Muhammad Ali bought this 1976 Alfa Romeo Spider new at
European Imports in Lake Forest, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. He owned it
for just a short time before he gave it to his friend – the current owner – who
was with him at the time of purchase.
We can’t say for sure who that friend and consigning
owner is, but the Alfa is said to have featured in the book “Running with the
Champ: My Forty-Year Friendship with Muhammad Ali” by Tim Shanahan – a copy of
which comes with the car. So we wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the author’s.
Whoever it belongs to has put over 80,000 miles on
the car. It’s powered by a 2.0-liter straight four with a five-speed manual,
decked out in silver with a handsome red coachline and a black interior, and
wears a California vanity plate reading “ALIBEE2.”
The Alfa wasn’t Ali’s only encounter with small
Latin-flavored roadsters. As Jalopnik documented shortly after his death just
two years ago, Ali was once part owner in a small Brazilian manufacturer called
Puma, which made little fiberglass-bodied barchettas powered (ironically
enough) by “boxer” engines from the Volkswagen Beetle.
The obscure sports cars earned the nickname “Lettuce”
after a deal with a Saudi sheikh saw the cars rebadged under his name Al Fassi
– which in Portuguese (the language of its native Brazil) refers to the leafy
vegetable. “I guess that could be cool,” wrote Jalopnik’s Jason Torchinsky, “as
long as, you know, you don’t park next to a Rabbit.”
The deal (and the automaker) collapsed when Sheikh
Al Fassi was investigated for tax evasion, and only one prototype for the car
that bore his name is thought to have survived. But the Alfa is up for grabs,
and it could be yours if you place the right bid next month at
Barrett-Jackson‘s Las Vegas sale.
