The following appeared in the July 15, 2005 edition of the San Jose Mercury
News, San Jose, Californa.
The Mercury is a major metropolitan newspaper for the San Francisco Bay Area.
Our story was the
lead item in Leigh Weimers' popular column about the Bay Area. Other columns
by this author
are found at www.mercurynews.com ,
columnists, Leigh Weimers.
Team takes pride in non-originality
By Leigh Weimers
Sweet are the uses of adversity. That applies not only to William
Shakespeare, who said it first,
but also to the sports car scene today.
Steve Smith and Richard Lane of Santa Clara, Ben Lamprecht of Mountain View,
Ted Williams of
Los Altos, Tom Sahines of Milpitas and Gary Williams of Sunnyvale were showing
off their Alfa
Romeos last year at Concorso Italia (not my typo! -GW), the big Italian car
event that precedes
the Monterey Historics race at Laguna Seca each August. But, relates Gary
Williams, ``throughout
the day we noticed that a number of people who wandered by grumbled and
muttered because
our cars are not entirely original. We have non-stock engines, different
upholstery, different
wheels, etc. Our quip of the day became, `Well, it's nice, but not original.'
''
Thus dissed, the six decided to roll with it. As a joke, they named their team
Scuderia Non Originale,
Italian for ``team not original.'' Gary tacked a Scuderia page onto
his personal Web site (greend.com)
and they had Scuderia stickers made for their cars, based on the decades-old
Alfa racing symbol.
Then things took off.
``Little did we know that Scuderia NO would become a hit with Alfa enthusiasts
who find us and sign
up for our free membership, even though we don't advertise and all we offer is
the guarantee of NO
dues, NO meetings, NO publications and absolutely NO relevance,'' Gary notes.
Branches even have
sprung up in England, the Netherlands, South Africa and, of course, Italy.
Their furthest outpost: Balad,
Iraq, where member Russ Turner of Texas displays the team's colors on his
battered Humvee. (Sorry
Russ. Leigh accidentally dropped off "Air Force" that preceded Humvee - GW)
And yes, the team will be back at the Concorso on the Monterey Peninsula on
Aug. 19. Standing proudly
while purists sniff at their modified Alfas. The cars may be non-original, but
their owners' creativity isn't.
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Contact Leigh Weimers at lweimers@mercurynews.com or
(408) 920-5547. Fax (408) 288-8060. Previous columns can be read
online at www.mercurynews.com/ columnists
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out how to modify the navigation bars on this template, so "Product" is Webese
for "Here are the Alfa pix."O
