What's to come

Jay Laifman (Jay_Laifman(at)countrywide.com)
Tue, 26 May 1998 07:52:39 -0700

Well, I may be joining Scott Christie's Series III Registry much sooner than I ever expected - in fact, I never expected to join it. I have found two very clean Alpine bodies available. One is a letter "straight" fin car, like mine. The other is a Series III GT (no folding top, larger boot area, factory matching "square" hard top). Right now, the deal on the Series III is better than the Series V. With either, I would have it painted and transfer over all of my Series V mechanicals (engine, suspension, etc) and interior. The tough part is that I generally perfer the straight fins and round top. I have spent all weekend pouring over my collection of Alpine magazine articles, books, and even that video tape from SS with all the racing and Rootes promo videos, trying to decide what I like better. I actually have decided that I like the front of the early cars better with the small turn signals, finer grill and the badge on the bonnet. As to the hard top, I am torn - I now sort of think that the later top would look better with the high fins and the round top good with both. As to the fins, I like the idea that the fins are closer to the designers original concept of a flowing car from front to rear - sort of like the car is at speed (it's too bad they had to push the angle of the windshield more upright in the later cars, taking away from that concept). But, from certain angles, I don't know, the fins are rather extreme and do remind even me of the amphibian car (so do the straight fins, just not as much). There was one comment I read that said the earlier cars were clearly 50's cars and the later cars were clearly 60's cars. I see exactly what the author meant. The way the badge was taken from the bonnet and moved to a "floating" badge in the grill - sooo 60's.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings. Feel free to flame me for any of my suggestions or opinions.

Jay

P.S. I did look at a few of the Alpines on Jarrid's for sale list. The 66 for $1700 is a factory OD. If it was not for the damage to the front fender/headlight area, with a questionable repair, I might have picked that one up.