Another magazine 3X8 slam

Lived in England for a couple of years '67=68. Carnaby Street, all that stuff. Had a TR4-irs brg green, wire wheels everything; sold it for a profit as all production going to America. I do miss the car as it was everything British... great when it was on the autostrada scattering Fiats, hard to start in the damp.

Any one wish like me they had never sold on a car? (Especially the E-type)

 

Isn't that what was said about the Dino??

 

1914 5-digit Serial Number Colt 1911
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I buy them to drive them.
As for my Triumph Spitfire.... I seem to work on it more than drive it.
Guess that's why I have 5.1 surround sound in the garage

 

For subtlety though, you can't beat one of these.
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BTW, the Thomson is very cool. But I've heard Al Capone preferred to carry a matched set of these Colt 1903 Hammerless .380's.
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Interesting similarity with the prancing horse logos. Never noticed that before.

 

If we're showing of our Colts, here's my Colt AR-15A2
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I LOVE IT!!!!! Dont mess with our cars!

 

Geeze, that's a whole different thread. Mine are:

61 E-Type Coupe
1935 Wosely Hornet Special
Lotus Elite
57 MGA
Alfa Bertone Sprint Veloce Coupe
Various Alfa Early Spiders
73 MGC

There are more.........

 

Try trying to explain to your father when you were only fourteen that the price he was about to get for a 1968 Shelby GT500 ( only one in our whole country at the time ) was way way way to low and he should advertise it. What did I know. He sold it to a guy who just walked up our drive on his lucky day. The same day my mother went off at him for owning such a noisy car. Gone in sixty seconds!.

 

We need a gun thread here

 

Screw what the magazines have to say if I was a bazillionare I would still love and buy 80's Ferrari's I would just be buying more of them! They don't know what they are missing.

 

Even with folks who achieved a + financial ROI on ownership of certain cars, their main advice has been to buy what you like.

The 308/328 may not be as collectible as the supercars of the era (288 GTO, F40, Countach), but it is on the second tier. I think there is enough evidence that there are US Gen X car enthusiasts, which may propagate the hobby; but they are not in high numbers as Baby Boomer car enthusiasts. In Europe, there already seems to be an uptick on these cars again recently.

I'm thrilled if I can continue to enjoy the car I like while it keeps up with inflation.

 

Join Rossa, it's a gazillion pages long...

 

BTW, the next car that may replace my 328 is valued at 20X the 328. As much as I occasionally read Automobile magazine, I would simply take their comment as a data point...not gospel.

 

Thats the best responce yet.

 

When you read Playgirl magazine are you surprised when you only find la salsiccia?

 

I do find it interesting that most 308 references in european magazines are generally very positive (there have been a number of different articles in the last year or so), while here in the US most print references are negative or otherwise disparaging.

Chalk it up to cultural differences I suppose.

 

Yeah, I think it's just the different way cars were "used" years ago.

In Europe there were many areas where you could drive quite fast for extended periods. In the US, speed limits made acceleration a more important issue for car guys because you could enjoy that capability without using much space and, even though you might hit 120 in a 70MPH speed limit area, you weren't usually way over it for all that long.

So IMO, that's kind of where it all came from. Acceleration was more important in the US - from which we got drag racing. Nowadays, of course, there are US, asian and european cars that can do both but during the muscle car era that wasn't so much the case. Fast-accelerating US production muscle cars were unlikely to be able to reach much above 130MPH if that. Most, despite what folks would like to think they remember, would top out at around 120-125.

But though our 3x8s are not particularly competitive in the acceleration department, a 328, at 14.2 in the the 1/4 is faster than the "common" muscle cars of the 60's - 383 Mopars, 396 Chevelles, 390 Fords, etc. Unlike what you'd think from reading about the era, the vast majority of muscle car owners did NOT own hemi Mopars, 427 Chevys or 427/428 Fords that could run in the 13's. Most of them were mid/high 14s or even low 15s.

 

Mike, the big difference between US and European consumer attitudes towards sports cars is, as you allude to, acceleration & outright speed in the US vs a tendency to focus more on chassis refinement in Europe.

You can pin this down precisely to motor racing. The US had (and still has) a tendency towards oval tracks and the country's huge open spaces lend themselves to the drag run and land speed record attempts.

Europe's racing were always much more to do with circuits featuring plenty of tight twists & turns and hillclimbs. It was the British garagistes, predominantly Colin Chapman of Lotus, who showed that by building the right chassis, fragile agility could win easily over brute horse power on these sorts of circuits.

As we all know, Enzo Ferrari ignored that innovation to his cost, but Ferrari eventually started paying more attention to the chassis through the 60s and into the 70s with crucial changes like moving to mid-engine. I think the 308 is a good example of this sort of refinement.

Decades on, this difference in emphasis still pervades.

 

Any time a magazine starts to take itself too seriously, you see self-righteous drivel of that ilk, and a general loss of the true spirit of whatever it is they are supposed to be being experts on. Call it "occupational myopia induced complacency."

 

Though I never bought one, (20/20 hindsight now), in the early 80's you could buy a 246 all day long for 8K to 10K. At the same time, a Fiat Dino was around 4K to 5K in perfect shape. In '78 I bought my '69 Alfa Spider for 1K. All my friends said my Alfa was the ugliest car they ever saw. Same with my '71 Green GTV that I bought for $1200.00 in '79. Like it or not, the 308 to some nay sayers may not be "Collectable" but, of all of the models, it is among the few "Iconic" Ferraris.

 

Making a 'withdrawal' from the bank?