trinacriabob

@balthazar I looked at that house to the right and immediately thought stucco ranch in a SoCal neighborhood. Then, I looked at the door of this car and it says Long Beach, CA. Bingo.

Like @Robert Hall said, they were in reorganization under the eye of the Italian government, burning through a lot of cash, and didn't meet the criteria to stay solvent. I believe the new entity tried to acquire the name, branding, and all that. They wanted too much for it. Yes, it saddens me because they were my first choice for any transatlantic trip. I grew up with this brand. I had pizza with a friend (coincidence) yesterday and he said the same thing for him and his family. All the things I like are going away - good music, first coupes and now sedans, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, 747s ... where does it stop? The one company that did make a go of an initialed name is T.A.P. - Transportes Aereos Portugueses - and it's known as TAP Air Portugal, or just TAP, to customers. I flew the outbound with TAP and the return with Alitalia. Let's see how this big change goes. They were migrating to this livery on their wide bodies, which I'm not sure I liked. A lot of carriers, such as Air France, got rid of striping along the fuselage. This was on a B-777 parked in Rome. They had also used this livery, with the stripe not going all the way to the nose, as it is shown here on a mock up of the B-747-400s they had intended to purchase ... until 9/11 came along, which caused them to retire all their 747s within the subsequent year.

Today is a sad day. It's Alitalia's final day of operating as it has been known for slightly over 75 years. Tomorrow, it becomes ITA (Italia Trasporto Aereo), which sounds very aseptic. Alitalia is an evocative name because it combines the 2 words "ali" and "Italia," which mean wings and Italy, respectively. So, the alliteration means "the wings of Italy" and it rolls off people's tongues. I'm very glad I've gotten to cross the Atlantic aboard their 747 when they operated them, mostly from Toronto (YYZ). Those were great flights. Great logo and livery, too. Delta heads up SkyTeam and their key European partners are/were Air France, KLM-Royal Dutch, and Alitalia. Sure, some people have (had) their issues with them. In the past, they've not been the most punctual. In recent years, they've been very punctual. I've enjoyed every flight aboard Alitalia. Thanks for the memories.

It does. I focused on the cactus in the foreground. The climate is a dry Mediterranean type, but after seeing how parched SoCal is, this climate is a little bit more moist. The bougainvillea, gelsomine, and orchids attest to that. So, it's a little more vegated than the desert and sill suitable for growing citrus. crops.

Pretty much the southeastern tip of Sicily ... Pozzallo You can see the Mediterranean and maybe the ferry in the distance. It's probably the ferry to go to Malta ... not very far nor very different from Sicily, I'm told, but they drive on the left because of their historical ties to the UK. I'll have to put it on the list.

A couple of random thoughts: I don't see what the Urban Meyer situation is all about. The photos don't look good; however, it doesn't look like he approached her. She seems like a flooze who went over there and started gyrating on his lap. It also depends on how long the "encounter" lasted. His biggest issue is the 0-5 situation of the Jacksonville Jaguars. From quick glances over time, JAX has never had that good of a team. Too bad that Matt Amodio had to lose his winning streak on "Jeopardy." I get bits and pieces from the homepage. This is one smart guy with impressive credentials. I wondered when the streak would end. It came a little bit sooner than I thought. I guess he'll have to go from celebrity status back to Ivy League PhD candidate status. I used to have Matt Amodio (style of) hair at one time.

September 28 Sicilian wedding "getaway car" ... or ... part of the entourage for the wedding. Note the white bow up front.

The only two covered bridges I've actually been in were in the Laurentians north of Montreal and in Stone Mountain Park outside of Atlanta. The one in the Laurentians was way off the beaten path and painted that faded country red that some people paint their houses. - - - - - September 25 Of the smaller cars over there, I sort of like this Opel Corsa coupe. I like the unique coupe and window roofline. This car was over here for a while badged as a Saturn, making it an "American" product ... the Saturn Astra, I believe. Saturns turned out to be better than I would have thought.

September 24 Acoustical parking ... I think the person behind the small sedan had left, so this looked even more invasive. Dumb inscriptions - a few years ago, I posted one of a Smart car that said "Farting Shirt" on it. Do they even know what the words they select mean? Another one of those minis powered by unknown means and said to be cheap, as in under 10,000 Euros, driven by a younger person on a budget, it seemed.

I had forgotten all about this one and then I heard it on the radio. This one could run just on the instrumentals and the "ow" sounds.

How much D-I-R-T-Y Laundry does B-R-I-A-N Laundrie have? So I randomly thought of this song ... How and when that whole saga ends is anyone's guess, but it is both sad and trying.

September 22 I was turning around at a gas station about 35 miles south of Mt. Etna and saw this. Needless to say, I was sort of blown away. One wonders where they'd even buy this type of vehicle over there, and what the engine/trans would be. I remember I once saw a GM "dustbuster" minivan over there, though up north near Turin, and the powertrain was nothing like the one that would have come with those vehicles in America.

Still in September ... September 20 The old and the new in Sicily ... the Smart car still sells and, compared to an ancient Fiat 500, looks downright upright and spacious. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The truck is actually parked on a steeply banked concrete apron and the Fiat Punto behind it is not even touching it ... but not my much!

September 18 Also a day for spotting a trio of minis parked in public parking lots in various parts of Praia de Faro (PT): 1 2 3 I haven't a clue what these are, what powers them, how economical they are, nor how much they cost. But their being frugal and easy to slot into tight spaces is appealing.

"Body Heat," of 1981 vintage, pushed its R rating fairly far. It was known for that. One of its many memorable lines include one where William Hurt is trying to pick up Kathleen Turner in a bar, after already having seen her around, and she says, "Most men are like little boys. Once they get a whiff of it, they trail you like a hound." - - - - - Spotted on September 18 Fueling my rental to take it back to the airport and I see this ...

Spotted September 15 This Renault is ancient!

I also saw "9 1/2 Weeks" and did not like it. Usually, when I didn't like a movie, I don't remember much about it ... like a blank slate. It wasn't like "Body Heat," where I had the lines down! Too funny. I saw the resemblance immediately. Thinking bench seat with no armrest, the cheapest of cloth interiors, the plasticky dashboard with those pods (which began in 1978), etc. But, if a person did buy a Malibu of those years, and it did NOT have a THM 200 and it did not have many problems with the CCC, it might serve its owner for quite a long time, though probably not as long as a Seville would. Hilarious that you drew this parallel: a poor man's Seville, so to speak. Edit: just found this ... the Chevy products of the downsized intermediates across 4 brands had the worst interiors and dashboards. You could tap on the side of the pods and hear rat-tat-tat. But the Memory Lane part is good fun.

Now that I look at it, the rear bumper is odd. As is the fact that any of the side badging is gone. True that. This car inspired GM sedans 5 to 10 years later. Case in point: my dad had one of these (see below), and it was a good little car. It was the enamel dove gray (thankfully, no vinyl roof), had the gray Limited interior, and wire wheels. It was nimble and rode very well. I was reading ads in the Times, stumbled into this one, we went to look at it, and he decided he wanted it.

I'm not much of a drinker at all. Plus, I'm cheap. But I have had port wine to finish off a meal when in Portugal a few times and it is tasty. Portuguese wine is reputed to be very good, in general. On this last trip to Italy, I was given a slip upon check in for a welcome drink at the hotel. I went to the bar and got my welcome drink. I tipped the bartender a Euro. The real highlight was scarfing down all these cashews he put in front of me. I tried not to be too obnoxious. Prior to that, I can't remember the last time I had anything with alcohol ... probably over 3 years ago. True. It was not a September release. It was probably a spring release. Either way, it looks like the eggcrate grille only stuck around for one M.Y. I didn't think it looked too bad. It might have been better if it consisted of vertically oriented rectangles to give it more of a Cadillac look.

Random thought about Portugal and Portuguese ... This was one wild movie - "Wild Orchid." Can't say I liked it, or any movie with Mickey Rourke who can only play sleazy types. In this movie, Carre Otis played a fresh law graduate of Northwestern from a small town in Kansas, yet fluent in Portuguese, who gets sent down to Brazil on an assignment and gets embroiled in all the horndog antics stereotypically associated with Brazil. I like the goofy bilingual part at around 2:50 when the local lady is showing her the parrots at this exclusive club.

Chunky grille seems to imply the eggcrate grille of ('75 and) '76. With the sunroof (and the finer, vertical grilled), that would make this one a '78 or a '79. It would have been interesting to speak to the proprietor or custodian of this car. It had to have come from America and I couldn't see it having anything other than the Olds 350 TBI V8. With their gas prices, they would mentally blow a gasket at the mention of anything around 5700 cc. To them, 1600 cc and higher is a big engine, it seems. Maybe one of its proprietors was still fighting the "civil war." This was on the south coast of Portugal and maybe whoever owned it wasn't fond of Spain. Younger people over there are getting over that sentiment.

Retroactive posting September 16 Driving down the highway in my rented Renault econobox, minding my business, and, WTH, I can't believe I'm seeing this car at what appears to be an automotive repair shop's front parking apron. It's a first-gen Cadillac Seville just about exactly 100 miles - as the crow flies - from Seville! I pulled over. How could I not? The grille might give some clues as to the exact year. There was no shopkeeper or proprietor around to talk to and ask questions. It would have been interesting to learn about this car's history. A sunroof in a dry Mediterranean climate that doesn't appear to be leaking. Underneath it are velour seats - probably a reupholstered interior. Left 3/4 rear view. Right 3/4 rear view. You may note that you see Cadillac badging all the way around, but there is no badging for the Seville nameplate. What a sighting!

One thing (a disco song) leads to another ...

I don't know who's scarier? This guy ... or the people he's chasing down. Just a random thought.

Of the colonnades, I really only liked '75 and '76. The '75 was the best looking one of the models with round headlamps. The '76 was the best looking of the rectangular headlamp models. It was stellar and that's why they sold half a million Cutlasses and over 1 million vehicles across the entire Oldsmobile portfolio that year. I feel that the '77 refinements weren't refinements at all - the busier grilles, dropping the spherical air vents on the passenger side, metallic candy apple red paints instead of "normal" burgundy ones, etc. '75 - last and best of the round headlamp colonnade Cutlass Supreme coupes (this was "Spectre Blue," which you didn't see that often but looked good on both Supreme and Salon coupes) '76 - first and best of the rectangular headlamp/waterfall grille colonnade Cutlass Supreme coupes ... virtually identical to the one my parents bought, except with a blue cloth interior. How I loved these cars. They brought me, my family, and so many others a lot of joy and many great memories. Things were definitely better all the way around several decades ago. "Innocence lost" ... or something like that.