How it all began....

marcjh · Sep 20, 2008

Coming home from a couple of weeks of mountaineering recently I had time to reflect on what led to my madness with the Dino. It was the early 70's and I was an undergrad at Ohio State University when I was driving home South of campus. There was a used car dealer on North High Street. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the most beautiful piece of rolling art I had ever seen. I knew right away what I was looking at. My first Dino. It was then and there that I knew that some day I would have to have one of these beauties. Some years later, bidness was doing fine, three little kids, and a wife who really didn't know what I was talking about, and the urge struck. I am lucky. Dennis McCann is in my community. His facility was 2-3 miles down the street from me. I went over to look. I thought I had died and gone to Dino heaven. Little did I know that Dennis was the Dino maven. He had more Dinos and parts under roof than the Ferrari assembly plant. I remember looking at a GT that he had for sale. Well, at $30k I thought that was a bit much. I passed on it (kick me, hard!!). Some time later, 21 years ago, it was all I could stand. A man I had come to know brokered a GTS to/for me. The day he was to drive the car over mi famigila was sitting on our front porch waiting. We heard the sound of the motor and saw the glint of red as Mark McClintic turned onto my street. My son could not have been over 3 years old at the time. He didn't know what was happening, but when that automobile turned into my driveway he went nuts. Mark gave me the keys and we went for a ride. My poor son has grown up with this toy in the casa thinking that this is normal. Little does he know just what it took to make my dream a reality. There's more to come. I'll add more to this post over time. I am sure that many of you have similiar stories. Now as the driving season in the Midwest is drawing to a close and it will be time to store the cars, many of us are getting in our last drives in the beautiful weather. We need topics to keep the spirit alive during the cold weather. Marc

docf · Sep 20, 2008

marcjh said: ↑

Coming home from a couple of weeks of mountaineering recently I had time to reflect on what led to my madness with the Dino. It was the early 70's and I was an undergrad at Ohio State University when I was driving home South of campus. There was a used car dealer on North High Street. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the most beautiful piece of rolling art I had ever seen. I knew right away what I was looking at. My first Dino. It was then and there that I knew that some day I would have to have one of these beauties. Some years later, bidness was doing fine, three little kids, and a wife who really didn't know what I was talking about, and the urge struck. I am lucky. Dennis McCann is in my community. His facility was 2-3 miles down the street from me. I went over to look. I thought I had died and gone to Dino heaven. Little did I know that Dennis was the Dino maven. He had more Dinos and parts under roof than the Ferrari assembly plant. I remember looking at a GT that he had for sale. Well, at $30k I thought that was a bit much. I passed on it (kick me, hard!!). Some time later, 21 years ago, it was all I could stand. A man I had come to know brokered a GTS to/for me. The day he was to drive the car over mi famigila was sitting on our front porch waiting. We heard the sound of the motor and saw the glint of red as Mark McClintic turned onto my street. My son could not have been over 3 years old at the time. He didn't know what was happening, but when that automobile turned into my driveway he went nuts. Mark gave me the keys and we went for a ride. My poor son has grown up with this toy in the casa thinking that this is normal. Little does he know just what it took to make my dream a reality. There's more to come. I'll add more to this post over time. I am sure that many of you have similiar stories. Now as the driving season in the Midwest is drawing to a close and it will be time to store the cars, many of us are getting in our last drives in the beautiful weather. We need topics to keep the spirit alive during the cold weather. Marc
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My recollections are somewhat similiar, but unfortunately I sold mine in 84 @ buying a 512BBi in France. The Dino was such an obscession I passed on a Daytona for similiar money. Bough it in 74, just out of production, I visited many car dealers finally finding my dream at FAF in Alanta Georgia. It was the ugliest color Ferrari ever Sprayed- Metallic gold. ( Color first Daytona spyder that can to the states was.) Would go to the events and it was thought of by the Ferrari elite as a step child !! Little did they know the true value and history of this magn. CAR IN THE FUTURE. When I left Alanta it was late evening bound for Tampa Fl. . Highways as I approached Fl. border were empty so it was time to see what it would do. 135mph for extended period of time, was enjoying every second of all the sounds, then in the distance the glimmer of tail light's, you got it - State Highway Patrol-- Made the situation worse as I went to flash the lights and did it wrong. Instead of flashing, accidently turned them off. Of course all of this in mille seconds. Didn't even get to go to jail, nor even a ticket. The policeman was so into Ferrari's esp the Dino which he had only read about in Car and Driver and had never dreamed he'd stop one in person.

2GT · Sep 22, 2008

Great stories! Let me add a bit of my own. I had seen Ferraris in Italy in the sixties, but shortly after the first Dino prototype was shown at the 1965 Paris Salon, MG Mitten had an ad for a trunk-mounted luggage rack in Road & Track. It contained a drawing of the Dino prototype with, naturally, the ugly aforementioned luggage rack mounted on the engine lid (who would really do such a thing?). I had not yet seen pictures of the prototype, so I thought that the Dino was a figment of the artist's fevered imagination. As soon as I realized that the car actually existed, I was mesmerized. While in college in the late '60s, there was a magazine article (Motor Trend?) with a small photo of Sergio Pininfarina's personal 206 prototype. I kept it folded in my wallet throughout the remainder of college and for all of law school. My senior year, I saw a well-used 206 in a used car dealer. When my parents came up for law school graduation, I drove to the dealer (it was closed) so that they could view the object of my lingering obsession. It was gone! On a trip to Italy after taking the bar exam, I photographed two Dinos in Rimini. I also watched while an idiot in Nice backed his Dino GTS into a portable no parking sign, denting the trunk without even caring. As soon as I started my job as an Assistant DA back home, I started saving for a Dino. I found it two years later, and took ten weeks to buy it. It had been left at an Alfa dealer on consignment, but the dealer led me to believe that they owned the car. My second Dino followed seven years later. On the orphan thing: the first time I showed my blue Dino at a local car show, which usually had a nice selection of V-12 Ferraris back then (mid- to late-'70s), a guy who owned a perfect 365 GTS4 (painted an unfortunate primrose yellow) walked over to me, looked at the engine compartment and said: "I see you only have half an engine!" At that time, the Dino's license plate read "GTB." After getting flack from a V-12 owner that it wasn't a GTB, I traded the plate back for another one. For many years, non-Ferrari-owning "experts" frequently informed me that my Dinos weren't "real" Ferraris. At one show, while my car was mobbed with admirers (about eight or ten years ago), a guy shouted to me from the other side of the car: "These were never very popular, were they?" I replied that they were, with me. We have finally come into our own, now that most knowledgeable people agree that the Dino is a modern masterpiece. We tried to tell them, but they wouldn't listen. Now they're reading Dino auction results and nodding knowingly. Vindication is sweet, ain't it? Fred

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