The other day my sister and I met at the movie theater, where we dropped our teens and had an hour and a half to kill.
“Let’s go see mom and dad,” she said. This idea may or may not have had something to do with Mom and Dad’s new dog.
So we hopped in her new Alfa. Okay, hopped is the wrong word. When you open a car door, usually the door takes up pretty much the whole side of the car. But in this Alfa, it only takes up the top half and you have to step over about a foot-high ledge like you’re stepping into a bathtub.
“I don’t think I could do this every day,” I said. lowering butt almost to the ground.
My sister got in the driver’s seat. “My goal is just to do it without grunting.”
We roared away, the warm evening air flicking my hair. Why are sports car seats rock hard? I imagined us getting rear ended and thought my back would a goner if we did. Or if it were a flag-flying Trump-loving pickup behind us we’d just get run over and crushed like at a monster truck show.
When we got to my parents I realized that getting out of the car was going to be worse than getting out of a bathtub. In a bathtub you can stand before stepping out. In an Alfa, you have to put one leg over the ledge and sort of roll over and out, pulling yourself by the car frame.
“You did it,” my sister cheered.
Something’s wrong when you need a standing O for exiting a vehicle. So my review of the Alfa Romeo convertible is that if you’re young and strong and flexible, it might be the car for you. I give it the following ratings: power 10, coolness factor, 10, ease of entering/exiting, (keeping in mind that I once almost tore my own throat out with the top corner of my Nissan door when I opened it) 2. I’ll leave my “1” for something that’s harder to get into, like Stanford.
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