I’m honored.

OK, I'll do that. In 2005 I boarded a plane at Laguardia bound for Cleveland and flipped open a Road & Track magazine that I had with me. After a while, a fellow sitting in the next row back and across the aisle poked me and asked me if he could read my magazine after I was finished. He said he would give me his magazine in exchange. I said sure. A few minutes later I handed back my R&T, and he handed up a magazine that turned out to be Cavallino magazine. As we exited the plane after the flight I asked whether he had a Ferrari, and he replied that he was thinking of buying a Lusso being offered in Detroit for a bit more than $300,000. I was astounded at that amount and he was really thinking it over carefully. But he suggested that I come to a Ferrari club event on the shores of Lake Erie in a couple of weeks. So I did, and there he was with a Lusso. Who knew that its value would increase tenfold in a few years? Shortly after that I was diagnosed with cancer, and in March 2006 i went through the lengthy surgery to remove my prostate, and there were complications. As I sat at a home recuperating over a period of weeks, I was feeling sorry for myself and trying to think of a pick-me-up that would brighten the months ahead. I recalled the Lusso guy, and I also recalled that my son as a teen had had a poster of a Testarossa tacked up in his bedroom. Aha! I would find a Testarossa and enjoy it with my now-grown son. His family lived close by at the time, and we made a few road trips to look at them. Finally I found online a pristine one in Alabama and paid a premium for its condition, without an inspection because the owner was a well-known collector. What a thrill it was to stand behind the carrier van and watch that brutally lovely car descend to the ground in front of my eyes! One of the really fun things about owning that car was the number of young men who came up to me in parking lots to say that they had had a poster of that car tacked onto their bedroom wall as teens!

 

At the age of 8 in 1975 my father brought home his first Ferrari, a brand new 365 BB. I was Sold! A year later he traded it in for a Daytona Spider. Thru the years/decades we had a lot of different models
Now I'm 54 years old. Ferrari has been in my blood ever since. I will continue to enjoy them for my lifetime.

 

My first “hands on” experience with Ferrari was in the back seat of a Dino, seeing the movie Jaws in 1975 at a drive-in theater!

Funny but true …smitten even since. My uncle had bought two new Dinos in ‘75, black & white….

 

...and what's wrong with that?
I have an Olds.

 

in 1973 I stumbled in the backyard of an independent garage over a 250 GT/E, 3rd serie. the doors has been open, the engine dismanteled in the trunk, oil pan missind, wheels missing. gearbox on the rear seat. inside birds built their nests. just had been 18 but was fascinated from this car and only know, it was a ferrari. no type has been in my mind. ferrari at thattime for me was always a race car, not a passenger car. the garage owner wanted too much moiney from me and so I went away. but often visited the place again. at the end of 1974 then finally the garage owner sold it to me. but I payed much more money then I earned in 6 month. also I traded in a mercedes 220 S.
and this this car it all started

 

I blame David E. Davis, and specifically this column:

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/columns/a15125225/david-e-davis-jr-drivers-seat-april-1980-column/

 

Back in '72 I was attending school at Vanderbilt. While on break I came back home to DE to see a red 330 GTS my dad bought from painter Jamie Wyeth. He paid $6500. Whenever I was home I was able to drove that fantastic car all over the country backroads in N DE and SE PA. Chicks loved that car!! Me too!

Fast forward to '76 and I was very close to graduating with my BS in Civil Engineering. Neither my older brother nor older sister had finished college. My dad was so happy I was getting a degree [he was also a CE grad] that he offered me his 330 GTS as a graduation present. Believe it or not I turned him down. It would have been my only car. I explained to my dad that the convertible doesn't have much room inside. And he kept this GTS in perfect condition. I reasoned he would be disappointed in seeing that I could not keep his car in the same condition. So....I said how about we find a 330 GTC instead? Off we went and bought a Silver/Blue 330 GTC from Ed Waterman in Arlington VA. Cost was $10,000. The 330 was my only car for 5 years. Put over 100,000 miles on it over a 9 year timeframe before I "upgraded" to a Boxer in '85.

 

Replace the words 8 for 3, and Boxer for Daytona and my story is basically the same. Not so many years before that Daytona will have been in the family for 50 years.

 

How great is that! Continue to enjoy.

 

I caught the bug through a friend whose father was the Director of Fiat R&D in Detroit during the mid 1970s.......Alberto Negro. His son and I attended middle school together. During that time I remember his father bringing home interesting cars from time to time. Back in 77 or 78 his father had a brand new (right off the plane; literally) 512bb and that did it for me. I was forever hooked.

 

Dear Dale,

Ask and ye shall receive, standby for a true sea story.

It was a superb party! The mid-May 1960 weather in San Leandro was perfect in the early evening as we sat around the apartment pool swapping stories of the day's events at the gimmick rally. The timed section over the Crow Canyon Road was impossible to make, but the Concord to Vallejo run was easy and the view was great from the MGA on a beautiful top down day. Leaving Vallejo, the rally master teased us with views of San Francisco across the bay as we wound through Richmond, then Berkeley and then through the hills of Oakland before dropping back to San Leandro. Talk inevitably turned to the hot newspaper story of the previous week with much speculation as to the make of the bright red sports car which had eluded California's finest White Eagles in a high speed chase which paralleled our Vallejo to San Leandro rally segment. We also got into one of the typical arguments about the segregated "class" mentality among different sports car owners. Clearly MG, Alfa and Triumph drivers waved at each other and to any other sports car, while Porsche and Jaguar owners seemed to suffer eyesight problems when offered a wave by the lower "class."

Although we each professed satisfaction with our current sports cars, there was a certain air of wistfulness when talking about quicker, more powerful machines. One could always wander through the BMC showrooms on Van Ness in chilly (or so it always seemed) San Francisco, or go past Charlie Rezzaghi's La Scuderia Rossa where there was always something exciting from Italy. As we discussed our various pipe dreams, the inevitable mention of Ferrari came up. I noted that on my meager monthly pay of $291 plus $47.88 for food as a Navy Lieutenant (Junior Grade) (equivalent to 1st Lieutenant for those of you of Army or Air Force persuasion), there was no possible way to come up with the money to think about acquiring even a used Ferrari from the occasional ads in Road & Track. At this point someone mentioned that a girl in the second floor apartment overlooking the pool had said something about a Ferrari for sale earlier in the week, but she wasn't at the party.

Obviously the next step was to go knock at the unknown apartment door and find out more about this rumor. The results were very sketchy. She thought that the car was located at some Rambler dealer in Richmond. After a simple scan of the Yellow Pages it was easy to spot the only Rambler dealer in Richmond which quickly became the target for a visit on my next free afternoon.

Once there, a quick look around confirmed that there was no sports car of any kind in either the lot or the showroom, so I asked the lady behind the counter if in fact they had a Ferrari. Almost with a look of scorn she replied “ Sonny we are a Rambler dealer, we don’t sell Ferraris!” At that point a fellow at the end of the counter said "I think there may be one out back in the shop, go ahead and look." On the first round of the shop, I almost missed an unsightly mess in the back corner. Upon second look, there clearly was a sports car but it was really in sad shape. It sat on jack stands with no wheels in sight. Under the rear end was a large wooden box full of strange looking gears and pieces of metal that were twisted and scored with streaks of blue shading from obvious overheating. There were no seats nor windscreen, and the hood and metal tonneau were stacked upright in the cockpit. The rear bodywork was crushed in, with slabs of broken white bondo showing under the mud covered blue paint. The sides showed the evidence of random paint gun spray pattern testing in at least three colors. The open engine compartment was filled with an oil, mud and grime covered assemblage resembling a V-8. I thought to myself, this is not a Ferrari, it is a Devin. I wonder what motor they used, so I grabbed a rag and wiped across one of the valve covers which revealed those hypnotic letters FERRARI ! That did it, I’ve got to save it! I was hooked and I would have to find a way to give this forlorn pile of junk a more proper home and to get started right away on the rescue mission.

Within three weeks I had found the owner, the wheels and the seats, agreed upon a purchase price of $2,225, secured a loan from my bank (for nearly two thirds of one year's salary) and wonder of wonders, I had become a FERRARI owner. Next order on the agenda was to write to the factory and obtain a shop manual just as I had for the MGA, after all, with a shop manual one could figure out how to fix anything.

The reply was forever in coming. Both letters, one in Italian and the other a translation in English had the prancing horse letterhead, and that was the only good news. I quote segments "The number 510 means that the car belongs to 'Series II'. Being a competition model, we built only a few of these cars, and therefore we have not available any technical description, sufficient for its maintenance, since all the repairs were usually carried out by our own staff. At present, however, there is a skilled mechanic, with our California Importers, and no doubt he will be able to help you a great deal. With this opportunity, please accept our best regards. P. S. - This car was originally sold to Mr. François Picard of Nice, France."

So began my 58 year saga with the little blue car.

Best regards,

Robert

 

With the passing of Mr. Ed Niles, the great Admiral Goodwrench here, may be our ranking "officer on the deck"......
Stephen Mitchell was also a trove of tales from the early wild California days....

*salute*

And God bless your lovely wife!!
Who over the years" put up with it all"....

That's a pretty funny letter actually, Brenda Vernor would have typed it??
Here's Brenda, with some whipper snapper.....
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Dear Dale,

It took nine months which is the normal gestation period. My mother called it her first grandchild and my son Bryan called it his sibling.

This answer takes the subject off topic so I will repost the above message to the "naked Mondial" thread as the basic repository of most of the story of this car.

Best regards,

Roberty

 

My Uncle David had a foreign car dealership in Westport, CT which occupied a large building across from the Saugatuck Train Station. He sublet space to other businesses including one owned by long time Tifosi Sam Brown. If memory serves me Sam had a partnership with Greg Young and they had none other than Francois Sicard as their mechanic.
During a visit to have my Mother's car serviced my cousin and I snuck into the Ferrari shop to have a peak at what was going on.
Sam had a 250 GT Lusso as his daily driver at the time and there it was in all it's glory, the first time I saw a Lusso in the flesh. Most of all I remember the smell that old Ferraris have, very distinctive.
Sicard had built a special stand which held a cylinder head, equally as impressive. I was hooked. An Industrial designer named John Cuccio had his office down the street and drove by each day to collect his mail from the Post Office next door. The Daytona he drove had Competition exhaust and made a sound that made the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Sensory overload which left to an indelible mark and led me to a career with the Prancing Horse spanning over 45 years. Thank you for allowing me to share this with you.

 

...ah...
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