In an all-out attempt to make Alfa Romeos slip into the American mainstream when the marque returns to US soil, General Motors is rumored to be planning a series of models that reflect and cater to American taste, as do all of their other products. Perhaps, first out of the block should be the 2005 Martha Stewart Edition Alfa Spider!

I don’t trivialize Martha Stewart anymore; I take the woman very seriously. Any single mother who can go from "baking cookies in the basement" to making well over a billion dollars on Wall Street, in the first eight hours after her initial public offering, has earned her R-E-S-P-E-C-T, as Aretha Franklin put it. As I watched Morley Safer do his second "60 Minutes" profile on Martha in five years, I began to tremble at the thought of what could happen if she were retained to develop a new American Alfa model.

Don’t misunderstand me; it isn’t that I think Ms. Stewart would be slipshod in making an Alfa. It’s just that I wonder if anyone would live long enough to find out how the darn thing looks or drives, by the time Martha finishes obsessing over every gear, nut, synchronizer, door handle, and quarter panel. You see, "Martha Stewart Living" isn’t simply about style; it’s about ensuring that every part of the final product is overseen to the most minute detail. I’m terrified to imagine how much this Spider she’s designing will cost, but I think it’s safe to say that Vittorio Jano might rise from the dead when her FBO sticker price hits Motor Trend.

Skeptical? Think my fears are groundless? Let me give you an example. Martha doesn’t just make a ham sandwich. First, she slices her home-baked bread, which she’s made from stone-ground flour she’s milled herself from the wheat she’s grown in her back yard. Then, of course, she slices the ham she’s home-cured, after slaughtering the pig she’s bred at her piggery in the Greenwich, Connecticut suburbs. The lettuce and tomatoes come from her victory garden of heirloom vegetables she recreated from genetically duplicated seeds she discovered during an archaeological dig in Plymouth, Massachusetts, near where the Mayflower landed, complete with Pilgrims. You catch my drift here? I don’t have to do Martha’s mustard, do I?

You’re chuckling at me; I know. You’re thinking that it’s just food over which Martha does all this fussing, like women used to in the "Good Old Days"—when we knew our place. Don’t kid yourself; Martha’s already conquered one of the most male-dominated, risk-ridden industries in America: publishing. This woman’s publications have 9 million subscribers, 9 MILLION! That’s about 18 times the population of Vermont!

Neither does her MSL empire stop there. Martha’s doing another billion dollars a year selling her household products from K-Mart alone. Do you know how much a billion dollars a year is? It’s a million one-thousand-dollar bills that, if stacked neatly, would take up most of the living space in your home, unless you live in the Vatican. That’s a billion dollars annually only from K-Mart shoppers who buy her dish cloths, bath towels, shower curtains, bed quilts, window dressings, throw pillows, and bed sheets.

Yup, bed sheets, which she designs on the cotton she’s woven from the thread she’s spun from the cotton balls she’s picked at her fields on the banks of the River Nile—where she can see the Great Pyramids, which she recently purchased, for an excellent price, at an estate sale held by the Egyptian government! (The Pyramids’ purchase is still only rumor; don’t spread that around just yet.)

Lemme guess—you’re still disregarding my concerns about Martha moving on to Alfa Romeos. She does "house stuff," you’re saying to yourself; it’s clearly a girl thing, like lipstick. She isn’t into "durable goods," as economists categorize the automotive industry. You’re thinking, Martha may be branching out, but she’s only moving around the ol’ homestead, merely meandering from the garden, to the kitchen, to the bathrooms, to the bedrooms, to the living room. Well, that covers just about every room at my place, except, of course, FOR THE GARAGE!

Think about it; what would be more natural than Martha doing cars to show America how to....commute to work....cavort in the evenings....cruise along on vacation, or....TaDa....carpool! You think you have trouble keeping all the amenities packages straight now? Wait till the Martha Stewart Living Spider comes your way! She’ll crochet cashmere covers for the steering wheels, for goodness’ sake.

You really want to buy the car that Martha would create after she mines the ore, to smelt into steel, that becomes the fenders, which wrap around the tires, she molds from the sap, that’s vulcanized into rubber, after harvesting the trees on her plantation in South America???

And we’ve barely begun. Can you imagine the cost of the stuff if Martha decides to do—gulp—GAS?! Shudder you should; I’ve heard gossip that she’s been sighted over the oil fields of Texas, hot-air ballooning in a gondola basket she’d woven, just before blowing up the blasted balloon herself!