When picking up the car I ended up at a dodgy place. It was not something I was expecting, not sure how to describe it either. There were various small companies on the plot. The car was parked outside next to a few others. It looked a bit neglected and not as clean as on the FB photo's. It looked accident free but when walking around there was a modest dent / accident in the back corner, bummer!
I gave the guy a call to say we arrived. He showed up from he backside. We had a small chat and agreed to drive to the shop to get it registered on my name (costs € 10,40) and pay the last amount in cash.
Turned out he was a friendly young man working as a professional car detail specialist. He confirmed the story he bought the car from the 1st owner, well, from the widow. The car was put up for sale via via without a telephone number (located in Bergen). Somehow he figured out the location of the car and used Google streetview to inspect the neighborhood. He made contact with some of the locals and as such he found the address of the 1st owner and his wive. Clearly she was very surprised and did not understand how she had been identified. How's that!?
As said, he only needed the car temporary as his van was broken down. So for the time being he bought this. He specifically searched for a 5 cylinder stationwagon and as such this showed up. His father apparently was an Italian car enthusiast (mostly Alfa) and did happen to rent out a mobile home on a camping next to a resort where I stayed during my summer leave in Italy. How's that?
Of course I remarked why he did not had car nicely detailled. But he had no time for that besides it would have cost too much. Right!
Back at his place we searched his garage as he recalled he had the original Lancia carpet covers for the the boot. Clearly he was a car nutter as well and had lots of things but we could not find it. When we gave up we walked out passing one of his cars. Then he opened up the back door and there were both covers. Yes, very pleased with these items.
The car was however having only 1 key, sigh! so no master and spare key ... not to happy with that. Oh well. When driving back home the gastank light was burning from the start, how typical.
I also noticed various other shortcomings about the car. I will compile a small list in a future blog. But the car felt very solid and ran very nicely. It handled very well, I suspect it must have been properly maintained. As the MOT is about to expire by the end of next month I have already booked a new MOT for next week. If all is OK I will invest a little further in the car and tackle some of the shortcomings.
As I have the service booklet I see the car was registered on a company called Arma BV and they are located in Nieuwegein. I do happen to live in that city, typical. When further checking it turns out it was a carlease company. See this article:
https://automotive-online.nl/management/laatste-nieuws/alles/1568-arval_koopt_arma.html
Last saturday I had the car insured and signed up for road tax. So the Coupe now went inside for hibernation. The first thing I had done was obviously removing the skibox. This was mounted using a clever mechanism, so that was easily removed. Looks so much nicer now. Mind you, on the photo is looks pretty much ok but on closer inspection you will see the car was very dirty and having lots of optical surface spots, scratches, small dents, poor paint, etc. Nothing surprising after 23 years of usage and 207.000 km on the clock.
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