out of place where it was, and he took a picture and he posted it. This Facebook group that chase’s stolen cars, it’s called [00:04:00] PDX, which is our airport code stolen cars. Guess what? My friend, uh, who had had her car stolen, said.

You should post up there. So she said, send me your information. I’ll do it for you. Because I was just kind of pissed off and not happy. And she did it. So she’s the one that actually saved the car. I went and I recovered it. It was part, actually not in a terrible place, but behind an RV of some people who were, you know, partaking of, of the rock.

The rock that is old.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, and and what did they want with the sixties era? Alpha male, by the way, I don’t

Chris Bright: think they’re the ones who stole it. I think they’re the ones who kind of got it when the people who actually stole it, who knew what they were doing. ’cause you are in an airport that is a highly surveilled place, right?

Yeah. I mean there’s cameras everywhere. They’re taking pictures of you every which way, tollgates and all that kind of stuff to get outta there. So they went in, they had face masks on and they did it in such a way. If you take a ticket and you leave within 10 minutes, ’cause the parking lot’s full, you don’t have to pay.

So there’s no payment required. They went in after that inventory, the [00:05:00] inventory ends by two. My car was. Rolling out the gate by two 30. So they had maximum time to kind of like before they brought it. But what I think they didn’t realize is a 1974 Alpha Mayo Julius Super is not a valuable car. It’s just, it’s not worth nothing.

But it’s also highly, highly conspicuous. ’cause within a day I had had an A PB put out to the entire Alpha Club nationally. Every member got a note saying, be on the lookout for this car. If you see it in Craigslist or whatever, like, hit us back. And that all brings me around to what we smoking. Well, I now own a crack pipe.

I

Crew Chief Eric: have,

Chris Bright: I looked in my glove box the other day when I got my car back and lo and behold, there’s a nice green crack pipe in there. So, oh. There you go.

Don Weberg: They took

William Ross: the time to dash it in the glove box. It was great.

Don Weberg: Yeah.

Mark Shank: But, but the best part about the crack pipe is the patina

William Ross: Oh, the CRO station on it. [00:06:00]

Mark Shank: Yeah.

I mean, you know, it’s authentic. It, it, it really came, it had some authentic use by a real passionate member of that community. They’re stolen Alpha Rome, Mayo.

Chris Bright: All right. All right. The inside of my car, they had clearly smoked quite a bit in there because Yeah, so I haven’t tried it yet. In fact, I haven’t taken it out yet because I have to get some rubber gloves or something to be able to like, I’m not touching that thing and I had to.

William Ross: You haven’t tried the crack pipe or tried driving your car?

Chris Bright: Not the crack, but I have driven my car, but whenever I lick my fingers I get this weird tingly sensation. So was there any damage

Crew Chief Eric: to the alpha? Did they try to hot wire it?

Chris Bright: Anything like that? Anything that they did, yeah, was with the ignition.

They put a screwdriver into the ignition and my car, I’m the first owner in the us, it had gotten imported in from Italy directly. That part is why I haven’t had my car until just a couple days ago. Like I got it out to my mechanic and it’s just taken a [00:07:00] while for the part to come in. And actually the part didn’t come in, but he kind of figured out a way to hack it by taking in a US barrel and flipping it upside down and kind of like hacking it in there.

I can drive my car until the real part comes in. Now I need to go downstairs and get the crack pipe.

Don Weberg: Yeah, I know how your Portland people are Chris, so you know, they love the pipe

Crew Chief Eric: out of context. That sounds extremely terrible, but sounds terrible with

Mark Shank: context.

Crew Chief Eric: So that said, like every good, what should I buy?

Episode, we have some shopping criteria. So we have to kind of let our audience know what the purpose of this episode is. And as you guess from the intro, we are focused solely on Italian cars. This episode is a long time coming, so we’re gonna be discussing collectors, sports, cars, and exotics from the country of Italy.

And we are also gonna be focusing on all different ages of Italian cars. So we will span the gamut from pre-war to the modern cars, [00:08:00] whatever suits our fancy, and we’ve kind of bucketed things unlike other, what should I buy episodes into price criteria. So cars under 50 grand. Between 50 and 150. And then those special vehicles basically going from $150,000 to Infinity and beyond.

Crew Chief Brad: I would like to add a criteria, just a special criteria if anybody wants to size requirement. So an Italian car. This is gonna be a tough one. Red size doesn’t matter for a large individual when you, when you’re my size, size does matter.

Crew Chief Eric: So we’re gonna start with that new Ferrari, SUV and work backwards from there.

Is that where we’re going?

Crew Chief Brad: Is it made for a small Italian named Antonio? Or is it made for a large American? Is it for the American market?

Mark Shank: If you’re a Girthy boy, don’t get the carbon fiber seats. They’re never gonna work. No, no, no. I am a girthy boy.

Crew Chief Eric: So Chris, how tall are you again?

Mark Shank: I’m six foot tall.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh darn.

I thought you were five foot something. ’cause I was gonna say you’re our staple. What [00:09:00] resident Italian, right?

Mark Shank: Is that like a tender six foot tall? Yeah, six. Six foot on tender. Six foot tall on a box.

Crew Chief Eric: I will say we did allow a special caveat for vehicles that were penned and produced by Italian coach Works like Gia and Barona and Pininfarina and others.

So if you got some odd balls that are Italian adjacent, we’re gonna allow those into our suggestion pool to get us going. Why don’t we start on the cheap end of things and talk about some Italian collector cars or sports cars under 50 grand, who’s got something they want us to chew on?

Crew Chief Brad: I was gonna say, I note I, I don’t see 10 grand or less on this list.

Crew Chief Eric: Is that even possible?

Don Weberg: Oh yeah. Always remember the cheapest exotic is gonna be the most expensive. That’s it. Bar none.

Crew Chief Brad: Like with women,

William Ross: are we talking acquisition price? Are we talking acquisition price than what’s gonna take to get it to run? You know, that’s really up to you, William. Exactly, because [00:10:00] you can fall under that 50 easy, but then, you know, you’ll be over a hundred on some of these on

Chris Bright: the ultra low end.

There’s a couple of things down there, like, have you ever ridden in an X one nine? Yeah. Yeah. It’s like a little go-kart. Why not?

Crew Chief Brad: I think I’ve worn one as a shoe once. Yeah.

Chris Bright: You did the t tops out, uh, the passenger seat out and then, um, removed. Yeah. You know, you could probably even get like a fiat chiquito, one of those itty bitty fifties cars, like for around 10 grand if you looked hard enough.

Don Weberg: Are they that low? Oh, yeah. You know what I love about those little cars? Those you say better than me, Chris, the quintos, the five hundreds. Every time I’ve sat in one, I, I really, because of my size, six foot three, 330 pounds, believe me, I sit in that seat very gently because the way it’s put together and I just sort of sit there and hope to God he doesn’t hit a big bump because I’m gonna break that seat.

That’s my big fear. And yet I drive a fiat, I have a Fiat, it’s a 1 24 spider. It’s a, well, it’s actually one of the worst cars I’ve ever [00:11:00] had, but it is a lot of fun and it’s like, it’s, you know, it, it’s wonderful.

Mark Shank: That’s not a safety concern off the seat. Where to crumple in an accident or anything?

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, is there a single crumple zone on a Fiat 500?

Well, I, I think if I were in an accident, they would just bury the whole car.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, it just becomes your coffin. Mm-hmm.

Crew Chief Eric: So what else is in that then? Sub $10,000 range? Is there really anything out there outside of Fiats? I thought the price on the five hundreds had climbed well above 10 K by now.

Mark Shank: When I first moved to San Diego in like oh 8, 0 9, I was shocked by what I would see on Craigslist for old alpha GTVs and stuff under 10 K.

But like that market’s dead and gone.

Crew Chief Eric: What about, uh, alpha Rome Maleo, a spider, like a later one from, yeah, I was gonna

Mark Shank: say if you’re, if you’re willing to put the work in it, it’ll be needing a lot. I think maybe more constructive would be under 20 k. I think you could find some really cool stuff under 20 K.

That’s a good one. And, and we create these big buckets. There’s a huge difference between 20 K and 50 K. Yeah, sure. You know, that’s a new, it’s a new car in between those [00:12:00] two.

William Ross: If you’re in that 15, 20 range, a lot of the major stuff’s gonna be done. So it’s probably just little things. It’s gonna have to be done to it to really make it acceptable to drive, you know, you’re not gonna be talking major body work, engine out or anything like that.

Work-wise. So if you get up there, you can have a, probably have a car that you could drive as soon as you got it. You just have to do basic stuff to it.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, so you’ve clarified Chris’s $10,000 car because he said I could buy an Italian car for 10 grand. I mean, I don’t know what I was getting Fred Flintstone mobile.

’cause the floorboards are rotted out.

Crew Chief Brad: You get an Italian paperweight for 10 grand,

Don Weberg: put it out on the lawn to piss off the neighbors, you know?

William Ross: Yeah. I get it. Goes back to say the account. Okay. You’re gonna buy, is it the cost of just when you buy it, not including working on it. You include everything, I guess.

It’s all how you perceive it. I agree with, you know, under 20 grand you can find some decent stuff out there that you could drive as soon as you get it. Gonna have some nice patina to it, what’s gonna have character to it. But you’re gonna be able to drive it and not have to worry about it. You could leave it at the airport and let someone borrow it for a few days and smoke some crack in it and not worry about it.

That [00:13:00] story’s never gonna get old. You’re

Mark Shank: gonna get a sweet pipe at the end of it.

Chris Bright: Exactly. You get a partying gift. It was like in the bottom of the, of the cracker jack box. It’s like, Ooh, I got a problem.

Crew Chief Eric: I like your recommendation. ’cause the X one nine was definitely on my list. I love those cars. A lot of people are like, it’s the slowest car on the planet.

If you’re hoping to do burnouts at a traffic light, it might take 20 or 30 minutes to get that done. I mean, it’s not a fast car, but they’re definitely fun cars. And it’s the Italian MR two or I’m sorry, nine, 14 or all of those things. Right? All those, yeah.

Don Weberg: Or the Fiero.

Crew Chief Eric: You have just blessed feed.

Don Weberg: That’s what I’m here for.

I thought that’s what you wanted me here

Crew Chief Eric: for. Mark hit on a good point. Cars under 2025 grand is probably more reasonable because you are, and to Williams point, you’re gonna find things that are fixed up at that point that are gonna be runners. They’re gonna be drivers. You’re gonna have a lot of fun with them in that category for a while.

’cause we were seeing the show up at the [00:14:00] track, it might have been one individual or more, but the Maserati Cupe the two door, not to be confused with the Quattroporte, which is the four door was always right around 25 grand and it was like the baby Ferrari front engine rear drive paddle shifters. But for 20 5K, it was a great car

Chris Bright: that has the uh, Ferrari V eight in it.

Correct.

Mark Shank: It does have the far view. I had a friend with a grand sport. God, that thing was expensive to own. It’s got a single clutch automated manual that really dies quick. The grand sport was just the continuation of that copay A couple years later, I think the grand sport looks better. I mean, you could find ’em real cheap and I don’t doubt that you can find one 20 5K, but if I were buying that car, I would be prepared to set aside a significant amount of money, a significant maintenance budget

Don Weberg: right there.

You’re getting right back into the whole conversation of the cheapest exotic is going to be your most expensive one down the line. That’s just kinda the way it works out.

Mark Shank: I mean, it depends on what you’re doing. Like if it’s a 1500 mile a year car you’re just taking out on Sundays to [00:15:00] have fun with, that’s a different story.

Like if you’re trying to really drive it, my friend used it as a daily driver. It’s horrible. And that was one, it was relatively new. It was only a few years old at that

Crew Chief Brad: point. We got into this kind of debate when we did the collector car muscle car classic car. In that episode, we kind of debated what those terms mean.

Are we saying that all Italian cars are exotics?

Don Weberg: No, no, no. ‘

Crew Chief Brad: cause this episode I think is, is about Italian cars in general. So you can say some cars that aren’t necessarily exotics. They’re just, they just happen to be Italian.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re all imports. We can say that.

Crew Chief Brad: We did also say classics.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. So that’s like a Fiat 1 24 in my opinion.

That’s a sports car. That’s a Roadster, right. It competes right alongside of Triumphs and Mgs and all those kinds of cars. That’s what it was designed to do. And classic cars would be like Chris’s super Julia, where it’s not necessarily like a, you know, Zagato or a two 50 short body or something like that.

But it’s still, it’s a classic. It’s from that 50, 60 seventies [00:16:00] era of Italian cars that needed to be brought over to the states or probably a handful that were brought here. So I think we can kind of split hairs on that, but to me exotic means super cars. We’re talking Lamborghini, Tage, Testa, F 40, stuff like that.

That’s an exotic

Crew Chief Brad: Right. But for this episode, just Italian cars in general. Yes. And Italian cars all, if someone wanted to bring over a, a fiat panda, that’s fair game.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a classic. And yes. And you can get that for less than 10 grand. So points to you.

Don Weberg: Right? Yeah. Just saying the same thing when he said Panda

Crew Chief Eric: Chris, Chris is like throwing up in the back of his throat.

I couldn’t have disagreed more. Oh, but please do. Tell me what,

Don Weberg: I think Chris wants to come back when we get to the more expensive stuff. I think that’s Chris’s 14. No, no,

Chris Bright: no. I think I disagree, but you know, I, he, we don’t want to talk about just ordinary cars. That’s very

Don Weberg: true. I came here with some weird stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: I’d expect nothing less from Don.

Don Weberg: Does it go in a pipe? Camera

Crew Chief Brad: on, right, Don? [00:17:00]

Don Weberg: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I come from, you know, weird stuff, so I’m just gonna barf it out there and you guys do what you want with it and that it’s done. It’s, it’s on the table. But I, I’ll tell you, I, I came here with a couple of weird oddballs that were, uh, penned or built or partially built, or whatever you wanna say in Italy.

One of them, because Eric put it on an email, was the Volvo, not the P 1800. That’s a car that, it’s a great car, whatever you wanna say about it. I was always a fan of the seven 80 Coupe. Came out in about 1986 in Europe. It hit the United States, I believe in 87, and it lasted with us until about 91. What was interesting to me about that car, if, if I’m not mistaken, that car was not only designed, but it was also built by Penn and Farina.

And even though the car’s, body panels look exactly like what you find on a seven 40 or a seven 60, nothing, nothing lines up with those sedans, nothing. They’re completely independent. It’s just in the chassis of the motor. All that stuff is standard Volvo. I always thought [00:18:00] those were an amazing car, but I like Volvos and a lot of people don’t ’cause they’re just too boxy.

So if y’all want to chew on that, that’s great. Or do you want me to bring in the other weirdos?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a good weirdo because you’re right. But there was also a Barona Volvo later too, wasn’t there, where they went back to the Italians and asked them to design another Volvo

Don Weberg: before the seven 80 in, uh, late seventies, early eighties.

They had the 2 62, I wanna say, was the number, and it had a vinyl top and it looked like it was a chopped top. It was squashed down typical Volvo brick of shape, but it looked like the two 40 sedan that had been heavily, heavily customized. That was actually, I don’t wanna say the first, but in terms of this modern coupee look, that was the first one that Volvo worked with Bertoni on.

Then they came out with a seven 80 later on in the eighties, which was a, in my opinion, a sharper car. But the 2 62 was also yeah, designed by, in both cases. Try to find one. Yeah, try to find one. They are rarer than he’s [00:19:00] teeth. Especially if you say to yourself, well, you know, I want one, but you know, I, I got a budget of 15,000.

Holy cow. That is a lot of Volvo coup because nobody wants them. They’re just not that much money. They don’t, they’re not quick. They’re not fast. They’re really for oddball person who just likes weird styling. They like weird stuff. They like stuff that you don’t see every single day. When you go to an Italian car show, if you pull up in a Volvo and they let you in, you can be pretty safe.

You’re gonna be the only one there just because there just weren’t that many built. There aren’t that many left around. And fortunately or unfortunately, those Volvos were treated like most Volvo customers treat a Volvo, which is, I drive it every single day. It’s my only car. It’s gonna get two, 300,000 miles by the time it gets there.

If they’ve taken care of it, yes, being a Volvo, it’ll still stand the test of time, but it’s still gonna be. Pretty tired at that point. So you’re gonna start sinking money into it. And believe me, you haven’t lived until you’ve sunk money into an old Volvo. [00:20:00] They suck money better than an old Maserati.

Trust me

Chris Bright: that they do. I could come with better suck analogies than that, but we’ll take a pass on that. You know, to me, I think we started at the lower end of the scale. I, I think that’s interesting. But in Italy, they have. And I already mentioned the chiquito and things like that and I really liked the suggestion that came up earlier.

’cause I was driving a 1989 Alpha Romeo Spider the other day and that is a cool engine. It’s an inline four double overhead cam chain driven cams. And they use that engine for 60 years. I mean that same inline four starts in the seven fifties in the 1950s and finally sunsetted, I think in the nineties at some point.

It really went for many, many, many years. It’s a fun car. It’s not very expensive to own if you’re in the affordable into things. I think Alpha is probably the the standard because they’re pretty easy to fix. You can [00:21:00] literally disassemble the engine with a set of Allen keys and a set of metric wrenches and you’re good to go and the parts are accessible, the parts are plentiful and they aren’t expensive.

My car that we were talking about is a really cool car. It’s a Julius Super. For those who aren’t so familiar with it, they were all on the same platform. And there’s the two-door coupee, which is the GTV. There’s the spider, which is the two-door open top, and then there’s the four door bar, which is the Julius Super, which I own.

But I’ve also owned GTVs and like anything in. In that category from the seventies, has character for days and is maybe at the high end. You’re getting up into the forties, but are very accessible in the 20 to 35 range. Like a really good GTV will be up in the mid forties. But a driver GTV, you can get in the low thirties right now.

It’s a beautiful baroni body. It’s one of my all time favorite bodies of any car [00:22:00] period. And it comes along with the notion of do you want a car with a ton of horsepower that you can’t use or do you want an underpowered car that you can throw around on some roads and have a good time and not get in trouble with these?

Fall into that category. It’s like I was on a core tour last week driving my super and I was working hard to, to keep up with everybody ’cause they had more powered cars. But I was having more fun, I can promise you. And not getting in any trouble.

Mark Shank: Don brought up a good point. So first of all, I know Chris and I are a little in, but I agree with everything you just said.

Crew Chief Eric: Just a, just a little,

Mark Shank: I’m just gonna throw that out. I agree with everything Chris just said. Hug. Oh. Going back to Don’s comment real quick. I was going in the other direction with this. Are we trotting out anything Panina or, or Brion ever designed as a potential Italian exotic? Are we, are we shopping Cadillac Antes and

Crew Chief Eric: shit?

I mean, that’s an interesting call, but I think what we’re we’re trying to do is scratch and itch, right? We’ve got our first time collector, like always for these, what should I buy episodes?

Don Weberg: Sure.

Crew Chief Eric: Who goes, you know what? I don’t want a [00:23:00] Mercedes. I don’t want a Porsche. I don’t want, um, a hot rod. I wanna buy an Italian car.

What should I buy? We need to hone in on, on what that is. I think there’s some quintessential like starter Italian cars. Like we could just throw out Ferrari 3 0 8. Okay, great. The 9 44 of, of Italy, right? And Alpha Romeo’s to Chris’s point, it’s like the BM BMW of Italy, right? You’re like, if you want a three series buy an Alpha Romeo, GTV, you know?

So there’s sort of these equivalencies when we boil it back, but people don’t realize that about those cars. It’s where you start to get off the deep end. To Don’s point, there’s these coach builders that were making cars for other people under different brands, whether they’re Bert 20 or Pina or whatever.

But then you kind of go the other way too, and it’s like. Have you thought about an Alpha Milano or a 1 64 sedan or a launch of Delta? Some were available in the States, some are now available Gray Market because of the statute of limitations being lifted. And then obviously we wanna talk about the high end collector, right?

[00:24:00] The guy that’s already got 50 cars and goes, I need to add one more. And it’s gotta be an Italian. And obviously we’re gonna defer to William and his expertise on that as we get to that part of the conversation. So I think we need to hone in on where do we live and then where do we adventure to,

William Ross: if we’re gonna be talking for that individual that’s looking to buy their first one or buy their 50th one.

It’s that question you always ask that person when they’re looking about, well, what are you going to do with the car? All of us can sit here and talk cars for days and everything. Obscure ones this and that, and they, the little minute things about it. What’s fun about it when it boils down to when someone’s gonna buy the car, it’s like, Hey, what is your intent goal for this car?

And what do you wanna achieve with it? Are you gonna wanna do it to go to car shows? Are you gonna wanna, you know, are you gonna go cross country? I mean, what are you gonna do with the car? Because I think that can dictate to a lot too, with what you’re gonna buy the X one nine, you’re gonna buy that thing.

You’re not gonna be taking a lot of luggage in that thing, going very far in it. No, you’re gonna be jotting around on the weekend here, going to a car show that’s maybe only 30 miles away. Or are you gonna want something that’s four door’s, got a trunk and you’re gonna be able to go drive somewhere. You can drive 8, 10, 12 hours in it, go [00:25:00] somewhere with the family, your kids or whatnot.

So, I mean, I think that’s the question they ask too, is what is your intent with the car?

Don Weberg: Yeah, that’s a good point.

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s start with the cruiser slash cars and coffee guy. What does he or she buy rather? Is the person flashy

Mark Shank: or they wanna be understated? I think the cars and coffee guy wants to be rare.

The cars and coffee guy would like to be the only one in the parking lot.

Don Weberg: Right,

Mark Shank: I agree. So that’s where you start looking at Lancia. ’cause you don’t see those at cars and coffee too often. The quantities are so low. Some of the older Maseratis where the quantities are so low or they sold in the hundreds.

I think that stuff is really interesting for that person.

Crew Chief Eric: But which, right, because the lancias, you could be all over the map on those. The Maserati, are we talking about the coupe? Are we talking about a morra? Ss? Are we talking about, you know, one of the ghibli’s or whatever? I mean it, we’re all over the map with these cars.

And I think that’s the problem with the Italian cars. They’re so frenetic. There’s not that consistency that you find in the German cars where there’s just these evolutions, these legacies. And it’s just [00:26:00] like the Italian’s just like. Today I felt like designing the Alpha 33, boom, here you go. And then they move on to whatever their next thing is.

Don Weberg: If you’ve ever spent any time with the Italian army, you know that’s how they do it. Never spent time with the Italian army

Mark Shank: on

Don Weberg: you should it. It’s fun. It’ll wake you up. It’s wonderful. And that is how they build cars. Just like you said this morning, I woke up, I felt like building this and there it is.

Crew Chief Eric: And we built three and we moved on.

Mark Shank: Yeah, we move on. We go Now, one of my favorite old top gear episodes, 2005. I thought of it immediately when you sent out the topic for this call was they did Italian mid-engine supercars for under 10,000 pounds. Well, great old episode. I

Don Weberg: remember that.

Mark Shank: What did they land on?

They got a Lamborghini Rocco. Mm-hmm. Which is now $50,000. At least a Maserati. Merrick I thought of ’cause you just said it. And Ferrari three oh HED 50 Horror. Of course. Same episode. They reviewed the Zanda a, you know? Mm-hmm. Great episode. If anybody wants to go back, I remember that episode. It was a good episode.

The Merrick, to me is like a baby Bora. Although the [00:27:00] Bora is for what? It is relatively affordable. Yes. It’s 150 grand. I’m not saying 150 grand is affordable for what it is. They made what, like less than 600 of those cars? Yeah. How many Italian cars? They made? Less than 600 of can you buy for, you know, 150 grand?

Crew Chief Eric: Not too many, that’s for sure. So that’s actually a pretty good deal. But. If we take the other side of that, what about a Deto Mazo, Panera American muscle under the skin of an Italian car?

Chris Bright: Are we still in the sub 50 k range? ’cause that’s, I think the Mar the Merrick pushes 50 K.

Mark Shank: You could do that

Chris Bright: Merrick’s on the cusp, but the Panera, we gotta save for the middle ground because that’s okay.

Don Weberg: 50. The Panera grew up. That’s fair. I remember the Panera, you could buy ’em all day long for 10 to 15,000 in really nice shape. And then it was like one day overnight. Bam. 60 grand. I said, whoa, whoa. Where’d that come? And then it, they keep on going. It’s insane. They turned up in

Chris Bright: a fast and furious not too long ago too.

Um, I can’t remember the ruiner of car

Don Weberg: values.

Crew Chief Eric: I thought that was bring

Don Weberg: a trailer. I wanna throw this out there just ’cause here I go again. You know, Mr. [00:28:00] Malay is here and, and all the oddballs, but we’ve kind of bumped on the ante a little bit and I gotta tell you, yes, I love ante. You know the, the, hello, my name is Don.

I said that sarcastically. I know, like I said before, I gotta vomit these out and then just see what y’all do with that. Next

Crew Chief Eric: he’s gonna say the Chrysler TC by Maserati. Yes, yes,

Chris Bright: yes. Didn’t Lee Baron, that was designed in over in Italy or something. Oh, so terrible. Want that car?

Mark Shank: Great. They were so awful.

You had to love them. We scared William off. William just straight up ran away.

Chris Bright: I

Mark Shank: think Don is lost. We gotta bring you, Don stole your pipe.

Chris Bright: Yeah,

Don Weberg: stop my crack pipe. What I wanted to get at, I remember when those cars were new, the ante and the tc, which by the way stood for two costly, if you remember how expensive those things really were.

You know, I grew up around car guys. All my dad’s friends, they were all car guys and some of them liked them, some of them didn’t [00:29:00] like them. But I, I remember one word specifically that always floated around both of ’em, which was. Poser poser because you have this ante, which was confused. Was it an SL competitor or was its own bag of lasagna that’s trying to compete with what?

What? From Italy is similar to the ante. There’s nothing, oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Dr. Aya Coka says, hold my chiante. Yeah. He sends this LeBaron over to Maserati and says, fix it up. So they did and they sent it back. Some of them had Maserati heads and a five speed manual transmission, and believe it or not, those little bastards would cook.

They could really, really go. You had to rev the hell out of ’em, but they would really get going. My favorite shoot me now, it was the Mitsubishi V six. That was the best of all of ’em, in my opinion. If you’re looking for a cruiser, it was strong, it was healthy. The only problem with it was it was nose heavy.[00:30:00]

That car, you put it into a curve, it didn’t wanna do anything. But wait a minute, we’re talking ante, we’re talking tc. They’re not sports cars. They didn’t wanna be sports cars. They wanted to be kind like poor man, sls, but they were so confused. But there’s really nothing from Italy that came from them.

Okay. Yes. You know my problem. I like those cars. My question is, you show up to cars and coffees. Are you still branded as, oh my God, I can’t believe he had the guts to bring that thing here. What a poser. Is he

Mark Shank: still a poser today? Not anymore. You’re weird, but you’re not a poser.

Don Weberg: I’m the only one wearing a Maserati

Mark Shank: headband, so I’ll go with eccentric.

You’re eccentric

Chris Bright: sex offender watch list. But other than that, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re well accepted.

Crew Chief Brad: I just love the fact that Don’s pick for an Italian car is an American car with the Japanese motor.

Don Weberg: They’re all base. He’s paid. Let’s look at Don’s

Crew Chief Eric: Volvo. He’s flag on the play. Let’s bring this back a little bit because we’ve [00:31:00] skirted around some cars and even my list is all over the map because as I was trying to remember, cars that were sold in the United States that were purely Italian, the list is pretty short.

It’s actually longer now than it’s ever been. If you look at all the offerings between Ferrari, Lamborghini, alpha Romeo, and so on, back in the day, I’ve mentioned this before, the Fiat eight 50 rear engine kind of beetle like Hillman MP looking thing came in a bunch of different body styles. I think those are fantastic little cars.

Don Weberg: Yeah, and if I can, when you go eight 50, you’ve also got the Moretti. You’ve got a few little coach builders out there who played with the eight 50 and created their own little demon, and they were fantastically styled cars, especially that Moretti coup. That thing was beautiful and it was so tiny, and yet 6 3, 330 pounds.

I fit in those cars very, very well. Those are incredible. I do throw the alignment out, but I fit in the car and

Mark Shank: the passenger, the passenger also gets thrown out.

Don Weberg: Negative Camber. It’s all [00:32:00] good. It’s crazy. You, you have to counter, uh oh. I lost my, I lost my badge. Hold on. Okay. There it is. I just taped him on because I wanted to reflect Italian quality as well, you know, so I use tape.

And I put it right there and I have my Ferrari badge over here and my Mara hat. I’m good to go.

Crew Chief Eric: So did your shirt come with holes in it from the factory? Is that what you’re saying?

Don Weberg: Yes, it is factory air conditioning. The panels

Mark Shank: of the shirt misaligned. So it’s like

Don Weberg: one, one sleeve longer than than the other.

That is a true Italian shirt. Very exotic.

Crew Chief Eric: There are definitely some defacto Italian cars. We’ve seen more Delta HFS on the shore now They’re like these gimme cars like the 3 0 8 and some others, you know. That’s fine. There’s some other ones that I think we forgot came to the shores, or I’ve mentioned one of ’em before was the launch of Beta Montecarlo, right?

With the panda front end kind of looks like a DeLorean, it’s a mid engine two-door sport coop, but you could take that a step further and they [00:33:00] sold less of them. But then you had the scorpion and the scorpion was the Babyo 37. So if you’re into that like group A, group B rally and you’re not interested in a hatchback, you know, pinned by juro like the delta, you could look down those other avenues of launch A and people forgot that those cars were actually sold here.

Another one I mentioned before is the Fiat 1 31. You could very easily do some Boltons and create your own Abarth. You’re not gonna have the jackknife flares that the Abarth came with, but you can build a little hot rod out of a plain Jane

Chris Bright: 1 31. Mm-hmm. Those scorpions are great. I, I just got a ride in one the other day and man, very cool styling.

You know, it’s kind of got that group C, group B kind of look and it’s, it’s like a hot hatch type of styling.

Crew Chief Eric: And if I remember they had a detune dino engine in those, just like in the Stratos.

Chris Bright: Yeah. Yeah. It’s a very cool car and very affordable. It’s easily in this price range of the sub fifties, you know, another launch that I [00:34:00] think gets very overlooked for people in the know.

Love it. The full Via, yeah. Everybody knows the full via from the sixties and seventies. Rally car, front engine, front wheel drive. They look funny when you open up the hood, if you’ve ever gotten in one, the, the engine is rotated off axis and then flipped over by like about 30 degrees. It’s cantilevered.

Yeah, it’s laid over just to get the weight down a little bit. Very cool. You can get those for 30 or less. If you look around, you’re rolling in a cars in coffee, you’ll be the only person in Alancio. Fulvia for sure.

Crew Chief Eric: What about one of our ugly cars from the uncool wall? The Alpha Romeo Sz? What are you talking about?

I love that car. It’s like the Italian rado. Why? What’s not to like about it? It’s amazing. Why? Why would you even call it ugly? You’re the worst. I know. I think it’s cool. A lot of people think it’s heinous, especially that back end because it’s completely slab sided.

Chris Bright: Oh, oh. Don’s got something to say about that back end.

Don Weberg: Oh no, I, I agree. I think it’s kind of an [00:35:00] ugly car, but I think that’s the charm of it.

Mark Shank: It’s come full circle. It was ugly. It was cool for like six months when it was released. Very quickly became ugly. It has been a very interesting, good looking car. I, I think for the last 10 years or so.

Don Weberg: See, and for me, I think it’s ugly.

I do, I think it’s a hideous car, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t buy it. I mean, I appreciate a car that goes out on its own and says, Hey. Look at me, I’m ugly. I don’t care. I love that attitude. I love it. It’s kind of like an American car that was built in Italy with a Japanese engine. Oh geez. There’s something about that that just,

Chris Bright: you know, to me it just reminds me of like a Milan fashion house or something.

It’s like, it was ambitious. It was over the top. It was oat couture kind of. Exactly. Car, even in very small quantities. And it’s very cool. You know, it’s, but it’s a

Crew Chief Eric: performer too. It’s got a great engine, good balance. Everybody that ever drives one and reviews, it says you don’t see it from the inside, but it is a driver’s car.

Mark Shank: Right. So you get that [00:36:00] shape in the eighties from the GTV six. Yes. As well. Obviously in more volume than the SC

Chris Bright: GV six is a great one. You, you could, it it’s,

Mark Shank: yeah, it’s a, you know, these were the kind of cars that like, I did not like them when I was a kid in the nineties looking at them, I was like, ah God, that’s so eighties and horrible.

And now I look at ’em and I’m like, ah, it actually looks pretty damn cool. The only thing that’s really slab sided about the SC is the back. Okay. The back is just a big flat.

Crew Chief Eric: You know what’s funny, I’m with you, mark. But on the opposite end of that spectrum that when I saw that car, it went immediately on my wall alongside the Viper and a bunch of other cars.

And I’m like, the SC is amazing. But then a year later when they introduced the RZ. The Cabrio le, or the spider, whatever you wanna call it. Oh my God, that car is aous. Take the roof off of that thing. And suddenly I’m like, no, thank you. Had enough. But an underappreciated car, if you’re looking for something that really nobody wants.

Mark Shank: It’s like an uglier ante in convertible [00:37:00] form.

Crew Chief Eric: We’re gonna keep going back to that,

Mark Shank: never letting the ante go. Today’s episode

Crew Chief Eric: is brought to you by Cadillac.

Don Weberg: The only way to travel is Cadillac style.

Crew Chief Eric: So William, what about it from your experience, what’s a bargain basement Ferrari that isn’t a 3 0 8

Mark Shank: or a 3 48?

Crew Chief Eric: What’s some of these more obscure ones that people aren’t thinking about? Well, the fi Dino, that’s a good looking car.

William Ross: You got the Ferrari engine in it. It’s just got the got badge on it, but it’s fi Dino, that’s a great car. They’re going up in value, that’s for sure. Again, you’re not gonna be killing anybody zero to 60 times that, but it’s a lot of fun.

It’s a great engine. It’s a beautiful looking car. That would be my thought. I

Don Weberg: was gonna say, I, I’ve always been a fiat guy ever since I got my 1 24. I’ve loved fiat even before I got my 1 24, I always wanted the Dino Coop. I always thought that would’ve better looking car than the convertible, which both people disagree with me on, which is fine.

I I’m the guy who brought the ante to town, so, you know, what do you want? Anyway, [00:38:00] where, where I was gonna go with this though was the Dinos are kind of going up pretty nicely. One car I’ve always wanted, and here I go again with the Volvo styling, the Fiat one 30. Do you remember those? It’s kind of, yeah, it, it, it looks a little bit, honestly like the Volvo seven 80 Jennifer nine V six engine, but they were Fiats entree to, we can produce something like Alpha Romeo, but we can still do it on a budget.

They were nice.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s two versions of that. There’s the round headlight early car and the rectangle headlight late car. Yeah. So if you’re into that square body round headlight thing, you could go either way with this thing. They’re pretty cool.

Don Weberg: Yeah, they are. And not a lot of people know about them. They were never imported to the USA.

So any one 30 that you see here with brought over by a private person. But I, I think, like you were saying, now that the statute of limitations is lifted, I don’t think that car would have too many problems being registered in almost any state. I, I really like those cars and I, and I think trying to go back to the focus, [00:39:00] which is what should I buy for my first collector car?

As much as I might like the ante and the TC to look really weird. I don’t want somebody to pull into a cars and coffee and think, oh God, what a poster. I’d like them to pull into a cars and coffee and have guys around and think, whoa, wait, wait, wait. Where’d you get that?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And that’s

Don Weberg: where that alpha comes in and that’s where kind of the fiat comes in and you know, these are little odd balls that people don’t see every day.

These are cars that you, you pull into cars and coffee and a lot of people will wonder, what is that? Oh my god, that’s a fiat the Dino people are pretty familiar with. But I think those one thirties, I’m not gonna say they’re cheap. They’re certainly not commanding Dino money. Yet. Yeah, they are going up.

And I think that has to do with the Dino people who know the one 30, it’s not a dino, it’s not a sports car at all. It’s a big grand touring car. And I think that’s where Eric and I kind of have a lot of fun bouncing off of each other because he seems to be much more the sports car. Get out there and run through the cones and terrify your dog, dog do.

And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. I wanna go on a nice [00:40:00] leisurely cruise to a restaurant at the beach. And that’s where we kind of have fun. You know, I, I look at these little lancias that you and Chris are talking about. I’m like, oh my God, that car just looks like a headache to me.

Crew Chief Eric: Good. I got another one for you, Don.

How about the 1 28 3 P? That’s basically Fiat’s answer to the mark one Rocco.

Don Weberg: Yes. Yes. They were a great car. Don’t get me wrong. All of them that we’ve talked about I think are terrific cars. I, I know Mark, you’re gonna keep bringing up the alte.

Crew Chief Eric: My mom had one of those. Oh God, I gotta meet your mom. You gonna tell you the coolest thing about my mom going car shopping with my mom is amazing.

She walks in and people are like, excuse me, ma’am, you’re looking for a car? Yes. Well, what are you shopping for? Uh, I need a car with a manual transmission. Uh, what. You need a car with a manual transmission? Yes. I never learned how to drive an automatic. Do you have anything with a manual? If the answer is no, she turns around and walks out the door.

That is it.

William Ross: That’s awesome. I learned how to drive an automatic. That’s awesome.

Crew Chief Eric: That [00:41:00] said, going back to William for a second, what was the Ferrari from Rainman? Was that a four 12 or something like that? A 400, yeah.

William Ross: Yeah. 4 0 400, 4 12. And And know what? I’m a big fan. I love those. I think that’s a great car and a lot of people don’t like it ’cause of the design, but I’m actually a huge fan of that car.

I think it’s fantastic.

Mark Shank: The, the design of that was way ahead of its time when it came out, right? Because they made that car forever. What, 72 to 89? So someone please correct me or what? Yeah, 76. But you imagine that seeing that car in the mid seventies, that was 10, 15 years ahead of its time from a design language perspective.

Mm-hmm. It also made a big movie Reappearance in the Nicholas Cage. Unbearable weight of massive talent. Yeah. He was driving a 400 eye. But the four 12, you get ’em with a manual. Oh geez. I don’t know if it fits under our 50 KI was pulling the sales on bring a trailer, looking at their charts. Unfortunately, the bring a trailer [00:42:00] lumps ’em all together.

You know, from all of the years you kind of have to dig in and, and look at ’em. Certainly in that sub 100 K, 50 to a hundred K type range. A lot of really interesting options.

Chris Bright: I’ve got 41 k for, uh, 400 GT in, uh, sports car market. The, the

Mark Shank: big difference is the four 12 was a fair jump and then there’s whether or not you got the five speed or the three speed

Chris Bright: auto.

Yeah, that’s up to 80 K now when you get

William Ross: up. Yeah. If you get the man, it’s gonna have a nice, it’s gonna have a 20 to 30% markup on it with the five speed in it. You know what, the automatic’s not that big because it kind of goes back. You’re not gonna throw that thing around some autocross event. That’s a nice touring car to go for a nice long distance drive, pop that thing into drive and just go and cruise at 89 miles an hour.

And, and nice luxury comfort.

Don Weberg: Right? Well, and it’s not that I want to go there too far because you start stepping in a Ferrari’s backyard and it gets real expensive real quick. But Ferrari was always brilliant at building for place Coues with a V 12 front engine rear drive. [00:43:00] My God, those cars taught other people how to build a coop.

I mean they, they were fantastic. They would move like bats outta hell. But like you said, William, you’re not gonna throw it around too many curves and corners because that’s not what it was built for. It was built to take you on a nice long journey. It was built to take you over, land it over a hundred miles per hour and you didn’t know you were doing it.

God, they were dream cards. They really, really were to me, and maybe I’m wrong, but I mean I look at the five 50, the 5 75, not that we can bring that into the, our conversation because they’re still really expensive. What fantastic cars, and I’ll tell you the one I would, the one I’ve been looking at most recently, not that I’m gonna pull the trigger on it, is the uh, 4, 5, 6, the 4 56.

Yeah. Which, and I’ll be honest, you know when they were new, I was a 5 50, 5 75 guy. By God, that was the end all be all Ferrari. That was that. This 4 56 can go straight to hell. I started kind of growing up a little bit and I realized, God, you know that 4 56 has a real nice look to it. It was almost like the [00:44:00] 5 55 75 was that really hot girl in school.

You just loved this girl. She was smoking hot, but. You realize she’s a little bit of a pain. All the guys want her, but you know, she’s got a sister. Alright, we, well, let’s stay away from the teenage

Mark Shank: girl metaphors. Who said teen? Who said, I don’t know, I didn’t say

Don Weberg: teen.

Mark Shank: You said school. I’m assuming you didn’t mean graduate school

Don Weberg: who went to the team comment.

But the the point is though, the 4 56 is that quieter, classier sister who you’re just leaning into this, aren’t you? Gets overlooked. Just gets overlooked, but Oh, I agree. Yeah, once you meet her, once you, you know, once you, this is where it gets weird. I know. Never a dull moment with Don. Can you move

Mark Shank: on from the

Don Weberg: metaphor and talk about the car?

So anyway, the ante car, can we put a time out and I think you uh, I [00:45:00] think everybody knows you’re gotta buy an ante. You’re gonna have a Cadillac kind of call. You need right there, everyday usage. It’s quiet, it’s conservative. And that’s why I like the 4 56. It’s quiet, it’s conservative. And for me, I gotta get it in.

I can never pronounce it, but it’s basically champagne gold. But I don’t know, I see those cars as a bargain right now. My, oh, they are odd. It’s a V 12, it’s front engine, it’s fuel injected. It’s for place, it’s everything. The 404 12 I was, and yet because it was ugly. The four 12 just kind of lingered in the value.

Now they’re starting to go up, if I’m not mistaken. Is that right, William? Yeah, they are. So, you know, the guys like me, they’re becoming unobtainium and yes, the 4 56 is still unobtainium, but I look at that and I think, you know what, and correct me if I’m wrong, I think that would be a better car, just simply because it’s more modern.

Just the technology,

Mark Shank: the engineering is there a 4, 5, 6 sold on bringer trailer just this week for 60 K?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s not bad. Was it the automatic or the six [00:46:00] speed

Mark Shank: and it has 25,000 miles. Get ’em under 50

William Ross: If you got the service history, I mean, of course it’s gonna go with probably, you know, any car you wanna get service wise, but even that 4, 5, 6, if it’s got 40, 50, even 60,000 miles on it, but it’s got the service, everything done to it, that’s not a problem.

Right. A again, ’cause it’s not a car that you’re gonna be kind of revving the piss out of it and you know, slamming two gears or anything like that and you know, you don’t have to worry about the automated transmission that it, it’s. A great car to go for a nice touring car.

Mark Shank: I was gonna say the V 12 on that is supposed to be one of the most reliable from that era.

Yeah. Simply because they didn’t lean into it as hard as they did on the five 50. Right. And so to slot it into its product placement, but as a result of that, it, you know, doesn’t break.

Crew Chief Eric: But there’s plenty of these ultra rich Japanese track rats that have taken four, five sixes and put ’em on places like UBA and Fuji and other and put them against other cars like nine 11 turbos and m threes and stuff.

And the 4 56 as curvy as she is [00:47:00] and everything else, she can hold her own against those other cars. And I was shocked at some of those videos. Granted these are six speed V twelves, not the automatics, but I think can scoot and it can handle, I mean it does have some body roll to it. I’m of the personality that if I could tighten it up, I think it’d be a performer.

I think it’s a, it’s one of those wolves and sheep’s clothings.

Don Weberg: Yes. And Eric, was it you that sent me the video? Somebody sent me a video of, and I think they were in Japan and it was a 4 56 on a racetrack. It was full race prep, 4 56. This damn thing is keeping up with an F 40. Yep. The only challenger to that car is an F 40.

Yep. And as long as she keeps that F 40 behind her, she’s fine. But sure enough, the F 40 found a way around her and bam, that was it. But it wasn’t it that 4 56 stayed right on the rear end, dogged them the whole way

Crew Chief Eric: around the track. Yeah, it was awesome.

Don Weberg: Incredible, incredible. And you think of how much weight the, and granted, okay, they prepped it a little bit, so I’m sure it lost a little weight, but it’s still just a heavy, heavy car compared to an F 40, you would think there’s no way this car could [00:48:00] hang onto it, but sure enough, there it is.

No, I I, I’ve really, really started becoming a fan of the, uh, 4 56. I really have automatic five speed. Doesn’t matter.

Mark Shank: I just. I was gonna bring this up later, but do we have any research on manual swaps for 4, 5, 6? Because I think to me, that’s the key to a lot of car value. In some situations where the manual swap is relatively easy, like an F four 30 where you can go in, do it, it’s a known quantity, it’s not a rabbit hole, and then all of a sudden you’re just in a totally different category from a car value perspective.

And yeah, sure the market will figure that out, but it’s, if you can pick up an automatic on the cheap and do a manual swap for 20 grand and then it just becomes like a totally different car, I think that’s really interesting.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m, I’m with you on that. I think at that point it’s worth doing if it’s doable and there’s probably a, a high probability that that transmission is probably shared with something else and more than likely it’s probably a ZF transmission or something, you know, that I don’t know, that maybe Ferrari built those drive trains or maybe they’re fiat transits and then we got other things to think [00:49:00] about.

But

Don Weberg: isn’t the automatic a GM unit with the automatic on the 36 from General Motor. That I’d have to check.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re just trying to bring us back to that freaking Cadillac again, aren’t you?

Don Weberg: Speaking of the

Crew Chief Eric: Cadillac? Oh, you know, here we go. But there is another car that I wanna bring up for us to chew on, and it’s my second Miata.

No, stop. It’s a weird car. It is not Italian. It’s just as a a Spanish sounding name that said, there is another car. It’s my second least favorite car on the planet. And those of you that listen to the show know my number one least favorite car on the planet is the Citron and Ds followed by. I was just having one of those.

What is wrong with you? What are you gonna hate? A ds? God, dude, don’t even get me started. I hate those things. Oh my God.

Don Weberg: You know why he hates the Ds? He hates the Ds because it is French. My friend. He’s Italian. He has no choice but to

Crew Chief Eric: hate us. We are better than him. Truth be told, I have an affinity for French cars.

There’s just something about the Ds that gets under my skin. We’ll put a pin in that for [00:50:00] now. My second least favorite car on the planet, second to the Citro and Ds is the Ferrari. Manal tea. And I know you guys are gonna tell

Chris Bright: me I’m

Crew Chief Eric: wrong, but

Chris Bright: yeah. So wait, by show of thumbs, like Roman Coliseum style.

Come down.

Don Weberg: Yeah. Now you wait a moment here. You wait a moment. I am gonna tell you a story, okay? Oh man. Here we go.

Mark Shank: Story time. Get the editor ready.

Don Weberg: I was a hater of the Mondale too. I used to hate it all the time, but then I went to Concord to Italiano, and I gotta tell you, this is where I was changed.

There it was sitting on the green, on the field all by itself. Dark gray, lightly tinted windows a coop. I gotta tell you, I, I was a changed man. All the rest of ’em, I don’t like, you’re right. I still don’t like the model, but that one painted correctly. Wow. It actually came out pretty nice. So I learned that if you put the right makeup on, an ugly person, that can look pretty good.

A sister you were

Chris Bright: talking [00:51:00]

Don Weberg: for, geez,

Chris Bright: here’s the conundrum with it though. ’cause that’s like a $25,000 car. You know, you can get those pretty cheap nowadays and it’s basically the running gear of a 3 28 or 3 48, right? I think it’s a 3 48 if I’m not mistaken, is when I thought it was

Crew Chief Eric: a 3 0 8.

Don Weberg: 3 0 8, okay. It goes both ways.

Yeah, it goes both ways. You have a 3 0 8 and then the 3 28. Yeah. Depending on the year.

Chris Bright: So it’s got the same suspension, the same engine, the same transmission, the same steering box, the same everything except for they wedged a little bit more space in there. And, and I agree with you. I, I know there are not anything to look at, but if you were to just like set that aside and go bang for the buck, and I’m not talking about maintenance.

If it’s gonna be a maintenance hassle, then you’re in a world of hurt. But if you got a good one that was driven and cared for, you get that for $25,000 and you can rip. You can have a blast in that thing. So that’s my counter [00:52:00] argument. But it’s still too ugly. It’s just ugly. Yeah. I mean, it’s a light

William Ross: car, it’s got 300 horsepower.

It, it’s gonna scoot. You can have fun with it. Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder. I mean, it’s one of those situations as it ages, is it gonna be more attractive to someone? No, I don’t think so.

Don Weberg: You know, I gotta, I gotta side with William on that one and, and Chris too. You’re getting a lot of car for the money. You really, really are. Okay. It’s an eighties Ferrari, early nineties Ferrari. You are getting quite a bit of, of car for the money. And I think the younger generation is gonna embrace those cars.

You gotta think you, you’re going after the rad wood crowd and as the 3 0 8 3 28 continue to just skyrocket in value, people are gonna start looking, well what’s the next step? And then they’ll realize, oh my god. The Mondale is pretty much the same car. It just got four seats. And like I say, I was a chain guy.

I always hated the Mondale. I always thought they were ugly and and horrible. But then I saw the gray one, and I’m not kidding you, I’m not joking around. When I saw that gray one, I thought, you know, that actually looks really [00:53:00] good. And I think that’s it. There are some cars that just have a presence and they, they need to be.

Painted. Seriously, they are you gonna paint a 4 56 bright red? I’ve seen them, they look okay, but in my opinion, they look a lot better when they’re blue or dark gray or that silvery gold color. They have to have a sort of a businessman’s presence to them. And I think the mania was trying to do that, but it just sort of failed because people wondered what is this?

This is like the LeBaron of the Ferrari world. Speaking of which, Chrysler had a car called the tc. Oh my God. No, I’m kidding.

Crew Chief Eric: But, but to that end, since Don has established that all Italian cars are female,

Mark Shank: no, they’re all high school girls. Apparently,

Crew Chief Eric: unlike his painting of the flowing blonde hair, the LT upon the prairie grasses of the car show, where I got impressed upon the Mondi LT was with the movie Weird Science.

And I’m like, oh, that’s cool. It’s a Ferrari. But when it pulls up next to the 9 28, I was like, you can keep that turd like mm-hmm. And the nine 20 eight’s [00:54:00] a weird car, right. By all respects and all means, but when you put them side by side, both iconic cars of the period, you’re just like, nah, there’s other ways I can spend 25 grand than on a Monday lt.

True. But then you’re getting back to guys like me who wanna be a little

Don Weberg: bit different, a little bit out there. Here’s my question for you, and I’m not trying to bring them back into it, mark. I want you to answer this because you seem to be the number one hater.

Mark Shank: Hater. I’m

Don Weberg: a hater of the ante. You seem to feel toward the ante as, oh man, as Eric does toward the, the Citron Ds.

Mark Shank: I never got to see a good Cadillac there. It was post malaise my whole life.

Don Weberg: Which one is more poser? The mondal, the ante or the t? Which one is more poser.

Mark Shank: I’ve never known a person who owned an ante that didn’t love the hell out of that car. There was no posing there. It was just love posing is this kind of disingenuous car ownership.

You don’t love that car. You love the way people look at you when you drive that car. That’s, to me, [00:55:00] disingenuous. And the poser

Crew Chief Eric: is the guy that builds a Lamborghini in his basement out of wood and fiberglass and tries to pass it off as the real thing, you know? Or they just buy a guyardo.

Mark Shank: He, but the point is that, I don’t know.

I don’t think there are any posers in that. This is a trick question. There’s no posers in any of those questions. If you’re driving amond all at this point. Yeah, sure. In the eighties, nineties, whatever. Yeah. You know, someone’s buying that ’cause it was the most depreciated Ferrari fine. Fair enough. At this point, if you’re willing to pay the maintenance bill on keeping that thing running, then you must like the damn car.

No one’s seeing that person driving down the street.

Don Weberg: Alright, let me throw a weird one out there. You know me, I don’t know where they all value wise, I haven’t been paying attention, but I’ve always been a fan of the Lamborghini Halah.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah,

Don Weberg: the jpa. Yeah. Well the, how do you say it? Is it Jpa or Halah?

I’ve heard both. I have no idea.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Hapa would be Spanish. So an Italian, it’s jpa. Well, that would be

Don Weberg: perfect then. No, no, that wouldn’t be perfect because remember Lamborghini always named their cards after Spanish bulls. Spanish bull fighters. That’s true, that’s true. Et [00:56:00] cetera. So halper would be the way to say it, I guess.

What do y’all think of those? Am I going too far astray for the price wise yet? Have we gotten there?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s the car that people confuse for a Kunta when they don’t know. So it’s sort of like the difference between an M three and a three series when you kind of don’t know. To me that’s where it’s at. But I think there’s value in that, Don, in the sense that people don’t know that the JPA is like a thing and that it can be just as cool as mm-hmm.

Mark Shank: They think it’s a pantera. If you drive down the street in a jpa, they just think they saw a Pantera.

Don Weberg: Especially with the wing on. Yeah. If you put a wing on it, a hundred percent. My point is I, I always like that car. If for no other reason, I love Ferrari 3 0 8, everybody’s gotta love a 3 0 8. Those things are just a perfect car.

But Lamborghini said, hold my beer. We can make a better one. And that was the silhouette, of course was the first one. And then from the silhouette. And the helper and I, I’ve just always loved it for that gumption of this is our take on what a Ferrari 3 0 8 should be. And yet I I, I’ve heard both sides of the coin.

I’ve heard, you know, it was not as good. It was better. I, you know, so I, I don’t know, [00:57:00] but I think my fiat thing fell off the tape again.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s the rust spot underneath. There

Don Weberg: it is. Yeah. Little bit of it comes from the factory that way, you know. But I think to Mark’s point though, it, it’s one of those things, you’re right, it, it is a love thing.

If you’ve got the money to put into this thing and, and you’re, you’re dedicated to it. Yeah, there’s some love going on there. Or to William’s point, you know, what’s your end game? Is it an investment situation? Is it something you wanna buy, hold for a couple of years and then hopefully sell it with a little bit of a profit?

You know, that might be a good way to go too, if you can find one. I just didn’t know where the values were. I haven’t been paying attention to those cars for a while. They

William Ross: had ’em in production for a long time, but they only built like 600 of ’em over like eight, nine or something. It’s a rare car, but the point I’ve made is not a lot of people really know what it is.

They think it’s a panter, they think it’s something else. They think it’s a Kant. They just don’t know. You would think, oh, let’s see. Low production, volume, whatnot. Oh, rarity. You know, think, oh, value up here, but they’re actually not that expensive. Body panels, whatnot. If you’re crash it, you’re gonna be screwed on it motor wise and stuff like that.

You should be able to work on it yourself. In all honestly, if you got some common sense to [00:58:00] yourself, it’s not that difficult of a car. It’s just got very, very unique looks to it. You pull into a car and a coffee with that guarantee you we’re not gonna see another one there,

Chris Bright: and you will absolutely be a opposer.

No,

Mark Shank: no, no, not at all. No way. For me in this episode, this is my favorite car buying advice so far, is the helper. It’s low volume, inexpensive for what it is. It’s a cool car. I think that if you’re looking at a collector car that you can love and, and has some potential, I like it a lot. It is gonna be a pain in the ass to buy like, I think six or seven transactions in the last five years on bringing trailer.

So, you know, that’s tough.

William Ross: It’s not gonna quadruple in value in the next 10 years, but it’s not gonna lose all that much in value either. You’re gonna maintain your value.

Mark Shank: No, not at all.

Don Weberg: Not at no. Right. Yeah. I think the helper would be a fun one to have it. It’s a little offbeat. It’s a little different like you guys are saying.

People are gonna say, what? What is that car? And I think that can be kind of fun when you have a car. You know that not everybody knows you. Look, if you pull into a car in coffee [00:59:00] where you’re surrounded by cars, you’re surrounded by car guys and they’re saying, what kind of car is that? You’ve done something great.

You really have. And you know, correct me if I’m wrong, Chris, William, you might know this better than me. I think they built fewer helpers than they did Kunta. They did. Oh yeah, by far. Oh yeah, that’s what I thought. Yeah. And yet the Kunta would just, I mean, that was just the poster child of eighties excess.

The

Crew Chief Eric: only problem I have with the helper is that it would be in line with like the Lamborghini Gala, which is another one that people don’t really remember. It’s the precursor to the Gudo and the Merc Lago and all those. And so you’re like, do I really want that? And for the same kind of money. I know you look like a poser if you’re in a gado, but is it more value for the money at that point?

You’ve got, I hate to say a commodity Lamborghini at that point, but it’s not hard to go down to the Audi dealer and get parts for your 4.2 liter V eight or, you know, your V 10 or whatever it is. The Halite, yes, it’s going to, or the Japa, it’s gonna be more rare. But I, I don’t know. I, I’m, I’m [01:00:00] torn on that car like.

It is the best choice so far in terms of checking all the boxes. But Chris, I, I think you’ve been sitting on some stuff. What have you got?

Chris Bright: Oh, you know, I think that like I’m a big GT guy, so I really like that idea around the four fifty six, and you may recall from prior appearances, I owned a 9 28 and drove it every single day and put 200,000 miles on it.

Love the car. To your point, if you drive them, they last and they don’t misbehave. And same with my daily driver Alpha. Now there’s one that I was in recently, and this is on the cusp of kind of moving into the, we’ve kind of gotten with the Hapa and I’m gonna go with that pronunciation and then we can have a Sharks and Jets kind of fight later about.

We are the jaas, we are the houses.

Maserati, indie. Ooh, yeah. Maserati Indie is this killer. Unibody gt car. Roomy, backseat, fold down backseat. So you can get stuff in there [01:01:00] just like in 9 28. That’s why I was mentioning that. Great. Sounds great. Manual transmission, you know, it’s a cruiser and it’s, you know, a Ghibli is the same. Car with some changes but not really and it’s a hundred thousand dollars more a good indie you can get like in the 50 to 60 range.

And I just don’t even understand why that car is so cheap, to be honest with you. It’s a great engine. It’s a great drive train. Beautiful styling, beautiful car. You know, to me that’s like a real diamond in the rough. I agree.

Crew Chief Eric: You guys are agreeing for a change. This’s. Super weird. I know we gotta up Chris, you suck.

There we go. We’re back to normal. No, but speaking of diamonds in the rough, I think there’s another car as we kind of come up the rungs of the ladder and we’re talking about pricing, one of the ones that I really like in Williams’ world, especially in the fine art world of Italian automobiles, you know, everybody wants the short base, two 50, you know, the 360 [01:02:00] fives, all those, you know, super rare.

Just like the early air cold Porsches and stuff. There’s the launch of Mina, which is basically the baby sister to the two 50 short wheel base car. It almost looks exactly the same, change the grills and, and the taillights and it gets forgotten all the time. Mm-hmm.

William Ross: Great. Car it the argument about. The poser question is the fact is, you know, a lot of people look down, you know, especially I guess say non-car people, something because they see someone driving a Ferrari.

They look down, we got a Ferrari, you know, they’re not gonna know what the hell it is. Not even a lot of people in the cars that know what that car is. And again, kind of going into a car and coffee, you’re gonna pull into that. That’s gonna be the one where people are gonna be coming. What is that? It’s gonna get that question asked.

Creates a great conversation. It’s something different to set yourself apart than someone else that has the Ferrari, the 2 75, the two 50, or what have you value wise, you know? Yeah. Obviously it’s not where that is.

Crew Chief Eric: What do you think a flamini goes for? I don’t want to [01:03:00] guess. I’m sure it’s probably cl in the six figures.

It has to be.

Chris Bright: Oh, it’s well into the six figures. It’s a, we’re talking like 300 to 400 k. I see. It’s a bar.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a val, it’s a bargain compared to the Ferrari. That’s like 7 million.

Chris Bright: I know, I know. But, uh, you know, the one that I really like in the launch, a range is the early ones. And I’m a huge launch a fan, by the way.

So the B 20. Oh, yeah, B 20 is in the, just over the a hundred k, like the 120 K range. And I know that sounds like a lot, but I think one of those got second overall in the mil. Amelia, it’s a big sedan. You look at it and it’s like, what is going on here? But that was the first production V six engine in the world that came out of Victoria Yano and a guy named De Virgilio at Launcher.

That was a groundbreaking car. It has a transaxle, it handles crazy, but it, again, it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Like you look at it and you go, what the heck is this thing? But you get one of those tuned up. Well, and it [01:04:00] will hang with anybody in that era.

Crew Chief Eric: Well there was that video, was it like two years ago or or so where that B 20 A where they did the chop top on It was making, it was like a viral video.

Chris Bright: I saw one of like that the guy who does those, he’s done about eight of them.

William Ross: Yeah,

Chris Bright: I was on a tour with one last year and oh my God, it took your breath away. It was like a gorgeous,

William Ross: yeah, that

Chris Bright: so cool.

William Ross: You got a lot of heat for doing that. They were like, whatcha doing in this car? Know? But then to your point, once it was done, they’re like, oh, I get it.

It’s gorgeous. You know? They turned out fantastic. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, they’re incredible. It’s sort of like the Lincoln Zephyr of the Italian world, right? That B 20, if you think about it. Yeah. No, that,

Chris Bright: that, that’s not far off. But there’s another hidden Lamborghini kind of in that era of like the, I think it’s the.

Uh uh, mark. Is it Jor or Har?

William Ross: I’ll give you a Haram.

Mark Shank: I don’t have a hernia. Trying to figure that out.

Chris Bright: [01:05:00] It’s like an early seventies. It’s almost like the Lamborghini Daytona,

Crew Chief Eric: ADA. Yeah, the Asada. Yeah.

Chris Bright: Yeah. Got into that little angular kind of vibe. So it wasn’t the Curvy Isro, which is a very cool car. The Haram was just kind of after that and had that little extra angularity to it, which some people don’t find appealing and it’s very distinctive to that early seventies.

I mean, but it’s a crazy V 12 screaming engine. It’s, I think what we all love about Lamborghinis, it’s like, I love your Ferrari engines, but we’re all children of the Cannonball Run movie. Hearing that Kunta streaming engine down the, the highways, it still rings in my ears today. It’s the same engine. And man, what a great GT car that is.

And they are not exp expensive. They’re just like, I think they’re just getting over the a hundred K point right now. They are. Yeah. No ante, Don. I mean,

Mark Shank: we just said a hundred K car. Isn. Inexpensive relative.

Chris Bright: It’s relative for [01:06:00] sure.

Crew Chief Eric: Before Don brings us back to the Cadillac ante by way of Ria, GIA, the Stutz Bearcat, and God knows what else he’s got on his list.

I wanted to bring up another weird Italian brand, the Iso Gfa or the Griffin. Those are pretty interesting cars. Often forgotten sort of Homologated Maseratis in a way. Let’s talk about those a little bit.

Don Weberg: You know, the Grifo is a great car. What I love about that, what I love about those ISOs, and don’t forget the, uh, the Volta.

A lot of people argue with me. I got nothing against the Grifo, but I think the Volta is actually just a little prettier of a car. I really do. It’s a little cleaner, a little sharper. It’s got a little more of that Maserati look to it. But what I love about these things, you can go to Pep Boys and get engine parts for these things.

Oh, yep. It’s fantastic. You know, uh, it’s a great, great way to, to go. I wanted to bring up. The Maserati, Mexico a little while ago. I always thought that was one of the most That’s beautiful cars ever made. Great. Yeah. I always thought that was a gorgeous car, Eric, now that you [01:07:00] bring up isso. Absolutely. The Gfo and the uh, the Volta are great ways to go, especially

Chris Bright: if you’re buying your first,

Don Weberg: that

Chris Bright: whole world of the, you know, the American engine designs, you know, so we are kind of leaning into the Panera and deferred till now, but it’s like these are all birds of a feather where you have these Italian designers who don’t have the wherewithal to build their own engines from scratch and just use a powerful hotted up hot cammed Chevy engine or Ford, I think in the Panera.

Don Weberg: Yeah, Panera was Ford.

Chris Bright: It was the Cleveland 3 51. I was hanging out with the Panera last week and it’s like, what a crazy ass.

Don Weberg: You know, the funny thing about the ESO Grifo, if I’m not mistaken, you had a 3 27, 3 50 or a 4 54. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for God’s sake, you know that, that was just incredible. But you talk about a nose heavy beast, you know, don’t try to put that thing into too many curves or that’s one of those cars you’re driving on the coast to get some ante and that that’s what that is.

You know,

William Ross: again, they start out with that. We [01:08:00] lost,

Don Weberg: we lost them. Williams dead. Now that, that is Italian right there. That’s Italian right there.

William Ross: Got right off his chair. He’s so

Mark Shank: engaged. He died

William Ross: the grid was, I, that’s what I love too because I I, I like the mesh of the Italian design Italian built car with the American motor.

I, I wanna say it takes it out the stress, so to speak, but to your point, you go down to AutoZone and whatnot and gets parts for the motor. Mm-hmm. Get the thing running. It’s not intimidating to an owner to own it and be worried about going out and driving it because it’s got American V eight in the engine bay.

Again, you’re not gonna be tossed this thing around, but you know, it’s a great cruising car and it’s got style for days. Again, it’s kind of one of those ones you come around. So it’s not, a lot of people will know what it is

Mark Shank: because it looks like a body kit on a C3 Corvette. I mean, just to play devil’s advocate,

Crew Chief Eric: thanks Mark.

Thanks for putting a pin in my balloon.

Don Weberg: You know, mark, it, it’s funny you bring up putting a body kit on a C3 because back in the eighties Chrysler put a body kit on the Le Baron and I called it tc. [01:09:00] It’s a wonderful car. It’s a great way to

Crew Chief Eric: go. Love it. I swear to God he’s gonna utter the words by a bricklin by the end of this episode.

Mark Shank: I should have got some weed for this. Well, since you bring it up,

William Ross: we were playing a drinking game and every time you mention we’re doing a shot, we’d all be really drunk.

Crew Chief Eric: So I think the 900 pound gorilla that William has brought up is, do we have a reliability problem we need to overcome, or is it just the expertise is missing on this side of the pond?

What’s the issue? Like, what’s the apprehension with these Italian cars?

Don Weberg: You know, I remember reading an article, I think it was Car and Driver Magazine a thousand years ago, and they were talking about how to own a Ferrari 3 0 8 on a working man budget. And I read that article five or six times to make sure I got it all, and basically it, it, it said the bottom line was just budget.

Just budget your money. The other thing that was a little undertone. And I think a lot of people, especially with [01:10:00] Italian cars, don’t do enough. They don’t drive ’em. You gotta get out there and drive ’em. Yeah. ’cause that’s when you’re gonna work out those bugs. People always say, oh God, Italian cars, they’re horrible, they’re terrible, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I always wanted the 84 quattroporte. People always thought that was just an ugly car. It was either a love it or hate it kind of car. And I, I knew one guy, he had five of ’em. He always said, you’ve gotta drive him, you’ve gotta drive him. He had a very low mile one, it was an 82 and if I remember right, that car had something like 3000 miles on the clock.

It was like brand new, but it didn’t run. It was just a paperweight. His other car and 80, I wanna say that was the 84. He had close to 250,000 miles on that car. And he said that car ran like a chimp. No trouble, no problem. It was always going. But he did admit. It took a lot of money, a lot of patience and a lot of time to get it to that level.

But once he got it there, there it was, he was brilliant.

William Ross: You gotta drive it with a little gusto too. You can’t just putz around. You gotta really kind of work that foot, right,

Don Weberg: right. Yeah, you do. You’ve gotta let it breathe. Yeah, you really do. To and I, [01:11:00] I think most Italian cars are that way. I really do.

William Ross: Well, I mean, the one thing is if you can find the person that can work on ’em, that’s gonna be your friend for life, or as long as you own that car, you’re gonna have a great relationship with them, period. They’re gonna love you.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you have to be like a soothsayer or a mystic or some sort of profit to work on an Italian car?

I mean, an engine’s an engine. Chris was saying it’s a twin cam. How different is it than any Coze or a Toyota four a GE or anything else that’s a twin cam four banger. I get the intricacies of a V 12, but if you’re a Jag guy, how different is the Ferrari V 12 than the Jaguar V 12, right? At the end of the day.

So why are we so afraid of these cars?

William Ross: Well, that’s the problem. You’re afraid if you have some sense about you and some mechanical ability, you can work on it yourself. YouTube is awesome in regards to learning stuff. I mean, you gotta trust the guy that’s putting the video out there, but you know, you watch a few ever.

It’s not too crazy to work on these things yourself. Avoid that 150, $200 an hour labor charge and try and do it [01:12:00] yourself. It’s not too out of the realm of trying to accomplish that. You gotta have the confidence in yourself. You know, once you take it apart, put it back together, that you go and turn the key, it starts and then you can drive away.

I think just a lot of people are intimidated by it. That’s their biggest issue.

Don Weberg: I think there is a service problem or there was years ago, and I think that that is a stigma. It has stuck with the Italian car community. I really do. You know, when I got my fiat, everybody warned me. Oh my God, you’re gonna be in the shop all the time with that car.

Just get rid of it. Problem, problem, problem. Everything. And admittedly, yeah, we had to work through some bugs. But I’ll tell you something. That car, when I was in college, that was my daily driver. That was the only, well, it wasn’t the only car I had, but it was the daily driver. It was the one that got me to school to work and work was the worst.

I don’t know how well you guys know California, but I lived in Glendale, went to school in Pasadena, worked in Hollywood, but the work would often send me out to Beverly Hills, Malibu, sometimes Ventura, over into the San Fernando Valley. [01:13:00] And yeah, guess what? That was the fiat doing that run. But yes, I did have to work out some bugs.

I did have to pay the mechanic because these don’t like to work on cars. But I think it goes back to, it’s an old stigma. I really, really do. I, I, I think they’re quirky, maybe the way they’re designed, they’re engineered, whatever. But you do have to drive ’em. You’ve gotta work those bugs out. And William, you’re right.

Thanks to the day and age of YouTube, you, you can find almost anything out there about how to fix or how to tune or how to dial it in. And thanks to the internet, there’s a whole community out there who can help you out with this as well. You gotta question. You don’t understand the, the YouTube video. Go on Facebook.

You’re gonna find a community out there who’s gonna be able to help you dial in whatever it is you’re trying to dial in. Eric, you brought it up. Why are we so afraid of these? Why are the ISOs so attractive? ’cause they’ve got a Chevy engine under the hood. I think that just goes to economics. It just makes it easier if you are gonna work on it.

It’s easier to go to Chief Auto Parts or AutoZone or whatever and buy a water pump for a Chevy engine than it is a [01:14:00] Maserati, Lamborghini, Ferrari, whatever. So that just boils down to economics and parts availability. I, I don’t think anybody should really be afraid of an Italian car. I, I don’t, I think you should go in it with a little bit of caution, a little bit of education.

Have some guys around you who really, really know these cars like William does, like Chris does, like some other people out there. Go on Facebook and start to learn these cars before you dive in. See which one might be right for you. I think that’s really the best way to go.

William Ross: And it just enhances your ownership experience too.

I mean, when you work on that car yourself, as we all know, and you get your hands dirty and greasy and stuff like that, the ownership of that car, it just takes it to a different level because of you’re just becoming that much more connected with it. It creates that relationship. It just, it makes it that much better owning that car when you are working on yourself because you, you know it, then you starting to really know the intricacies of that car.

Mm-hmm. And learning what it’s about. Mm-hmm. And especially with Italian cars back, the older ones that they, almost everyone was kind of a little different than the next [01:15:00] one that came down the line because, you know, as the day went on, you know, they were drinking their wine on the assembly line, you know, hey, you know, some corners get cut or whatnot, but you know, each car’s gonna have its own little quirks and stuff like that.

And you learn about it. And that’s what’s great about owning those cars. ’cause it becomes your car.

Chris Bright: I’m gonna disagree. I was gonna disagree first. Oh shit. Mark. Sorry. So I’m a Ferrari 3 48 owner. Service position engine out. Exactly. You have to be careful and, and I don’t disagree. Working on your cars is good, but it’s kind of soured me a little bit on Ferrari.

It’s a lot of low volume unobtainium and they put in planned obsolesces in there, so they, the engine out belt change needs to be done every three years. Well, guess what? You’re always in the window of having to do that. Either you just had it done and you spent 12 grand to have it done and it’s really hard to do on your own.

There’s special tools and dropping your engine out. It’s not like changing some filters or anything. Dropping an engine out is a, you have to know what the hell you’re doing. It’s [01:16:00] one of those things, yes, if you’re mechanically inclined and you have the equipment to do it, but you’ve gotta have the tool sets to do it, and that is by design, by Ferrari because they wanted to keep enough action going through the maintenance bays in their local dealerships that make ’em make sense.

If it’s a low volume car, you’re not gonna get enough work to keep the mechanics around and keep ’em fed and happy. So I think that’s one of the dirty little secret of the car world and especially the Ferrari world, is that they’ve really kind of built that maintenance cycle in to be a little bit beyond the normal maintenance cycle of any other cars that are out there.

You know, I think that’s a little disappointing now that isn’t true necessarily of earlier and the later ones now, they’re so electronic and digital that. You know, it’s like you have to be more of a computer guy than a mechanical guy to deal with them. But the parts are low volume and they’re often made of exotic materials.

Like here, I, I have a recent example. Something wasn’t feeling right in my transmission. I take into the shop in the 3 48, [01:17:00] they used what’s called a dual mass flywheel. So in the flywheel, in the clutch, they have grease packed in there to be a shock absorber. Well, I don’t know if you know about grease and if grease and how a clutch works, it’s a frictional device.

Right? If any of that grease leaks out, guess what? You gotta tear the whole thing down. The good thing is it’s very accessible on that car. It’s just like, okay, that’s unnecessarily complicated for that car, right? They wanted to bring their F1 technology in. It’s a great car. Like I, I will say with a 3 48, it always gets called the baby test aosa because of the stripes on the side.

But it’s actually closer to a baby F 40. It’s got the longitudinal engine, it’s got the cooling ducts behind the driver. A lot of the steering is very similar. It’s a great car. It’s a ripper. It’s fun. It’s not gonna be the world’s fastest car. It’s kind of gotten beyond that. It’s got go-kart. One of the best steering, I think.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh

Chris Bright: yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s one of the last true manual Ferraris like the end of the day. Yeah, absolutely. That,

William Ross: well, that’s the thing is [01:18:00] the 3 48 to 3 55, your major services, it’s all engine out. Everything coming out. And when, uh, I’m gonna hack his last thing up, but when Luca di. He’s started to recognize these problems and they said, oh, ’cause when he came on, the fear, they 3 55 was already basically coming out and doing it.

So it was all right. So the 360 came because it 360 belt service, they got the panel door, whatnot. So you’re gonna have to take the engine out, you can get to it. You can go your local guy that knows how to do it. Three, four grand, still not cheap, but to be with things when they went to the four 30, everything went to chains, everything like that.

Hey, you know, kind of solve some of those issues there. But it’s unfortunate in regards to some of those things. ’cause yeah, I mean, you have to know what you’re doing and it kind of goes to the ownership to your point. Either you just had it done or you’re planning to have it done. You have to put in your budget, alright?

You gotta balance it out that you gotta roughly have five, six grand a year. You gotta basically kind of put aside in your mind that you’re gonna have for maintenance. Now one year you might only have to do two, three grand, but the follow year might be seven or eight. So it’s, it’s kind of one things. You also have to think, it’s just, it’s part of the [01:19:00] ownership.

A lot of people get intimidated by that and that’s why they kind of steer clear. ’cause they’re like, oh, I don’t wanna spend the money. But it’s like, well any older car you’re gonna have, you’re gonna have to spend the money. It just, depending on what model is it, what it’s gonna take, it’s just part of the ownership of it.

Would I tackle doing an engine out thing? No. You know, I know my limitations. Very cautious in regards to what I’m gonna do myself. You know, I know what I can and can’t do. I’m more than happy to have my guy down the street know take cars and just have at it. Here’s my credit card, charge me.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a lot to be said there.

I mean, I’m still trying to put two and two together with Chris’s spaghetti sauce powered, dual mask flywheel, because the Germans, it’s all metal plates and springs and things. So I’m trying to figure out how this viscous setup actually works, but we’ll, we’ll put a pin in that as well. But the Ferraris, I think give the rest of the brands a bad wrap, whether it be the Fiats or the Maseratis or Lamborghinis and so on.

They all have their complexity. The Minnetti, Marelli, electronics, they’re right up there with Lucas, unfortunately. To Williams’ point, if you know how to turn a wrench, some of those more, let’s call them [01:20:00] basic engines, even the twin cam alphas and stuff like that, the V six is the buso engines. Those you shouldn’t be afraid of, because honestly, I’d recommend those power plants over a flat six Porsche any day.

I know Mark can sympathize with me on this. ’cause timing, a flat six is a pain in the neck. If you do it wrong, you blow up half the motor. You know, there’s a lot of intricacies in the German engines, high tolerances, all this kind of stuff. The Italian motors, non Ferrari engines, they’re pretty stout. I mean, they’re designed to rev to like 10 billion RPM all day long.

Where do you think Honda got the idea from? I, I don’t know. I, I just don’t want. To sour people’s impression of Italian cars by basing it solely on Ferrari. I think there’s still some gems out there.

Mark Shank: Your point, so one I might add, we haven’t addressed either of the other two price categories. We’ve spent the last hour and a half sub 50.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, we’re, we’re getting there. We’re climbing up. So take us there. I

Mark Shank: I, I would say if you’re going with one of our sub 50 K relatively exotic recommendations, they’re very low volume and that’s a real fucking problem, [01:21:00] right? You are shipping stuff from Italian junkyards at that point to get back to you when some just 30-year-old piece of metal fails as it is want to do.

I haven’t heard in the sub 50 K any obvious future classic, the two most obvious ones to me being the Quadri Folio of Julia and the Alpha four C, the four cheese that was on my list. I mean, obviously the four C isn’t as good as it Cayman objectively, but subjectively you can make a strong argument for it.

Transmission notwithstanding, it’s a really cool little car under 50 K. You’ve got the Quadra Folio and you’ve got the four C, and those things are much more modern. They skip all of these kind of problems, carbon tub notwithstanding, and you’re in a situation to deal with them in a much more, uh, reasonable, contemporary kind of fashion.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m with you, mark. If I had to start all over again and to satisfy that itch, check that box. It says, thou shalt own an Italian car to be a proper petrolhead. I think a four C is the [01:22:00] answer to your point. It’s not as good as a Cayman, but it’s better than an Elise. If you think about it from that perspective, it’s better than a lot of other cars.

Maybe not as good as some, but the power plant in the four cheese comes right out of the Juliet. It’s a two liter turbo. It’s a commodity engine. Right. They’ve been running that two liter turbo in a bunch of stuff overseas, so it’s not an exotic engine, but it’s hopped up. Right. 250 horsepower or whatever they make, the way that car is built, that whole mono cock design they came up with, if you, there’s a whole thing on History Channel about that car specifically.

’cause it’s extremely unique the way they do it. It’s F1 technology

Mark Shank: and yet somehow managed to be heavier than a bonded aluminum chassis in its competitor.

Crew Chief Eric: I I know we’re not gonna go there. We’re not gonna go there. But you could pick one up for 35 grand.

Mark Shank: Yeah. No, a hundred percent. No, a hundred percent. I, I totally, I totally recommend it.

Crew Chief Eric: You forego a manual transmission. That’s the only thing that would keep me from a four C. It is at the top of my list.

Mark Shank: It’s a dry dual clutch. Yeah. That they bought from Dodge. That’s [01:23:00] the really unfortunate part.

Crew Chief Eric: Stellantis I had, man, if you’re suffering from Stellantis for more than four hours, see a doctor.

All right. I had to get the

Mark Shank: appointment for that shit. I have Stellantis and I have an appointment in the morning.

Crew Chief Brad: I was gonna ask, you know, so for a bigger car, what about the quattroporte? It’s been around a longer, you can find him for within probably 25 to 45, depending on the year. And the, I guess the, the mileage and everything.

It’s ly. Hmm. It looks like a fish. How dare you? It’s that bad. It looks like a fish. How dare you. How dare you, sir? I think the quattroporte is a good looking car.

Mark Shank: It’s like a very dangerous fish. It’s like an exotic and dangerous fish.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s an exotic catfish.

Crew Chief Eric: It has those Buick air inlets along the, like, the fenders along the hood.

It’s ridiculous. It’s like a Roadmaster like, I can’t it. It’s got that big gaping mouth, like a [01:24:00] carp. Like I don’t get it. I

Crew Chief Brad: thought we were friends. So I want, I, I want to hear from the real Italian petrolhead, like Chris and, and William, what their thoughts are. Eric, Eric is the only at, he, he’s a, an Italian redneck Quatro, but

Crew Chief Eric: not a fan.

Crew Chief Brad: And I’m talking about the, the mid to late two thousands. Not the, you said two votes

Crew Chief Eric: Fugly, two votes. F let’s Roman style voting Quattroporte.

Chris Bright: It’s an executive car. One of those. It’s an

Crew Chief Brad: executive car that I can fit in.

Chris Bright: See? Yeah, there’s a whole,

Crew Chief Brad: it’s an Italian car that I. Squeeze my frame into,

Chris Bright: and I don’t know, William, maybe have a, has a different opinion.

I mean, good running gear I guess, but it’s also kind of expensive. We were talking about Maseratis earlier, kind of being problematic, the SCS and that kind of stuff. And it’s like, I think we can all agree it’s no ante, no,

Mark Shank: no one’s recommended to buy Turbo. Where’s, yeah, I was gonna go

Crew Chief Eric: there because no one recommends to buy Turbo because you have to buy it with [01:25:00] 200,000 miles turbo.

Chris Bright: B Turbo. B Turbo. The JPA crowd is, says it buy Turbo. Turbo.

Crew Chief Eric: So I’m gonna start calling the Audi S four B Turbo next too. All right. So it’s all good. You know, nobody recommends those cars because they’re like Jags, if it has low mileage run away from it. The buy turbo is notoriously just terrible. It’s a nightmare car.

I’ve met some people that own them and they’re like, it’s fantastic for the five seconds that it runs, but if you don’t find one of the high mileage, it means it was not a runner. And that’s, that’s a scary reality with those cars.

Mark Shank: I’ve heard. You gotta rewire them soup to nuts. Just

Crew Chief Eric: again, do you want to go through that nightmare?

Mark Shank: No, but yeah man,

Crew Chief Eric: Marelli for the win.

Chris Bright: I think we’re turning into the Jerry Lewis telethon of of podcasts.

Jerry said, Hey, ed, I hear the Tiffany, [01:26:00] Debbie Davis and I are sitting over here. We’re gonna have Carol Channing come out and sing with us. Hey, mark, that’s low. He’s going right for you.

Mark Shank: I’m just hanging my head in shame.

Chris Bright: I think we ought to like spend some time in the fantasy world. I think so too. The amao cars, the ones that we all dream of.

And, and I’m gonna ask a controversial question. Oh, Kosh, would you own one thumbs? Oh wow. Four votes down. Two boats up. I’m imagining Don getting into a, a Kosh right now. Nope. Which, which half of him,

Don Weberg: I’m gonna tell you a little secret with a little bit of Vaseline and a, a shoehorn and a guy pushing. I can get into a osh,

Crew Chief Eric: ask him how he knows.

Don Weberg: No, don’t ask. No. Otherwise, I’ll bring up an elante.

Crew Chief Brad: I’d rather own a [01:27:00] Diablo to be clear. Yes, take your osh. Thank you. Thank you. Diablo’s, where it’s at.

Chris Bright: And the Kunta was on our walls. And then I don’t come from car stock, you know, my parents didn’t care about cars or anything, but I did Cannonball Run. I saw there was a car show and they were gonna have a Kunta show up.

So I went to this car show and I was like, utterly disappointed. I have to say. It was like there was this era where the front wheels were like just a little too small, a little too weird looking. I think it’s true with the Testa Rosa, you know, kind of that general era, like when you look at ’em, they’re just not scaled exactly right now, the next generation, they got it right and all that sort of stuff.

I’ve never owned one, so I can’t talk about the ownership issue. And maybe one of y’all can, or William might play in that world, but a Diablo, a Merc Lago, something like that. I’m there all day and if I could have a dream car, it might be the Mura. I just think that’s a beautiful, beautiful, amazing car.

Mark Shank: Everyone’s [01:28:00] dream car is a Mura.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah,

Mark Shank: the Mercy E gear is uninteresting to me personally.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, the, I mean, the mirror set the stage for what we define as exotics, right? Let’s, let’s be serious, but

Mark Shank: yeah, no, a hundred percent.

Crew Chief Eric: When you bring up Diablo, you have to be very careful with that, because I think there’s gen one and Gen two, even though that’s not an official thing, because I’m a pop-up headlights Diablo guy, early Diablos, because the later closed over kind of look with the svs and the S VJs where they kind of bloated ’em, they changed the wheels, to your point, came in those funky, uh, plump, crazy and all those weird colors that, you know, they were getting from Dodge, that they were painting ’em in.

I just, eh, it doesn’t do it for me.

Don Weberg: Remember one thing though, when we’re talking about Lamborghini and go back to the Miura. The Miura is the car that put the super exotic on the map. That was the car that said, this is what we’re going for. That was the car that made Ferrari say, oh shit, what do we get ourselves into when we piss that farmer off?[01:29:00]

So he builds the Miura. The Miura had a major Achilles heel, which was transverse

Crew Chief Eric: engine

Mark Shank: fuel tank in the front end weight.

Don Weberg: Yep. Front end weight. The way the engine was mounted, it created a lot of handling problems. The Kunta came along and its job was to not only solve that, but again, put the fear into the heart of Ferrari.

And at this point it started splitting the crowd. Now, Eric, to your color thing, one of the separating dynamics that made Mire so popular was the color palette that was available. Ferrari was all red. It was just red. Everything was gonna be red with Ferrari. But we were in the sixties, the psychedelic movement was coming out.

Younger people had some money, and so Lamborghini cashed in on that by offering the psychedelic colors, and that really, really worked for them. So when the Kunta Shira came along, they were kind of getting away from that. They wanted to go into something totally different, get away from the meda, get away from what we used to do in the sixties, is over.

Let’s move forward. The Kunta takes us into 1989 [01:30:00] from what, 1974. And you had a car that stepped up to the ball plate and you talk about the most unapologetic, the most dynamic, ridiculous looking car. You know, Chris, you brought it up. The wheels didn’t look quite right on the first, on the earliest series.

They, they really didn’t. In fact, if you look at the early series, Kosh. They didn’t really look right at all. They looked a little weird. It wasn’t until they started refining it and made it what it was. I stay away from the anniversary editions. I think those are an abomination. I think they’re horrible. I hate to say that, but there’s too much Tupperware going on.

My only problem with Diablo, and this is where I still side with Kunta, is the Diablo was essentially a Chrysler design. Which is really interesting that when you go later down the line and Eric, you hit the nail on the head. They started coming up with all these dodge colors. Well, that was the way a lot of people saw it.

They said, oh my God, they’re stealing colors from Chrysler Corporation. No, they were trying to go back to the mere days because they were the ones who [01:31:00] brought it up first. Chrysler copied them back in the sixties and seventies. The psychedelic movement, that’s where it came from. When Chrysler invested so heavily, they saw what they thought was a really ugly car, and that really ugly car became, and forgive me, Eric, I know I’m messing this up badly with your accent, but I think I’m saying it right, that she’s Atta Marra, the

Crew Chief Eric: Chis Atta.

Yeah. I was gonna bring that car up. The V 16

Don Weberg: Zeta. Yes. And that car was supposed to be the original Diablo, correct. Chrysler said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That car looks way too ugly. It doesn’t look good enough. We’re taking the design back to Detroit and we’re gonna smooth it over. We’re gonna make it more like maybe a Chrysler TC or le.

Oh geez. And that became the Diablo. Now, I have nothing against Diablo except to me, when you have the Miura stepping up to the plate and telling everybody, by the way, I am Lamborghini. And people took a breath and said, oh my God. [01:32:00] And then that car wore out and they said, ah, we’re gonna knock your socks off again.

They said, by the way, I am Kage. Holy cow. And what does that translate to Kage? So you have these unforgiving looking cars coming out of Tata, and then there was Diablo.

Mark Shank: It’s easy to make one of these cars when you make it unlivable. You know the Diablo. Only by Lamborghini standards could you call it more practical for Christ’s sake.

It’s a Diablo. It’s still trying to murder you, and it’s still wholly impractical.

Crew Chief Eric: And that’s where we go back to the jpa

Mark Shank: jalapeno,

Crew Chief Eric: the Lamborghini jalapeno. Jalapeno. Yeah, exactly. Because that was to the point that was made earlier, more of a competitor to the 3 0 8. It was more of a driver’s car, the Kunta, every review I’ve ever seen about it, whether it was filmed yesterday or 30 years ago, people are like, you can’t see out of it.

It’s noisy, it’s hot, it’s undrivable, it steers like a truck. It’s all [01:33:00] sizzle and just no stake at the end of the day. Right. So it’s very flashy. And I’ve always wondered, because you don’t hear people talking about Diablos. You don’t see them in shootouts like that Japanese videos that we were talking about.

You don’t, you just never see Diablos. Maybe because they made three of them.

Mark Shank: Yeah, they’re low volume. Because the Kosh was so revolutionary that they made a ton of them. It stuck around forever.

Crew Chief Eric: But I think that Undriv ability is still there in the Diablo. You can’t see out of it. It still steers like a bus.

You know, all those kinds of things that didn’t get corrected until you got to the gala prototype, the Mercy Lago, the the Guo, and all those R eight platform based Lamborghinis, when they’re finally straightened out, even the Kunta is an engineering miracle. If you look at how that motor is mounted on top of the transmission and the shifter is directly into the tail.

I mean, it, it’s bonkers. The

Chris Bright: prop shaft goes through the engine.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, it’s, it’s absolutely insane. It’s like what mental patient came up with this thing? And then, you know, again, we get into the reliability question and [01:34:00] maintenance and all that. Kuta is just so over the top extreme. I love them, don’t get me wrong.

And I do like the JC Whitney body kit ones, you know, the later ones, non-US bumpers and all that kind of stuff. You mean the Tupperware edition? A hundred percent only came in white. The Tupperware edition. Yeah. David Hasselhoff drives them. You know, those kind of cars, uh, Lamborghini, I mean, they are the poster on the wall, but then you have tester on the other side saying, look, I’m here too.

Chris Bright: That was less interesting. I mean, the Kunta was everything you wanted to be in your fantasies. It’s just in reality, like I was describing earlier, when you saw it in real life, it didn’t quite live up to the eye candy that it was on the poster. Even when you see it on tv, one of those things like, oh, okay.

It’s like when you meet a famous actress and it’s like, you’re not exactly what I remember.

Mark Shank: Never

Chris Bright: meet

Mark Shank: your heroes. No, I mean, I think it’s fair to appreciate the longevity of the Kunta. Right? Like I was gonna say, the Kosh is like, a, was a little bit like the [01:35:00] GTR, but it’s probably more appropriate to say the GTR was more like a Kosh and that it was revolutionary when it landed and, and that gave it.

The longevity that it had, and by the time you’re really complaining about it, it’s very long in the tooth. From a car design, uh, perspective.

William Ross: They didn’t have a choice though, is because they’re going through bankruptcy so many times they, they couldn’t. Yeah. I mean, they couldn’t make money,

Mark Shank: you know

William Ross: Exactly

Mark Shank: that.

Not withstanding, you know, reasons not withstanding

Crew Chief Eric: to your analogy, mark. I think the Kunta is closer to the GT 40 than anything else. ’cause if you look at how it evolved and even now, the modern Kunta, when we stack that on top of the pile, it really follows more of the Ford lineage than it does anything else.

And it’s evolution.

Mark Shank: That’s fair. I’m not gonna argue on that one. It was a big deal and that’s why it was able to, to maintain the sales volume relative for its time, low volume for today. It, it was sticky.

Crew Chief Eric: Now we can flip that over. If you wanna buy a drivable Diablo to go into Don’s world, just buy a [01:36:00] Viper and get it over with the Dodge product with a Lamborghini engine in it.

Mark Shank: Uh, buy one of the early first gen rear world drive ones and call it an A.

Chris Bright: All right, I’m gonna throw one out here. Could be the one car I would buy.

Mark Shank: Oh, oh, we’re talking about what we’d actually do. That’s a different conversation.

Chris Bright: Ferrari 2

Crew Chief Eric: 88 GTO. Oh my god. An F 40 with a street body on it.

Mark Shank: Wouldn’t, you’d actually buy what for like half a million dollars or?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, we’re in fantasy land man. We’re up in the real world.

Mark Shank: Yeah. If I win the Mega millions, sure.

Crew Chief Eric: The problem with the 2 88 GTO is that Yes, it’s awesome. It’s like the five 12 bb, right? You’re like, that is super cool until you realize for slightly more money you just buy a 40, you call it a day, actually less money because the 2 88 GT O, its DNA is in the F 40 I, I’d rather have the F 40

William Ross: a F 40 is cheaper than a 2 88.

Tell that right now. 2 88 are about 3 million plus your year F 40 are two to two five, depending on what mileage and whatnot going on it. So if I have my druthers, I’d take the [01:37:00] F 40 over to 2 88. I love the 2 88. You know, that’s one of my favorite code. It’s kind of right there. Have that F 40 and 2 88 are like right there.

But if I had to pick one, I’d take the F 40. It’s just such a raw, analog car. Nothing in it that’s just motor pedals seat and go, you know, it’s just a great car.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s Roman vote time, F 40 or 2 88. PU F 40 down is 2 88.

Don Weberg: Ah. I think the F 40 wins again.

Mark Shank: There’s no abstention. There’s no, there’s no, you know, you can’t abstain.

Crew Chief Brad: Fist is F 50.

Mark Shank: Fist is your disconnected fist. Is the F 50? F

Chris Bright: 50? No, honestly, the F 50 is probably the least. It’s one of the most underrated cars. Even though it’s like well-respected. It’s Ferrari’s.

Diablo. It’s terrible. No, no, no. V 12.

Don Weberg: Oh it, it’s not even Ferrari Diablo. It, it’s more like Ferrari tc. That’s how bad that car is. Ferrari love it. I

Crew Chief Eric: mean, I don’t like the Enzo either or the, I don’t really like the [01:38:00] FXX. I mean, it’s cool. It’s like the Batmobile, but all those, after the F 40, it’s like they couldn’t figure out what to do because the F 40 was so perfect and so timeless,

Don Weberg: you know?

You know, it’s funny, Eric, sorry Chris to drag this back, but going back to the Lamborghini, the Diablo was that moment for Lamborghini where they sort of said, God, what do we do after Kunta? And I think that was where the F 50 fell. After you did that F 40. What do you do? Throw air conditioning in it and a stereo call it a day.

Well,

Mark Shank: it also had hood scoops. That’s right. Yeah. I mean the hood scoops in the air conditioning. Totally different. Yeah. Yeah. Totally

Don Weberg: different car. Totally different car. Ferrari has kinda lost its way in the last 20 years to build an SUV

Crew Chief Eric: for Christ’s sake.

Don Weberg: Yeah, but they sell. And you gotta think that’s what they need now is that money.

Even, even Lamborghini is building an SUV, the uterus or uterus, however you wanna say it. I think that’s actually a pretty damn cool car. I really, really do. It has that little bit of that unforgiving, edgy look.

Crew Chief Eric: As one of our previous guests. [01:39:00] Put it, Don, it’s the prettiest Pontiac. Aztec. It’s, it really Is

Don Weberg: it really?

But it’ll go 200 miles an hour. Is that such a big deal these days? I’m not sure that it’s, and you have the cache of saying, I’ve got a Lamborghini. And let’s face it, the last time Lamborghini builds an SUV, it was called the LM oh oh two. It was the precursor to the Hummer, the Stallone Mobile. That thing was something else, but it was built for the, uh, the, was it the Saudi Arabian army?

Saudi Arabian, yeah. Army. They wanted this car and then they said, no, we don’t want it. And Lamborghini said, I bet we can sell this thing. They made like 50 of those. Wow. Yeah. They actually put it out there.

Crew Chief Eric: Wasn’t it? Code named the cheetah or something like that?

Don Weberg: Yeah, cheetah. Yeah. Very good. Yeah, that was the cheetah.

Yeah. So you gotta admit, going from the LM oh oh two to the Uras, boy, that’s a hell of a leap. You know that. That really is. And again, the LM oh oh two, the Ferrari SUV, which was the company that put high performance SUVs on the map. Oh, was it [01:40:00] Porsche?

Mark Shank: Porsche, yeah.

Don Weberg: Who made all the nine 11 guy? Oh my God.

They’re building an SUV. Oh Jesus. And it was horrible for them. But you know what? Ooh, damn. If those Porsche don’t bring in the

Crew Chief Eric: cash

Don Weberg: tore, they totally bring the cash

Crew Chief Eric: tore. Just wanna point that out. The Cayenne is a tore.

Mark Shank: It is. You can’t compare the LM oh two to the Euros. Theor is just an Audi.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it’s a Q seven or whatever.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But, but that actually brings up a really good point that I wanted to touch on earlier. We’re gonna go back to the fantasy cars. Stellantis has the opportunity to mimic the GM model of the tier system. And I really truly believe, to answer Brad’s question from before about the Maserati Quattroporte, does he fit in it and this and that, I think Maserati should actually stop building cars and be the SUV brand for Stellantis because they’re, they’re, again, they’re gonna start competing with themselves.

Alpha has the Stelvio Ferrari’s come out with their thing. Then there’s the ana, which is gonna be dubbed [01:41:00] here as the Hornet. It’s like, no, no, no. Split it up. Ferrari makes the sports cars like Porsche. VW makes the econo boxes. Audi makes the luxury cars. Stellantis needs to do the same thing with Piat, Maserati, Ferrari, and all the brands that are under their umbrella right now, they,

Mark Shank: they’ve gone in the other direction with releasing their latest exotic Maserati, right.

Crew Chief Eric: A hundred percent. But the Maserati SUV actually looks good. I like that fish. Look it, it works for that thing. It doesn’t work as a sedan, in my opinion. But let’s put that aside. Let’s get back to fantasy land, William, and I’m not, I’m not trying to downplay where you’re coming from. Throw us some bargain cars.

Two 15 and above. Bargain. Bargain two 15 and above. Uh, Bugatti. EB one 10. That’s French. Oh,

Mark Shank: the original. The original EV one 10

William Ross: French. Sorry. You want, you wanna throw it out there? It’s just, I, I just, you know, to me, I just think that’s a great card. I, I just, if you wanna go above, we gotta keep it Italian.

There’s a lot of cards on top of my head trying to go constant. Even Italian. What about the [01:42:00] Daytona,

Crew Chief Eric: the 360 fives? Where are they clocking it at? Oh,

William Ross: you wanna

Crew Chief Eric: go old or wherever? Wherever you want to go, man. Take us on a journey here.

Mark Shank: Take me on a trip.

Crew Chief Eric: Miami Vice. We are 1984. Let’s

William Ross: go. You can’t be a 2 75 GTP four camp.

Those things drive phenomenal. That’s a car you could drive. I don’t wanna say on a daily basis, but that’s a car you could drive around continuously. It’s not gonna beat you up. The motor’s fantastic. You don’t have to worry about keeping up in the revs. Great, great engine in that car. You wanna get really crazy.

Start getting into like a, a two 50 California drop top Paris fueler. That’s just a dream card, you know. You really wanna get obnoxious, you go to the two 50 GTO, you know, you start getting into those type of cars, but you get that say the two 50 to seven 50 range. Here’s my thought on pricing on these cars to be some of these cars.

I don’t understand how they’re priced where they’re at because I just don’t see it. But, you know, the market’s gonna dictate what something’s worth.

Crew Chief Eric: So let me ask you this. What’s the card that you get requested the most to search for? At least in the [01:43:00] Italian side?

William Ross: F 40. The 2 8 8 ETL. Wow, okay. Those are the two I probably get the most train trying to find.

When you get to those cars, the next question is, okay, alright. How many owners mileage, original paint, you know, service, history, they really wanna start wheeling down and then you start getting cost wise, okay? Okay. I got one that’s got six owners that’s got, you know, 20,000 miles and this, that, okay, you’re at 2.9.

But then if you get a A two owner car, original paint, classy, certified red books, the whole nine yards. Okay? You’re at 3.7, 3.8 million. It’s gonna run the gamut on what someone wants to pay and what they wanna do with the car. And again, it’s like not a lot of these people that buy this car really go out and they go, Hey, I’m gonna drive this thing and put miles on it, whatnot.

No, they’re buying it more as an investment than anything. They’re gonna use it. They’re gonna take it to shows. They want it to show their buddies and say, Hey look, I bought one. I finally got one. I’m part of the club. One of those situations, which is unfortunate because you should get out and drive the cars.

What we said earlier in our conversation, you know, you need to go out and drive those cars. They’re meant to be driven. It’s a car, go out and enjoy it. But those are the ones that are really kind of get the [01:44:00] most requests for, again, the person that’s buying those now is the person that had those cars and those posters on the wall.

People that are in fall, that age group between, you know, your late thirties, early forties, into your mid, late fifties, early sixties. They’re gonna go after those eighties supercars. Hypercar that they grew up and they loved. The guy that’s looking for the 2 75 is looking for the sixties front engine V twelves.

That guy’s looking to complete a collection. You know, he’s got 20, 30 cars and that’s one he needs to finish off. What he is looking, there’s something special about it that he wants it, it’s a different bar when he start getting into those level of cars, you know, it’s not someone that’s, that’s the only one I’m ever gonna own.

Yeah. I mean, you’re gonna have your outlier here and there with someone. They’re gonna put all the money into one car ’cause that’s your dream car. It’s a different type of buyer that’s going in that market and buying those cars at that price point.

Mark Shank: If I’m looking in this exotic price point, the first thing that comes to mind for me, I don’t know how they pronounce it.

Is it MAT? Is it mat The Stratos remake.

Don Weberg: Oh yeah. That they

Mark Shank: do on top of the F four 30 chassis. [01:45:00] So basically you give them a donor F four 30 and they give you back a Stratos ish. 130% version type car. I think eight inches out of the chassis on the F four 30 shorten the wheel base, you know? Yeah. It’s stupid expensive Reviews I’ve read around it are like 500 K British pounds on top of the donor car to get where they are.

But for me, if I’m looking at stuff, I’d like to have it. It seems like a really, really well done version of that kind of car.

Chris Bright: Rather have that than just a Stratos proper. I mean, Arao is like 500 K. I’d rather have that wizzy V six right behind my head. Legit total rally heritage that DNA in there. I think that’s a cool car.

I like that car, but it’s like I’d rather have for the same money you can have the real deal.

Mark Shank: That’s fair. I think, I’m not sure how many public options they’ve really had for Estrada since the [01:46:00] values of everything has gone up through the roof. Mm-hmm. Was it 500 K four years ago? Certainly it was. I’m not sure it would be 500 k today.

I have a hard time finding public examples of that, that notwithstanding, they’re two different cars, right? It’s like owning the GT 40 from the early nineties versus the original one. They made a modern car that looked like the shape of the original GT 40 didn’t have all those compromises. You’re looking at a lot of compromises to get into some mid seventies.

Original Stratos versus F four 30 that they put body panels on to, to turn into

Chris Bright: a Stratos. You know, it, it, and it kind of brings up the whole idea of these like newer versions of things we were talking about that outlaw launch a, you know, an alcoholics GTA kind of thing where they go through and they take a, from the ground up, a brand new GTV bodied Alpha Romeo that’s got carbon fiber, all the bits and bobs, and [01:47:00] it’s like, it’s cool, but it’s kind of like it’s starting to fall into that rest od world where it’s like, yeah, a

Mark Shank: hundred percent.

I mean, the people are looking at what singer did with Porsche, right? And saying, can I do that? In these other market niches. Right. And in the Alpha Rome mayo and saying like, you know what, I’m gonna just redo all these body panels and carbon fiber. Right? I’ll have Cosworth build this out and we’re just gonna Yeah.

I mean at that point it, you’re getting them to absurdity land. It’s an amazing place to be if you can afford to be there. Yeah. Don, you’ve been very quiet.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. He hasn’t found another American car pinned by an an Italian yet.

Don Weberg: I was just looking on eBay. Of course, some antes for sale. I’m gonna be going out to Palm Springs, have a steak in a few martinis, and I want a nice new ante to take out there.

And I’m debating 4.9 liter or North Star and that. That’s my big problem today.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my God. I think I threw up in my mouth a little bit.

Don Weberg: I’ll pay you a [01:48:00] car that we haven’t brought up. I think I’m in the right price range here. I think it’s called Maserati Mc 12. Remember those cars? Yeah. They’re reintroducing a new one.

Yeah, they, they built like 25 of ’em, if I remember correctly, and then they built another 25 later on. I always thought those were kind of a neat car because it, it was, you know, it’s almost goes back to that category of what kind of car is that, you know, you pull into a car and coffee and a lot of people might wonder, is that a Ferrari?

That a Lamborghini? What is that thing? And then he saw a Maserati. Oh, a Maserati. You know, they’d never seen it before. And that’s kind of fun. I don’t know, I just wondered what you guys thought about that. I, I think they’re hugely overpriced, but you know, I’m an ante guy.

William Ross: It’s a bloated end zone.

Don Weberg: Yeah. Yeah, it is.

William Ross: It’s bigger, it’s wider. I mean, it’s just, it’s a bloated end zone.

Chris Bright: The new one seems better, has a better spec, I think. But I haven’t paid too close of attention to it.

Crew Chief Brad: I believe the mc 12 put down a better lap time around the top gear test track than the Enzo did.

William Ross: Yes, it did. Yeah. Well, they were able to obviously take the Enzo, they were able [01:49:00] to, I would say, tweak it, make the adjustments to it.

To make it a better handling car, and that was one that they actually took basically to go racing, whereas the Enzo wasn’t. So that’s what they wanted to do is make that thing better. So because they wanted to take that thing racing and it was actually extremely successful. I think it was like three straight championships or something.

I mean, it was really successful in their series of racing. Then

Mark Shank: how much of that is just tires? This is an honest question. If you put Michelin Sport Cup to r. Tires on that original Ferrari in the mid nineties or whatever the hell was, what, what would be its lap time then?

William Ross: No, that’s a good point.

Especially this day and age. I mean, ’cause you got so many different compounds and everything you can put on a car. That would be really interesting to see. Just, you know, put it down to tires. I would say a, a good percentage of it could come down to tires. What you have on it.

Chris Bright: Remember a couple of years back when Chris Harris went to Port Mau and took the McLaren, the Ferrari and the Porsche hypercar and like tested ’em and then they had to mandate, it’s like no one could [01:50:00] bring their own rubber.

They had to like, use

Don Weberg: Yeah,

Chris Bright: those guys were not happy about it, but, well, you got a

William Ross: lot of cars today that they’re built around the tires basically. Start with those that go to what that car’s gonna be specked with and go from there to what that thing can do. You know, you get cup twos on there. I mean, those things aren’t gonna last.

What? Maybe 2,500 miles?

Mark Shank: 1500 miles? I’ve got 9,000 on a pair of cup twos right now.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, you do?

Mark Shank: I do.

Crew Chief Eric: He didn’t tell you that they were corded, but you know, whatever.

Mark Shank: No, I, I just had service. They told me they were doing great. I asked him if I needed a new set and hoping they would say no.

Crew Chief Eric: Kind of going back to these Italian collector cars.

I don’t know that there is one right answer. I really do think it goes back to what William was saying early on. It’s what you wanna do. Don’s racing to say it ’cause the answer’s Cadillac.

Don Weberg: No, it is not a Cadillac. This time. Eric, you challenged me and you said Don has run out of America. No, I’d [01:51:00] like to contend, I’d like to offer up for your consideration.

All right.

Crew Chief Eric: Let me guess. The Oldsmobile Thor or the Chevrolet Testo or any of these concept cars that never made it to reality?

Don Weberg: There is the Oldsmobile tro. Oh geez. Which has an Italian name, but that’s an American car. I’m not gonna bring that up. No, you said penned. Okay, so I wanna bring up the Ford Granada gia.

Oh God. The Mustang two Gia. Uh, okay. These are all classy cars that you can run around in for 5,000 bucks. Mint condition. These are wonderful cars.

Crew Chief Eric: If my Italian was worse, I would say that Gia was synonymous with trash, but you know, hey, whatever. There’s certain design houses that I favor over others.

Let’s just put it that way. And there are a ton of Italian designers out there, and I think that’s. Also the beauty in some of this, right? We’ve talked about on other episodes where you know, there’s collaborations between Porsche and Mercedes and BM BMW and Toyota and all sorts of stuff. But in the old days it’s kind of like when [01:52:00] you realize that the Bee Gees wrote half of the music for everybody in the seventies and they never really took credit for it.

There’s a lot of Italian designers that did the same thing for auto manufacturers all over the world, whether it was Volkswagen or Subaru or Fiat, so on down the lines. And it’s kind of neat when you dig into that side of it. So I think we’ve been exposed to Italian cars, at least Italian design cars for a lot longer than we realize.

But it goes back to what William was saying earlier, it kind of depends on what you wanna do with this thing. Mm-hmm. It seems like money is no object when it comes to an Italian car. I mean, pick your poison gray market cars, there’s a million of them. It really depends on what you’re interested in. I mean, me personally, you know, we were talking about the Alpha Sz.

I wouldn’t import one as much as I wanna drive one. I mean, please, somebody hand me the keys. I wanna drive my hero. But if I had to choose, I’d buy a later Alpha Romera because it’s the evolution of the sz. It’s a little bit more easy on the eyes. It has all the right stuff, and none of the weird quirks of the nineties, you know, that kind of thing.

There’s some [01:53:00] understated cars like the Lama as an example, right? It’s a watered down Alpha Romeo sedan that can be hot rotted out. It has the same motor as the Alpha, the 1 64, stuff like that. There’s so many neat cars, but I think people need to take the time to look into them and see what excites them and what they can get into.

And I think services like what Chris provides, where if you’re interested in the older cars, he’s breathing a second, if not a third life into a lot of these vehicles. By making the parts more accessible in a global way for people that were like, I could never afford to work on that as easy as a a Fiat eight 50 or 1 24.

You know? I don’t know where to get the parts for that. These places exist, you’re looking for. Exotic. You call William up and say, Hey man, I want a 2 88 GTO. You know, he’s got all the answers. It’s a lot more challenging because we put up these artificial roadblocks, unlike we do for A BMW or a Porsche or a Mercedes, where they have reached an established supercar status long time ago than nine [01:54:00] 11 is no longer the every man Porsche.

I mean, the 9 44 was, but it’s supercar status. Now the Corvette has transcended, right? If you look at its price tag, $150,000 for a Corvette. You know, things like that. So I wanna wrap this up in some way, but I think it’s, it’s hard because we seem to wax poetic about all these cars, but we haven’t come to any sort of conclusion.

Don Weberg: I think you hit it right there. We wax poetic. You know, if there’s one thing that I think we can all agree on, and I think we’ve all been around the block a few times with a few different cars, a few different nations who build cars. Nothing drives like an Italian car. Nothing.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely.

Don Weberg: They have a feel, they have an intuitiveness, they have a certain earthiness, if you will, to them.

And I don’t care if you’re talking about my little fiat or that mc 12, that there’s gonna be that. Certain something that lets you know you’re driving an Italian car and it’s wonderful. I mean, they, to me, they drive better than any other car on the planet. I mean, there’s a reason I’ve had my car for 28 years, you know, and, and it’s the [01:55:00] lowly little fiat.

I can only imagine what some of the other cars are like. You know, Eric, you correct me if I’m wrong, but the Italians are also a very emotional mm-hmm. They’re very passionate about what they do. And when they build a car, you know, we were making jokes about them early. This is what I’m gonna do today, and, uh, that’s it.

I build three, I’m done. Well, they’re onto the next thing because they’re done up here. They’re done, they’ve done it, they’ve built it. Let’s go onto the next thing and good, bad, or indifferent. As car people. You’ve gotta love them for that because that’s just how they do it. The French are very much the same way, but we’re not talking about them.

We’re talking about the Italian and

Crew Chief Eric: the Germans just keep refining bad ideas forever. You know, like the nine 11,

Don Weberg: come on,

Mark Shank: I’m not gonna go there. But, uh, you know, okay. Germans make bad ideas. Good. Eventually, eventually. Is that what

Crew Chief Eric: far Figan translates to?

Mark Shank: Yeah.

Don Weberg: But you know, I, I think that’s what it boils down to.

And to William’s point, what’s your goal? Okay. We can bring up the Diablos and the Mc twelves and the GTOs and all this other stuff to Kingdom come. I think at the end [01:56:00] of the day, if we’re talking to somebody who’s gonna be buying their first collector Italian car, yeah, it depends on the bank role. And yes, William, it depends on their goal, but I think what we need to think about is what’s gonna make ’em come back for more, what’s the car that we can put them in, that they’re gonna say, wow, this is the coolest thing in the world.

I wonder what it’d be like, you know, having the fiat, everyone always said, well, why don’t you get an Alpha Romeo? That seems to be the next step up. I don’t know. I just never did. It’s not that I don’t like them, I, I just sort of got married to the Fiat and that’s. Where I’ve been.

Crew Chief Eric: I think you hit the nail on the head, and we can do another gladiator vote here in a minute.

But I think the answer to all of this actually lies in the halls of Alpha Rome, because like BMW, as we said earlier as a joke, it’s the Italian BMW. There’s, it’s something for everybody there between station wagons, compacts, hatchbacks, full sedans, luxury. They’ve got it [01:57:00] all. You have to decide which one you want.

And they all exude that Italian passion and that flare for design. They’re not ugly cars. Their sporty cars just like BMWs, right? They’ve gone through their phases. They had their Bengal period too. The answer always sort of goes back to Alpha Romeo at the end of the day, and. I guess we lost Chris. Mark.

What did you

Don Weberg: do,

Mark Shank: mark?

Don Weberg: Bring

Mark Shank: Chris back. I was texting him. I think I sufficiently offended him that he just left,

Crew Chief Eric: but I, I think that’s where people need to divert their attention is look at Alpha Rome male. Look at what they’re putting out. They just released spy photos of the new Duetto. There’s a lot of progress still being made under that brand.

It’s been around a long time. It’s over a hundred years old. It’s one of the older car manufacturers, so don’t take that for granted. There’s a lot of racing pedigree there. There’s a lot of refinement. Some of the best engines, some of the best sounding engines on the planet come out of that manufacturer.

Don Weberg: Well, and you know, you brought up age Italian car manufacturing. [01:58:00] Fiat is 1899. Yeah, alpha Romeo is right there with them. Maserati is not far off. Ferrari, what is that, 49? I think they were established 48 or the new kid on the block. Yeah. And you know, you wanna talk new kid, God, Lamborghini 63. You know, they’re brand new compared to everything else.

But yeah, Italian car manufacturing has been there for a long time. There’s a reason when you drive an Italian car, it feels like an Italian car. You know, you made the joke about the by Turbo for the five minutes that it runs. It’s fantastic. That Fantastic does transcend, you know, it really, really does.

And I, I think Alpha’s a great place for any, anybody looking for that first Italian car. I think Alpha would be a great place. ’cause there is such a variety. And not to be the biased guy, but I think you’re foolish to discount Fiat because again, you’ve got a whole bunch of different personalities, a whole bunch of different cars, whole bunch of different price ranges, et cetera.

You know, William, you brought it up, you, you’ve got the Fiat Dino as well, and I brought it up. We have the Fiat one 30, so we have some different ones, but Eric is right. The sound, the performance, the [01:59:00] refinement that you’re gonna find in Alpha Romeo. You know, you’re going out of the Volkswagen realm into the BM BMW realm and that’s where you are.

So yeah, I, I think we can definitely agree. Anybody looking for that first time collective car? Italian? Yeah. I, I think if you tell ’em, you know, look to the Alpha Romeo School, I think you’d be good because you’ve got that age, you’ve got the engineering. Do you want a GT car? Do you want a family car, a, a touring car, or do you want an all out sports car?

They’ve got something for you.

William Ross: Yeah. And then that product support’s out there too. You got so many, uh, out there that, you know, aftermarket suppliers and manufacture parts and to do whatever you want to ’em, it’s out there also. So it’s not that you’re gonna be left high and dry. So that’s what’s fantastic too about it.

I agree. And Alpha is a great route to go. And

Crew Chief Eric: Alpha, they’re still racing. Look at the fan base in Formula One. I mean, they’re still alive and well.

Chris Bright: People who are in Ferrari don’t realize that Inza Ferrari started working as the race director for Alpha Mayo. Right? You know, it’s like basically Vitor Yano went and got launch and started that V six.

It started that whole program, which then [02:00:00] turned in to the Ferrari Formula One team in 1956 with D 50 that then became the V six vein of the Ferrari. It’s like not all paths lead to Alpha Mayo, but. A lot of the Italian heritage and, and I think the, the charisma and also that drivability that Don, you were really getting at, it’s like that ethos is in there.

It’s really comes out of that house. And in fact, Enzo Ferrari was more of the mind of we’ll build a more powerful engine and that’ll make us win races. And you know, alpha was more, we’re gonna build a car that. People can drive that our drivers can take around a track and is balanced and has that right ergonomics to make them be successful.

And that has been their gift to the whole Italian car industry in that era.

Don Weberg: Building on that Chris Alpha too, if you buy one of their sedans, be it the, I don’t know, the Julia, be it, the Milano be at the The 1 64. The 1 64 is always one of my favorite cars. You’re gonna have a wonderful driving experience.

You can still [02:01:00] take the family out to dinner or you can still, you know, enjoy a car and coffee. You can go all over the map with that car. You’re not stuck in a run of the mill cookie cutter kind of car. You’ve got something very special. And they do move and they do handle, and they do have that passion and, and that it’s just an irreplaceable bit of Italy.

I

Crew Chief Eric: can honestly say I imprinted on Alpha at an early age. You know, I was driving age, I guess you could say, but I drove my grandfather’s Alpha 33 up in the mountains of Italy, and it’s one of those unforgettable drives. It wasn’t the most fantastic alpha male on the planet, but it was unlike anything else I had ever driven.

And at that point I had driven a ton of cars because I started running cars at an early age. To me, I was like, this is really cool. It was a driver’s car, even as a basic sedan, but you could rip through the mountains and that again, a high strung twin cam, four cylinder. It was a joy to drive. I walked away from it and it just, I still remember it to this day.

And that was nearly shoot 20 years ago, right. Or more now. Mm-hmm. That I haven’t driven that car. And it’s just like, it still just leaves that [02:02:00] impression on you.

Chris Bright: I imagine you even when you’re 16 with a full thick beard. Oh dude,

Crew Chief Eric: this came, this came in at like eighth grade. Man, come on now.

Chris Bright: You know, I, I’ll just say I live out in Oregon and Sports Car Market magazine had a SCM 1000 and we had an amazing array of cars from John. Shirley’s like $30 million cow spider. You know, it’s like one of the world’s most important cars down to little alpha Mayo spiders and stuff, and I was driving a 1965 Julius Spider Veloce.

Just a charming, beautiful car with 1.6 liter engine and a perfectly tuned gear box that just engaged in the steering was tight. It’s one of the greatest driving experiences you’ll ever have. Just full stop.

Mark Shank: Get your REOs listeners. So there’s something we haven’t talked about, which is if you are a first time buyer, are you looking at financing and and how does that work?

There’s this weird gap [02:03:00] in financing that I experienced when I was in my twenties and trying to buy cars that maybe weren’t the best, you know, financial decision that I was making at the time, but I did it anyway. You know, you can go through a major bank kind of up to like seven years old and then after that they don’t wanna finance it.

And classic car financing kind of starts at like the 25 year range and one financing can make these things a lot more affordable. It’s one thing to say you’ve saved $30,000 in cash and you’re willing to put all of that into a car. And it’s another thing entirely to say that, yeah, you know, I’ll make my $600 a month car payment on, you know, this car versus that car.

Getting back to what we were talking about with Alphas, you know, as we talk about kind of, you know, the more obtainable under 50 K range you get the quadr folio, the foresee that falls into your more traditional financing realm. I personally think the nineties have the most upside. William said it earlier in regards to, you know, the age groups of the people that are buying this stuff.

The people that are coming into the money, they’re coming into the strongest buying position [02:04:00] of their career. The cars they were looking at that they wanted were nineties cars, right? You’ve got nineties gtv. Very cool V sixes, gorgeous headers and great sound. Things that you can look at from that perspective that are actually falling into classic car financing range.

I bought an 85,009 11 in 2009 or whatever using classic car financing and it was the youngest car they were willing to finance. I had to actually like talk to them, be like, explain to them, no, this was the date it was built and therefore it meets your 25 year age requirement and you can finance me for it.

And after that they were totally cool and I got a loan and five years later I’d paid it off. That enabled me to get into that 85 9 11 that I wouldn’t have been able to get into otherwise. I didn’t have 25 grand in cash that I was gonna spend on that without it.

Crew Chief Eric: So, William, do you want to chime in on that from the financing perspective?

’cause I mean, you deal with this stuff all the time. Not really. He’s all cash transactions. Oh, under millions in

Mark Shank: [02:05:00] cash. They just show up with a dumb truck full of cash at the other guy’s house and leaving their driveway.

William Ross: I mean No, it’s a good point. Fact is, you know, I mean obviously to get into it though, you’re gonna have to find that route.

I mean especially it’s rates you get. I mean now lately this day and age, they’ve kind of got up ’cause what’s going on. But money’s still relatively cheap and you know, if you can finance it out and sit on your money a little bit to keep it for it, I would recommend going that route. But there are so many classic car financing out there.

Pick up Sports Car Marketplace. You pick up any of the magazines out there, you’re gonna find the advertisements for these companies. Just you call around. Shop around like you would anything, if you’re getting a mortgage or whatnot, find who’s gonna best rate. Some people are gonna be a little more flexible on how old the car is, what they’re gonna be able to do.

So it’s get the best terms you can and some of it’s gonna support you too, but not financing it but ensuring it. Also, it’s gonna be the other big thing you wanna kind of look at.

Mark Shank: Will they give you the value of what’s their total value on the insurance is a big one. Yeah. If it gets totaled, what’s it worth?

And then the other part of exotic car financing that almost doesn’t get talked about nearly [02:06:00] enough is the idea that when you make a claim, they also owe you for the depreciated value of the car as a result of you making the claim. I don’t know how, I’d never really heard about this until I got into the community a bit.

It’s a huge thing that isn’t talked about enough and they will certainly not tell you about it. And your friends who own Honda Accords are never gonna tell you about it. ’cause obviously they don’t experience

William Ross: it. Depending on your car, it could be a large percentage that that car’s gonna appreciate after the fact.

Especially if it was a car that had never been an accident, nothing all of a sudden, you know, it’s got this, depending on the extent, but a lot of people won’t touch a car. It’s been in an accident gauging what your depreciation was just because it was in an accident too, plays a key role because it’s, if you get an accident with your insurance, you wanna be sure that you’re gonna get that value also back because it could be a nice amount of money.

Well gentlemen,

Crew Chief Eric: I think it’s time to do a quick lightning round. As we close this thing out, I’m gonna give you two options. Your number one alpha male pick for this newbie collector or soon to be adding an Alpha [02:07:00] male to their collection. And then the second car is that Pinnacle just over the top. You had to buy one Italian car and money was no object.

What would that be? Crisp, bright.

Chris Bright: You know, there’s so many great entry points with Alpha. Most of them are still in a pretty reasonable range. If I were to recommend one, I would probably go with like a 1968 to 72 GTV 1750 engine right around the 30 K range can go up. If there’s one that’s really super sorted and fresh, great car, you’ll have fun.

It looks gorgeous and it’s just a great entry point and I think Alpha is a really good and supportive. Mark. You know, I’m the president of the Alpha Club for Oregon where I live. If you’re interested in getting one call the club first ’cause they’re turning over and people will look out for you and they’ll also recommend the right mechanics and things like that.

In terms of like the, the [02:08:00] car. Oh, there’s, there’s a few.

Crew Chief Eric: You get three max if you’re gonna go there. Oh three. I thought you just number one.

Chris Bright: Alright, I’ll go pre-war. I’ll go with an pre-war, the, oh man, Napoleon. We’re going

Mark Shank: pre Napoleon.

Chris Bright: Nope. Pre-war. I’ll go Alpha Romeo. P three fifties. I’ll go with a Maserati 300 s and more modern.

I don’t know if I’ll even go modern. I love the 2 88, but if I could get an Al Alpha Romeo 33 Rad. I think that could be the most beautiful car.

Mark Shank: It’s hard to bust his balls when he makes such nice choices.

Crew Chief Eric: I know, right? So Mark, you’re on the other end of the, you’re the yin to his yang, so what you got?

Yeah, sure.

Mark Shank: No, totally. So first time collector, I go back to the recommendation I just made previously in in nineties GTV. I think that’s a super cool car. You’re, especially in the US you know you’re not gonna run into many of those in a cars and coffee type range and it [02:09:00] still has, it had its values jacked up.

If I could pick something and I would go so far as to say, dare I say something that isn’t totally ridiculous, I would buy an F four 30 scud and do a manual swap.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a solid choice.

Mark Shank: I buy the scud, it’s a hundred fifty, a hundred seventy five K. I’d spend the 25 grand on the manual spot and you’d have one nasty ass, 500 horsepower mid engine V eight, naturally aspirated.

Just angry, angry car. That would be fun as hell to drive. Sweet.

Crew Chief Eric: Alright, Mr. Weiberg, what is in your Mani Morelli three car garage. And what’s your Alpha Romeo recommendation?

Don Weberg: That sounds a little bit weird. You know, this is the car that I ran into when we were photographing garages. It’s a little weird to work with me here.

The Alpha Romeo is Julia. GTC, it’s essentially the coop. They cut off the roof and now you’ve got this little fore place. Oh, Chris, you know, go get something to drink. Okay? Yeah, go find your pipe. Chris,

Mark Shank: where’s

Don Weberg: your pipe? I’m in,

Chris Bright: I’m in the sunlight [02:10:00] out here on the West coast. I haven’t even eaten my dinner yet.

Don Weberg: Chris, I’m gonna send my elante for you. I’m gonna take you for a steak dinner. We’re gonna take you to a nice dinner. It’s gonna be great. But the only

Crew Chief Eric: problem is that Don ante is Mary Kay Pink. So I just, aren’t they all? I thought that was just like, and they were all pink.

Don Weberg: They made another color. It’s Mary Kay Pink.

It’s pearl petal Rose. Oh geez.

Crew Chief Eric: Champagne, gold, metallic. Yeah. Whatever.

Don Weberg: So, anyway, that I, I think that’s the alpha that I would recommend to somebody. And I, I think I would do that because it is limited. Uh, it has a very workable, uh, drive, train. Parts are available. It’s going to have that driving experience.

Again, you’re not gonna see too many of them at cars and coffee, but it is gonna be a conversation starter as to, is that a factory thing? Is that, you know, how’d they get the top off? I think that’s gonna be interesting. Yeah. There’s so many pie in the skies Italians to go with. The one that’s been recently catching my attention a lot is the Lamborghini Ventor.

William Ross: That is a solid choice. I like that. Great

Crew Chief Eric: car.

William Ross: William, you’re [02:11:00] up. I’ll have to piggyback on Chris. I agree with that on the alpha. I think that’s perfect for, you know, someone’s gonna jump in. I think it’s perfect. Not only are we just with what the car is, the enjoyment you got of it, but the clubs, you know, and just to camaraderie you’re gonna have with with have that car.

I think that’s perfect car to get. You know, you’re gonna start out. If I’m gonna go my three car garage, it’s gonna be the F 42 88 and the 2 75 4 cam.

Chris Bright: Oh man,

William Ross: I hope you

Chris Bright: got good insurance

Mark Shank: system. Did you win the Mega Millions? You better win the Mega millions. I might actually buy that scud one day.

William Ross: No, what your choice in that scud?

That, I mean, that’s, that’s, but now, you know, and 10 years ago people would frown on that immensely. But now it’s so getting so common. No one cares. Everyone’s going for it. That’s a fantastic thing to do. I mean, those, those scuds are just fabulous cars. It’d been nice. They would’ve made ’em six beats from the factory.

But you know, those are, I think you’re gonna see a lot more of those. A lot of that happening. A lot more.

Mark Shank: Brad,

Crew Chief Brad: you’ve been quiet tonight buddy. You doing okay? Because I, I don’t know much [02:12:00] about Italian cars, you know, except for, you know, what I’ve seen from the nineties and on, I’ve actually been shopping while you all have been talking for a newer 2018 Julia Quadra Folio.

So that’s where I’m going with the alpha, because like you all were saying, it’s in the 50 range. It’s not terrible. And it’s a future classic pie in the sky. I’m doing a 5 75 m. I’m doing an F 50. I don’t know. I’m gonna do a Diablo vt.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, all right. So I’m gonna give you Jerry’s final thought here. You know, mine are always uber complicated and involved for Alpha Romeos.

To Don’s point, I’m always on the sporty side. I want a car I can jump in and kind of thrash and ho around in and things like that. I fell in love with the GTV six a long time ago, but I wouldn’t recommend that, right? It’s a problem child. It has its issues. I can get better performance out of an E 30 BMW if I’m gonna, if I’m gonna go down that route, right?

So I’m gonna park that one. I fell in love with the Alpha Romeo sz. That’s the car for me. That’s [02:13:00] Alpha Romeo’s Carrado. But. It’s also in that category of, okay, even though I got it here, now what do I do with it? If I’m going to import an alpha from overseas, I said it earlier, the RA is the way to go. It’s the modern version of both of those cars.

It’s got everything you want. Modern electronics, all the suspension dialed in, that kind of thing. A close cousin to that would be the 1 47 GTA hatchback. So they’re very kind of similar in that respect. Both those kinda shooting brake designs. I like that style of cars. So that would be my choice. If you’re into hot hatches, you know, the Rera or the 1 47 is really gonna be up your alley if you’re tired of the same old, you know, Subaru Impreza and and golf GTI and that kind of stuff in my three car garage.

It’s really. An interesting bunch of cars in there. I mean, obviously the F 40 is always gonna be at the top of my list. I don’t know that I would buy one because if I’m spending ungodly amounts of money, I want a 1 55 B six ti, you know, [02:14:00] 12,000 RPM touring car from the DTM era. I would love to have a Ferrari 4, 5, 8 GT three, just like our friend Andy Pilgrim runs in SRO.

You know, cars like that really excite me. I think they’re great at the end of it. There’s just something that we forgot on this list and there’s a lot of cars. We mentioned many of them were actually penned by Giro and I, you know, you guys know I’m a big fan of his, from the Bora to the Morro, to the Dino coop to, you know, the Panda and, and a bunch of other vehicles that we talked about.

Were all penned by the same guy and he often gets again forgotten. It’s kind of lost in the weeds. There’s another car that he penned and Donald appreciate this ’cause it has some funky doors and it’s not a DeLorean. The ante. Yeah, the ante. It is the Deto, Mazo Mangusta. Ah, good car. Yeah. I absolutely adore those cars.

I saw one again in person at the Peterson. It’s just so funky. So cool. You could take that to any car [02:15:00] show from cars and coffee to Amelia, to Pebble and back and everybody’s gonna go, wow, what the heck is that? Because it’s just so unique and it’s just got the juro flare all over it. So that would be my like top of the list.

Just funky. Just gotta have it sort of car. So we’ll leave on a high note. I’m glad for once we came to a consensus on a, what should I buy episode

Mark Shank: and only here is the mangusta.

Crew Chief Eric: We’re talking Italian cards. All right?

Mark Shank: Oh, yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah. No, but I, I’m really happy that for once we’ve come to a consensus, we come to an agreement on something and Alfa Romeo seems to be the way to go. So listeners, if you’re thinking about an Italian, you’re thinking about getting into this world. Alfa Romeo is the place you gotta go.

So if you started off this episode. Always dreaming about buying an Italian car. You’ve been too afraid to cross that line. Maybe because of bad word of mouth horror stories, misconceptions or parts availability. We hope that the advice that you were given [02:16:00] tonight proved that wrong, muted some of those fears, and you begin to turn your attention and investment dollars towards an Italian collective card.

Crew Chief Brad: We want to thank William Ross from the Ferrari and Porsche Marketplace. Also sales director for ACH Porsche. You can reach out to him directly atWilliam@ferrarimarketplace.com.

Crew Chief Eric: Also, we’d like to thank Chris Bright for coming on the show from Collector Part Exchange. You can find all the really cool Italian goodies on www.collectorpartexchange.com, or at collector part exchange on social media.

Crew Chief Brad: If you want to continue this conversation, be sure to jump over to Garage Riot, where Donovan Laura has created the social media platform for car enthusiasts. www.garageriot.com, also available as a mobile app for your iOS or Android device.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right, and he owns one of those gallardos that uh, mark doesn’t like, even though he wasn’t able to join.

We want to thank John Kasi from Project Motoring for sending in some [02:17:00] recommendations that we mentioned tonight. You can check out P PMM x@projectmotoring.com, your source for custom and bespoke safety gear at Project Motoring on Social

Crew Chief Brad: Don Weiberg from Garage Style Magazine and their new and improved website at www.garagestylemagazine.com.

And Act Garage Style magazine on social.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. And finally, our petrolhead extraordinaire, mark Shank, who has been on several great break Fix episodes and more to come in the future for sure. So tune into the show to get caught up with Mark. So gentlemen, I cannot thank you all enough for coming on yet.

Another abusive episode of What Should I Buy? No, I’m just kidding. Another episode of what Should I Buy Here on Break Fix. So it’s always a pleasure to get together and who knows what we’ll talk about next. Maybe French cars, race cars, who knows?

Don Weberg: Antes forever. Yeah, antes forever. We can do a whole episode on Antes.

Can we just have it on a show on Absolutely. A whole episode. They have three different motors.

Chris Bright: Okay. Wait, wait, wait. I have an [02:18:00] idea. Yeah, we do an episode on Ess and I will send you some edibles out from Oregon. We’ll all take them at the same time. Or maybe that’s better for French cars. I don’t know. That could be nice.

Under finder’s Keepers rules. I own a crack pipe now. Anybody, any of you fools. Can, can, can do that. Huh?

Crew Chief Eric: Only in an alpha. Catch you later. Thanks guys. Be in touch.

Chris Bright: Ciao. I meet.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about gtm, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at Crew chief@gtmotorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, crew, [02:19:00] chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies and GTM swag.

For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig Newton’s, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be [02:20:00] possible.

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All of our BEHIND THE SCENES (BTS) Break/Fix episodes are raw and unedited, and expressly shared with the permission and consent of our guests.

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