This car is special for a couple of reasons:

•     It almost incinerated itself on it's maiden voyage,

•     It gave me the opportunity to share a pretty good Alfa weekend with my Dad.

First, the attempted self-immolation.  It's a well known fact that Alfa Milanos have a little design defect in the heating system.  On the drivers side, in the ducting, there is some sort of exposed metal coil, a resistor of some kind.  I honestly don't know what the purpose is, but when you turn on the heat this thing has enough current going through it that it actually glows.

Now, a glowing resistor in a heating duct might not pose a problem in Italy, or California, but here in New England we have four seasons.  During one of them, the leaves turn all kinds of pretty colors (people actually spend money to come here to look at them), then they fall off the trees.  They tend to land on things, like lawns and cars.

To make a long story short, take one Alfa, a bunch of leaves settling into the cowl and then down into the heating ducts, and one glowing resistor, and pretty soon you've got smoke!  Followed by FIRE!

So, I picked up my Verde, drove away from the shop, turned on the heater, and almost immediately I saw smoke come pouring out of the heating ducts.

At that point I got lucky.  I knew what was happening, so I immediately turned off the heater, pulled over, got out, and closed the doors.

The car filled completely with smoke, but with the closed doors there was no oxygen being fed to the fire, so it died down after a while and went out.  I got back in and drove off, and didn't use the heater again until I cleaned all of the leaves out of the ducts!

Next, the weekend with Dad.

My parents have always been very supportive of their children and grandchildren, going to every possible event that they could.  Including many of my car events.  After about ten years of this, one day I asked my Dad if he was ever curious and interested in trying it.  He paused, and I thought, "wow, he's actually thinking about it!".  when he answered "yes", I asked him why he never said anything, and he just kind of shrugged.

Well, for our next annual Lime Rock event, I got the Verde ready for him and the Spider ready for myself, and we all got in and drove down.  He was really worried about being the slowest person on the track, but I assured him that everybody would be glad to have somebody to pass, and that he should just focus on learning the line and driving smoothly.

On the morning of the track day I took the Verde out for a few laps so I could get some readings on the tires, then parked it.  I didn't know it, but Dad had a watch on me.  He then took the Verde for the rest of the day, I played around in the Spider and tried to keep an eye on the Verde so he could focus on his driving.

During his last session of the day, he was passing people all over the place, and ended up as the fastest Alfa driving rookie!  (My friend Gene was faster in his twin turbo Mitsubishi 3000 GT).

Now, something interesting happened.  I know, in the back of his head, he kind of thought that since he'd taught me how to drive as a kid, and since he had maybe 30 more years of experience than I did, that he'd be faster than me.  Or maybe on par.  But at dinner that night, he asked me, if he was driving as fast as he could, with the tires squealing around every turn, and why I didn't squeal the tires once during my few quick test laps, then how was it that I was ten seconds faster than him?

That was kind of the first time I was able to do something interesting for my Dad, teach him something, and share a great car weekend with him.  As you get older, you realize that those opportunities don't come along often, and you have to cherish them when they do.