Year: 2025

AROC-NJ Monthly Breakfast Meet, Jan. 18, 2025

RichardReina Events ,

The New Jersey Chapter of the Alfa Romeo Owner’s Club (AROC) got the 2025 season off to a roaring start with our first monthly breakfast meet, held at the Bernard’s Café in lovely downtown Bernardsville, NJ, on Saturday, January 18, 2025. Ten hardy Chapter members made the trek, enjoying the fine food and comforting coffee as served up by the capable wait staff of the Café.

What did we talk about? Where do I start? Much of the discussion focused on our plans for the year. I’ve long maintained that living in the Northeast as we do, and enduring the winter seasons as we must, only makes us look forward to the coming spring with increased excitement. The group anxiously awaits that first drive of ’25. Meanwhile, all of us with older, classic Alfas have their cars in hibernation. Only Steve and J.P. with their modern Giulia, and John and Fran with their Tonale, drove Alfas to the breakfast.

For many of us, our Alfas are our toy cars, and we have “non Alfa” daily drivers. There was much talk around the table about our ups and downs with our Fords, Saabs, Volvos, Hondas, BMWs, Mazdas, and Kias, among others. This led to an interesting discussion about the prevalence in our daily drivers of modern safety aids such as rear-view and 360-degree cameras, and automatic braking for front collision avoidance. Our hobby-level Alfas have none of this electronic wizardry. Does that make them unsafe to drive? Not by a long shot would undoubtedly be our consensus. Our classic cars are fun to drive, and stick shift transmissions, manual steering, and non-ABS brakes require 100% driver focus at all times. We could make the argument that some so-called modern features, such as touch screens, add to driver distraction. At Volvo, I was taught that “active safety” is another term for accident avoidance, and our older classics have lots of active safety features. Precise steering, excellent handling, abundant outward visibility, and well-placed controls enable the driver to take appropriate evasive action when necessary.

Another hot topic: Stellantis, as in, the parent company of Alfa Romeo, which is having some major business issues at present. Alfa Romeo’s new vehicle sales in the U.S. last year were not great, and while these things don’t necessarily directly affect us right now, all of us want to see the brand thrive. The company is under new management and we’re hoping that there are big changes for the better coming soon.

Once we had finished solving the problems of the world, the group headed back into the winter air. The first day of spring is two months from Monday, and the days are getting longer, so there is plenty to look forward to and to be thankful for, including the continued camaraderie of this group.

From L to R: Bob, Richard, Jay, Steve, J.P., Tony (standing), John, Fran, Gene, and Cathy.

 

Entire blog post content copyright © 2025 Richard A. Reina. Text and photos may not be copied or reproduced without express written permission.

Cars on the Street: Washington, D.C., late 2024

RichardReina Cars on the street , , ,

My wife and I recently spent a long weekend in the Washington, D.C., area, and it was not a surprise to find some interesting automobiles scattered about. One day we toured the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, where I spotted a few JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) cars. I presume that navy men and women, while sailing around the world, return with cars that they can’t otherwise source here in the States.

Sightseeing in several neighborhoods also uncovered cars on the street that I haven’t seen in the metro NY/NJ area in a while. The most fabulous find was the Rover TC2000, because I would have presumed that one hundred percent of them stopped running ages ago.

It only proves that cars of interest are everywhere, you only need to look for them.

 

FROM THE ANNAPOLIS NAVAL ACADEMY:
This Mitsubishi is a “kei” truck, limited in size by Japanese statute

 

This Nissan Z car was seriously slammed

 

We know it as a Lexus SC, but in its home country, it’s a Toyota Soarer. Note the rear wiper!

 

A very clean Toyota 86, formerly Scion FR-S

 

A painter was using this Vantage as his work truck. Off-road use only?

 

ON THE STREETS OF D.C.

A pair of Volvo C30s. The design has aged well, I think, and they are starting to become collectible among Volvo fans.

 

 

A Rover TC2000 circa 1968?

 

Is it me or is this spoiler mounted backwards? Great downforce in reverse…

 

Entire blog post content copyright © 2025 Richard A. Reina. Text and photos may not be copied or reproduced without express written permission.

 

 

 

A Plymouth and a Lexus, several generations apart??

RichardReina Uncategorized

Happy New Year! I’m back after taking an extended break over the holidays, although my head is still in the clouds after that outstanding visit to the Auto e Moto d’Epoca in Italy in October.

I almost never post items found on other websites, but in this case, I couldn’t resist. This morning, while performing my daily scroll through the offerings on Bring A Trailer, I was struck by the juxtaposition of these two cars. By complete coincidence, they were placed side-by-side. Gaze if you will at all the similarities between this 1961 Plymouth Fury and this 2021 Lexus LS500: the headlight location, the front fender sweeps, the pinched grille, the horizontal brightwork along the bottom edge. The black paint only adds to the resemblance.

Sixty years separate these two automobiles, and while it’s fair to conjecture that the designers of the Lexus were not born when the ’61 Plymouth debuted, they might have stumbled across reviews of that Plymouth which referred to its front-end styling as “the grille that ate Tokyo”, or some variation thereof. Maybe something got lost in the translation….