Do you remember when you first fell in love with Ferrari?

Around 1979-1980 when I was around 10 years old my father came home and instructed me to get into the car. We then drove across town where we pulled up to a house where there was a bright red 308 GTS. My father told me, "That is a Ferrari!" He then broke into telling me more of the details of Ferrari and its racing history and heritage. I thought it was simply the most beautiful car I had ever seen. I told him that I wanted to own one. I immediately went home and started getting magazine articles and anything else I could get my hands on.

Anyway, that started a love affair with Ferrari that has persisted with me ever since. My dream was always to own one, but I figured my career path was one that would never lead to ownership. However, I was able to achieve that dream two years ago when I got my 1985 GTS QV. I absolutely love it and have put almost 4500 miles on it in that time.




PDG

 

About 20yr's before this pic was taken in '89:
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I remember the convertable Testarossa. Was it Stratman who first did it? I remember reading about one in an old R&T magazine back in the 80s.

 

I remember watching Magnum and Miami Vice when I fell in love with Ferrari and I used to tell Mum and Dad "I am going to own a Ferrari one day" when I was around 8 yrs old.

Yep, you guessed it.................they laughed at me.

But boy did I show them.

 

Mine started many many years ago as a kid. There was a puppet show for kids called "super car" that I watched on TV. I thought that flying car was the coolest thing in the world and at that age thought it was real. I remember looking and looking for that car on the roads but never finding it. Then some years later there was a cartoon called "Speed racer". Now we were getting closer to something that migh be based on the real deal. Then it happened. First year of senor high I was driving my first car a '69 XKE and a RED 308 came up from behind paced me and off we went racing down the highway. The adrenaline surge and pounding heart caused me to chicken out at about 95mph. He blew past and I new I had found my true love......two 308's later I still get that first time feeling every time I pull the cover off to go driving. It was imprinting! I really believe I imprinted at a very early age and therefore have little control over this obsesssion. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 

Cool! I had a '66 GTO, and as an avid reader of Car & Driver and Road & Track, was aware of both the name connection and the surrounding controversy.

 

Love your work Pap!

 

In 1959, with paper route money I started buying Road&Track, Sports CarGraphic and I was in love with anything Italian...especially Ferrari. I eventually bought a 125 Vespa which my parents let me drive even though I was only 14, which seemed almost as good as a Ferrari. Life was less complicated then.......Riverside Raceway was within driving distance of my Vespa. There I saw a 250 SWB Berlinetta. Life was never the same. Then I saw a 250GT 2+2 single headlight at a gas station as they were driving through to Palm Springs. The dream never died. In 2006, I finally got my 87 328 and think it is the best thing I have ever done.

 

Wonderful memories! I wonder if any of the F1 drivers have any similar stories?

 

When I read this issue of Car & Driver. I was 12 years old. I didn't start working at our local donut shop until I was 15 1/2 (but had chores), so I probably pleaded with my dear Mom, who was always very generous about the things that we were really passionate about. I might have been home sick at the time as well. Whenever I was sick around that time, it was Car & Driver and Spider Man comics. From that point on, the 308 was my ideal of a car. When a later C&D issue ran the "What can be conceived can be created" full-page ad, I spent hours sketching the car from it. I have that ad matted and framed, on my wall (along with three other 308 ads from those years, including the early QV). 34 years later, I have my first. Better late than never, and I love the car even more. It's the most connected to the road that I've felt in any car that I've ever driven. A true classic never fades, and people are happy to see it out on the road. Grazie, Enzo...and thank you, Mom.
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This may be sacrilegious, but I never had a lust for a 308 until she found me.
As a kid, I collected Corgi & matchbox & Hotwheels like most. I loved my Corgi Dino 206 sport. I played with it the most. And it's still in my collection less the long-lost front spoiler. I also loved the Corgi sharknose. The James Bond DB5 & Jag E 2+2 were also my favorites. WHen I hit driving age, I lusted after the neighbors brown '69 Dodge Charger RT Hemi. BUt when your 1 of 4 kids in a lower middle class family, it broke my heart when dad sold the family '69 corvair.

Then the 308 found me. Everything changed. She & I have had 11 wonderful years together & still going strong. Sure we've had our ups & downs, but we've stuck it out. She doesn't mind my extra wrinkles and greying hair and I dont mind her rock-chipped nose. A little dye, a little nose paint goes a long way

The new wife is tolerant of my insanity. And I'll admit I had conspired to sneak the 308 into our wedding pics. She was a very good sport about it, even getting into it. I've posted a couple before, but these alway bring a smile to my face knowing how lucky I am to have a good woman & good car.
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For me, it was the opening scene of Magnum PI when the 308 oversteers from the side of the road onto the surface of the road, and that wonderful exhaust adds to the music. I can still hear that music now.

 

My dad gave me a book from which I could cut out paper models of cars. My favorite was Ferrari. We lived near where the Carrera Panamericana road race (1950's era) passed, so we either went to see it, or we would tune it in on my dad's Hallicrafters radio. The crazy Mexican reporters would stand out into the roadway with their microphones to capture the sound of the cars and call the names of the drivers..... Felice Bonetto, Piero Taruffi, Umberto Maglioli, Juan Manuel Fangio. All the other machines, Alfa, Lancia; Porsche, were of passing interest, but Ferrari and its drivers burned itself into the most impressionable parts of my mind. My tricycle was a Ferrari, My bicycle, my Vespa, my Chevy, my Ford Mustang, VW, Innocenti; my Datsun 240Z... they were all Ferraris. I studied and worked hard, and knew that I would reach my dream.
I own a black 1983 308 GTSi, since 1984. Many other driving and flying toys also, but when I go to the Ferrari, it still feeds my soul. The names of my hero drivers from the Panamericana are lasered into the Titanium gearshift knob, and it has been a faithful, seductive companion for many years. Even though my daily beater is a Maserati, I drive the 308 once a week, and the magic has never faded.
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+1. I was a Porsche-only teenager until that 288GTO article. Months later, I saw a parked 308 GTS (metallic green and not red) for the first time and couldn't keep my eyes off it as I admired the lines.

What sealed the deal was early 90s Monterey Historics with all the vintage F race cars especially 50s Barchettas.

 

Great scene.

 

The Magnum PI Ferrari did it for me, but driving with my dad on the highway when I was around 10 or 11 and having a white white 308 drive by us sealed the deal. We followed it for miles, and checked it out from all angles, while I listened to the engine sing. Beautiful car, and the start of a multi-decade love affair with the Ferrari marque.

 

I loved the Magnum series which aired here in the mid 80's, and while I liked his car, I wasnt hooked. Then I received a book "Ferrari" by Godfrey Eaton in 1984, and was smitten...! Didnt see my first Ferrari in the flesh until 1995 when I moved to the big city, and sold my 1974 Fiat 124 Special T. The guy came to collect it in a 308 GTS! Then I knew I had to have one ... and 8 years later I did it.

 

Nice pics. They are both beautiful.

 

I reckon it was 1975/76 (I was 6 or 7) and a close friend of my parents had just bought his first Ferrari. I was into anything with 4 wheels at the time (& still am) and they asked him to take me for a spin. Not only did he take me for a spin, but I spent the entire day with his giallo 308GT4 (inside & out), and he even humoured me by letting me wash & dry the car.

My parents came to his house to collect me when the sun went down and I vowed to him that I too would own a Ferrari one day, and 30 years later he was probably as proud as me when I told him that I'd kept my promise.

 

waaaaay back in the early 70's, there was an elderly italian gent who loved to drive his f-car ... it was unique, with a GTC designation, where the 'C' stood for competition ...

but he used to drive it like a man possessed and my friends & me wld turn up for local events real early in the mornings just to watch him drive his red beauty ...

 

so you would have been in your early 20's then?

 

hehehe ...

 

I remember it very vividly;

It was 1987, I was 7 years old, and there was this new show airing every saturday at 5 pm on "Globo" channel called Magnum P.I. (context, I live in Paraguay, and in those days, my TV only caught brazilian TV stations, since we lived in the border and cable TV didn't even exist in my country yet; the show was in portuguese translation, and it started airing in Brazil in that year, a lot later than in the US).

The fist time I saw Tom Selleck flooring that 308 on the roadside throwing dirt all around, on the starting credits, I got hooked. I just knew, at age 7, that life couldn't get better than that. I was already a car-kid (I had a "Matchbox" collection of around 100 cars by that date) But that was the epitome of automotive beauty. And I have pursued that car ever since... I have almost 8 Gb on digital images alone... all the episodes of that show... and many other movies on which the Ferrari has appeared (bought solely BECAUSE that car was on them).

It's funny how things can affect you at such an early age, huh?

 

I was about eight years old cruising with my parents I saw a 308GTS near Old San Juan in Puerto Rico and that got me into watching Magnun.

 

During the wild hay days of disco around 1979, I was at a club in San Francisco, and had the great fortune to hook up with a model from one of the major magazines. She was from Belguim and was absolutely breathtaking. We left the club together to go to her flat and when the valet pulled her new 308 GTS to the curb, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The upshot of the whole time I spent with her (almost a year), was she didn't how to drive let alone shift the car, but boy was she good at other things. What a time I had, not only did I have this fantastic female, but also a new Ferrari to love and use as I wished! When she returned to Belguim, I ordered my Ferrari, (now the longest relationship I have ever had, 31 years). Ahhh to be young again!

WilliamR