Trade #24: 1987 Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce for 2005 Dodge Ram 1500

This trade was a lot of work and a long time coming, and I am so pleased with it!

I’ve had a lot of offers on the Alfa. I’ve had it much longer than I’d expected, and while it’s been fun to ride around in from time to time (and was even immortalized in a music video!), it’s very impractical for me and I’ve been pretty motivated to trade it. There have been a few close calls (one Mercedes was very nice, but the guy backed out when he learned that Spiders didn’t have power steering in 1987), and a few truly entertaining offers (a set of golf clubs!), but nothing that had really stuck. Until Bill.

Bill (not his real name) was exactly the guy I was waiting for. He had a solid vehicle in excellent condition for which there’s always demand — a powerful pickup truck. He had an abundance of these, and when I say an abundance, I mean Bill owns a couple construction companies in Sacramento and he told me he has 20+ vehicles. “This one was my wife’s barn truck,” he said. “She has an Escalade but wanted something else for driving through the fields.” So, yeah. He could spare one.

The best part, though: He had a great story.

In the late 1980s, Bill’s dad had owned and loved a 1987 Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce convertible. In gold. And Bill wanted to surprise him with another. He’d been looking all around and only finding red or black models, and was all but beside himself when he found my listing. His dad, who is in Texas, was going to love it.

Additional delightful thing: Bill is a big guy. He’s probably 6’3″. When we met up in Vacaville to swap test drives, he needed the top down in order to fit in the damn car. As I was driving behind him in this huge truck, I was watching him waver on whether to look through the windshield, or over it. It looked like a kid in a Power Wheels convertible. (He assured me that his dad is smaller and would fit more easily.)

And the truck rode so smoothly. It was a little jarring to go from a 2-seater, 4-cylinder convertible to a 6-seater truck with a V8. I felt both enormous and tiny. It was really powerful, and so easy to drive, and in really excellent cosmetic and mechanical shape.

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We swapped vehicles then and there, which was late January, but it took a couple weeks to finalize the paperwork. I finally met up with Bill’s assistant (honestly I think 75% of her job is managing his DMV-related paperwork, and she is so kind and so competent and wow I feel for her).

Now that everything is official, I can list the truck. This one’s up for sale or trade. If someone offers sufficient cash, it will get me to my first huge goal, and man, I’d love to check that one off.