Pizza is here!
A light grey and battered Mara Irena panel van with decals from a famous local Pizza shop stops just outside the beach parking lot. A man in his 30s gets out, his eyes widening as he sees the assortment of 90s cars gathered in the parking lot. “Did someone here order a bunch of pizzas… and an oven to make them on the spot?”
Two people from the organising team quickly make their way towards the new arrival. “Yes, yes!”, they shout. They gesture towards the beach at the edge of the parking lot. “If you can put your portable oven there, that’d be great. And your pizza, of course.”
“Sure”, the van driver mutters, still astounded. "I am Andrea, by the way. " He gets several cartwheel-sized pizza boxes out of the back of the panel van. “Prosciutto, Pepperoni, Vegetale, Quattro Formaggi, Inferno, Anchovies…”, he announces enthusiastically and heats up the oven. “What’s this event by the way?”, he asks.
“Everyone is going to bring their finest cars from the 1990 and we just have a good time. And pizza - this always gets people to show up!”
Andrea gestures towards the delivery van. “Oh, then my van technically counts, too. Except for the finest, maybe…”
“Doesn’t it look like more from the 60s or 70s?”, one of the organisers asks.
“Yes, but those folks from the East still sold it in the 90s. My father had one of the early models when he opened the pizzeria. Were very popular in his home country, too. And when our first one finally broke down in 1997 I simply got a new one without really thinking about it. I think they might even still sell them*.”
“Haven’t you thought of getting a new one?”
“Sure, but it does its job”, Andrea replied and put the first batch of pizzas into the now hot oven. “Once daily to the wholesale and the farmer’s market, load it up with the good stuff, that’s it. Ample cargo space, still runs pretty well and it’s dirt cheap to maintain. Something breaks, get something from the junkyard, and my friend Tony fixes it in no time for a free pizza or two. Presto, good as new. For regular deliveries, we have something else, of course - but your order here was a bit… oversized.”
“Wasn’t there a famed GT similar to this this in the 70s in some sort of rally? It at least has the same front”, one of the other attendees asks, eyeing the still unheated Quattro Formaggi in one of the boxes.
“Yes, that was its five minutes of fame. Still the same engine family and chassis, essentially, except that the GT-wannabe back then didn’t have a solid rear axle. And of course none of these ridiculous plastic bumpers - but they keep the dents away I guess.” A quick check of the oven timer let Andrea enthusiastically announce that the first round of pizzas is ready. He quickly slices them and put the second batch into the oven.
The panel van parked out of the way on the beach
After the first frantic wave of serving the first batch of pizzas and while second one is baking, Andrea has a few minutes for himself to enjoy looking all the other impressive cars. “Sometimes it’s all about life’s simple pleasures”, he thinks, as he grabs a slice of his delicious anchovy pizza that strangely was left mostly untouched, while there are already only a few scattered slices left of the other cartwheel-sized pizzas from the first batch.
“Speaking of simple pleasures…”, Andrea caught sight of a diminutive yellow box on wheels that stood deserted at the other end of the parking lot and made his way towards it. Its owner was probably amidst the pizza munching crowd that had gathered on the beach near the source.
* In my last campaign, the panel van version was actually my best selling variant of all my cars right up to 2020.
The 'Star' was a reasonably priced car
“Who keeps one of these for over 20 years in almost mint condition?”, Andrea wondered. His eyes had noticed a 1998 or 1999 Mara Zvezda (‘star’) sports coupe. The Zvezda was the first car engineered by Mara after the 1990s market liberalisation and it had taken them until the end of the decade to at least somewhat catch up with the rest of the world in terms of car engineering. As with the Irena, the Zvezda was available in sedan, hatchback and coupe form (no vans or utes though).
While the Irenas were kept in production as low-cost option for the domestic market (with the exception of the van which kept enjoying great popularity abroad), the Zvezdas were intended as more upmarket option for domestic sales and as mid-tier family cars and pony / budget light sports cars for export. If Andrea remembered correctly, the first generation Zvezda sports coupe had a then all-new aluminium head SOHC 2.3l I4 that made about 100 kW in factory tune, almost double that of the standard Zvezda sedan, hatchback and van versions.
Especially Zvezda coupes were especially rare these days and many of those had not survived numerous crude attempts at tuning by various shade-tree mechanics / wannabe tuners, accidents caused by cash-strapped boy racers who believed to be the next racing gods, or amateur racing events where Zvezda coupes were often entered in due to their affordability and (relative) tuneability.
However, in this case, the distinctive yellow colour, tastefully tinted windows and an almost diminutive - for the 90s - lip and spoiler told him that this version had gotten a makeover by Mara’s own inhouse performance division AMM (Avtostudiya & Manufakturiya Mayster), that power output was probably more in the realm of 130 kW, that the whole car had come with a standard factory warranty, and that the price tag had been not quite as low as those of the standard Zvezdas. He was not sure though whether there would be a market for cars like this these days.
After looking at the remarkably unremarkable car in front of him for a short while, Andrea tuned his head to see whether the owner was anywhere in sight. However, all he could see was that there were now little more than crumbs left of the first batch of pizzas at the other end of the parking lot - so even the anchovy one was gone by now. He made his way back to check the state of the second batch of pizzas in the oven. He also saw that there were a couple of new arrivals making their way through the crowd. Maybe his pizzas were even part of the reason why they showed up…?
