Have you ever seen the street races in Europe?  I got a small taste of what they're like on Thursday.  The Journalist posted earlier about the car purchasing "process" here in Italy.  As expected, it took two full days to finally buy a car.

On Thursday, I went up to Vicenza to check out the available cars.  There were six or seven options that ranged from fairly cheap to pricey (all used cars mind you). I whittled the options down to two after some deliberation.  One, a '99 Volvo station wagon, low mileage and very clean, was affordable.

The test drive was hair raising. The mechanic, driving first, "frankensteined" into a formula one driver.  We're driving a station wagon.  He said he was hard on cars as we exited his shop's lot area and accelerated over 100 feet at break-neck speed swerving to avoid potholes in the road.  We took a pretty hard right turn, accelerated again and then slowed to exit the parking area.  At this point, I'm sitting there going: "Wow...this guy is an aggressive driver."  He takes off and speeds down the road to take "the loop" (a common test drive route he has all his clients take).  He drove because he said he hadn't driven this car before.  He mentions that he's taken others on this same (blood-pressure increasing) route.  We burn around a corner swerving as we go.  He says he likes to drive to see how well vehicles perform.  As we slow down near a downward driveway, he says this is the best part of the drive.  We're going about 25 mph as we enter an underground garage chock full of cement pillars marking parking spots and rows.  As we slalom through, dodging pillars, our speed remains steady.  Mentally, I'm holding on while praying we don't die!  Then we shoot forward going straight for some 30 feet before we swerve to the left and out of the gauntlet.

From there we press forward through a residential area at a respectably moderate pace.  After the stop sign, he guns it.  After a quarter mile or so, he jams on the brakes.  My seat belt was definitely working!  We press on and he hits the brakes again not as hard as before.  Then...reason enters.  He simply says: "I drive the cars hard so they break with me not with you."  He slows to a stop and steps on the brakes numerous times.  He gets out and looks at the passenger side front wheel.  The brake line is leaking like crazy.  Then he says it's my turn to drive.  The vehicle limps back to the shop and we take out the next vehicle, an Alfa Romeo 147.  It is superior to the other in all aspects except price.  I did all the driving because he's driven that car a lot...his wife has one.  I'm fairly sold on the Alfa Romeo.

My mid-life crisis car (I'm peaking early : )

So after lunch, I pay a down payment, go get registration paperwork, call the insurance company and drive home in a small rental car.  You can't drive a vehicle without insurance and registration and you can't get registration without insurance (the chicken or the egg?).  The next day, we go get a money order to pay the rest, we get paperwork at the shop, go get the insurance cards, turn in the car paperwork at the registration office where they give us recycled license plates, eat lunch, go back to put them on the car, pick it up, take it to the base for a final inspection and then essentially it's done.  That was a long sentence (almost as long as Friday felt).  To boot, we didn't get signed up for gas coupons at the registration office because we didn't have the inspection sheet from the base.  It was 4 pm on a Friday by the time we got done, I had a headache and we needed groceries.  It was a nice ride home.  On Tuesday, we'll go back up to Vicenza to start the process to get our van (its driver side window is broken, by the way).