Alfa Romeo Speaks Romance in a Way No Other Car Brand Can

It wasn’t easy being immigrants to Canada in the 1970s. Back then, when my parents, Frank and Li Li Lai, first emigrated from Hong Kong, there weren’t many other Chinese people around to help them feel like part of a community. My mom also struggled to find work, and despite acing all the aptitude tests and speaking fluent English, employers kept telling her she lacked Canadian job experience and overlooked her for jobs she was qualified for.

Community and a sense of belonging matter for everyone, but especially for new immigrants. Instead of suffering through isolation, my parents recognized that cars are the great equalizer, and joined a car club. That car club was the Ontario chapter of the Alfa Romeo Club of Canada.

A Drive Back in Time

When my dad was a pre-teen in Hong Kong, he lived close to an Alfa Romeo Spyder driver. Every time my dad saw his neighbour drive it, he fell deeper in love with the Spyder; an Italian car in Hong Kong was an uncommon sight at the time, and as a young car enthusiast, it became a core memory.

“The design was just wonderful. Sleek and sporty all at once,” he says. “It has a style that’s completely different, it has an iconic shape, it represents Italy so well, and even the name ‘Alfa Romeo’ is so romantic.” It certainly has a better ring to it than Bayerische Motoren Werke.

When my parents first came to Canada, however, they bought a Ford Mustang, which wasn’t available in Hong Kong at the time. They thought buying a domestic car would help them fit in more and that it would be a safer move because it would be easier to service. But then they met a mechanic who used to work in Italy with Alfa Romeo and Ferrari, and he convinced my parents that finding parts for Alfas in Canada wasn’t that hard and that he’d happily service their car if they got an Alfa Romeo.

So that’s exactly what they did. They bought a used 1974 Alfa Romeo GTV. The mechanic put a turbocharger in it and did a handful of mechanical upgrades.

“It was a really fun car to drive. That car was really fast,” my dad says, grinning sheepishly because he now scolds me for driving too fast. I guess my lead foot is a genetic condition.

Their mechanic then introduced them to the Alfa Romeo Club of Canada because he also serviced a lot of the members’ cars in Ontario. An Alfetta later joined my parents’ fleet, completing their matching his-and-hers pair of Alfas.

“We joined the club to make friends,” my mom says. My dad says he always looked forward to club track days, when they would race.

“I won second prize,” he boasts. “First was always this Italian guy I could never beat. He was so fast!”

They joined club rallies, raced on the beach, did track days, and my parents eventually grew close with the club members, sometimes selling cars to each other and even becoming friends with Alfa dealers who gave them first dibs on new cars that popped up on their lots.

My parents were two of the three Chinese people in the club’s Ontario chapter, which was mostly Italian, but the club made them feel welcome because to love Alfa Romeo is a shared language that transcends ethnicity or culture.

“People were very welcoming because we loved the same thing,” my dad says, adding that club members were always ready to offer advice or tips on ownership or maintenance. This mattered because vintage Alfa Romeos aren't known for being the most reliable or easy to live with.

“Although it's a lovely car, especially in the earlier days, they were so temperamental. Alfa is a love-and-hate situation,” my dad says, adding that being an Alfa Romeo owner requires patience, like any good relationship. But love takes work, and that love makes the community stronger because it’s a common bond.

“People who have taste love Alfa Romeo,” he says. “Everybody loves Ferrari. Everybody loves Porsche. It’s the obvious choice. But with Alfa Romeo, it's a different type of love.”

Buying His Dream Car

My dad is retired now and recently bought a 1993 Alfa Romeo Spyder (he found it on AutoTrader, by the way), a rare yellow one with a manual transmission in uncommonly pristine condition. The first Alfa Romeo he’d owned since those formative days in the ‘70s, the Spyder had only two previous owners and apparently had never been driven in the rain or in the winter. But he hesitated at first because it seemed too good to be true, which made him suspicious.

My mom wasn’t having any of it. “I told him, ‘This is the chance that you've been waiting for for so long. You have to do it, otherwise you will regret it for the rest of your life.’”

So he bought it without even test driving it.

“The Spyder always was in the back of my mind, always my goal,” my dad says, referring to the Spyder he saw as a kid in Hong Kong. “I love the Spyder.”

When he drove his new-to-him Spyder for the first time, he was in disbelief.

“I smiled so much,” he says. “I couldn't believe that I owned a Spyder that's this clean. It's like new, brand new. And it was my turn.”

Coincidentally, this Spyder came with a sticker on the windshield from the Alfa Romeo Club of Canada, so one of this Alfa’s previous owners was a member of the same club that welcomed my parents in the 1970s.

Whenever they drive it, my parents say it’s like a magnet. People are just naturally drawn to it. Everyone wants to talk to them about their little yellow, bug-eyed sports car; it makes people smile everywhere they go, and it sparks conversations with random strangers all the time. So even after all these years, my parents still meet friends and find community because of their Alfa Romeo.

The mechanic who introduced my parents to the Alfa Romeo club almost 50 years ago is the same mechanic who works on my dad’s Alfa today — a lifelong friendship that began with a quirky Italian car brand.

Romance and La Dolce Vita

I recently got married to the love of my life. It was a tiny wedding, and we went bowling after, a full-circle moment because my parents met as teens in a bowling alley in Hong Kong.

It’s against this vibrant backdrop that I am driving a red Alfa Romeo Giulia with my freshly wed husband on our honeymoon across Italy, three days after we got married. The wedding itself was a rollercoaster of extreme emotions due to an unexpected, devastating event two days prior. Severe heartache, combined with the wondrous euphoria of knowing you’re in a profound, lifelong partnership with your best friend, meant that by the time we picked up the Alfa Romeo in Milan, we were emotionally exhausted. Our hearts bandaged together but also bursting with love, we set out on our journey.

The moment we escaped the snarl of Italian traffic and I got to stretch the Giulia’s legs, all the stress seemed to melt away, and all that remained was the road ahead. Our road ahead, filled with adventure and the giddiness that comes from being so madly in love that it chemically alters your brain.

The Giulia (most Alfa Romeos, in fact) are simply divine to drive, and the emotional connection is too tangible to ignore. With cruise control set to the Italian highway’s generous 130 km/h speed limit, I take one hand off the wheel and reach for my husband’s hand. He squeezes my hand, and I feel recharged.

Our hearts seemed to heal the deeper we drove into Italy. And I think we fell even more in love with each passing kilometre, with each gelato and tiramisu we ate, and with each ancient site that reminded us what we have together is forever. The Giulia gave us solace when we needed it; it was the perfect vehicle (literal and metaphorical) to remind us that, like Alfa Romeo ownership, the ups and downs make the relationship stronger and more magical. As my dad said, with Alfa Romeo, it’s a different type of love.