Finally, I fulfill the dream......

In the 7 years I've been living here, I had not seen a Ferrari on the streets of Marietta. Late this afternoon, I finally made sure others would see one, as I took my 328GTS out for the first drive since I bought the car!

Admittedly, the main purpose for the drive was to charge the battery, since it was dead when I first tried to start it up yesterday. (It had only run sparingly since leaving CA three weeks ago.) So after AAA jump-started the car, I figured the best thing to do was to take it for a nice drive.

While I was out, I stopped by the local hobby shop and pizzeria to show them the car (since I had told them it was coming), and everyone really liked seeing it. Well, the owner of the pizzeria knew about the car, but the kid behind the counter didn't, and he didn't believe it until he came outside and saw it.

Tomorrow, I'm going for a longer drive, and this time I'm taking the top off.....

 

Here's a photo of me sitting in the car before it left California. I'll take one in my driveway here the next time I have print film in my camera. (When it comes to photography, I'm a traditionalist.)

 

Well, I've owned it for three weeks, but it spent the first two of those weeks getting here from CA; it arrived on the truck Monday morning. However I didn't get the insurance confirmed until Friday afternoon.

It's definitely harder to drive than my Civic SI, but when I put on narrow-sole shoes, it wasn't too bad. The gated shifter feels quite notchy, but I never missed any gears and before too long I found I could shift without looking at the gate. The ride is firm, but that is to be expected. Once I figured out how the parking brake worked--again it felt much different than the Honda--I was actually able to stop and start on an incline without rolling backwards. It's definitely not a real comfortable car, but that didn't bother me one bit! I'll get more used to it in time.

And yes, it's my first exotic and my first sports car; in fact it's the first time I've ever owned two cars. The Honda will still get the lion's share of my driving, but the F-car will always be there for those special times. The s/n is 62319 and I've already added that to the 328 Registry.

As I said, I want to exercise it some more tomorrow, and then on Monday I'll take some time off from work to get it emissions inspected and titled.

 

Thanks for the encouragement. It has just under 48,000 miles on it, so doubling it anytime soon is highly unlikely!

After seeing the photos of that fake "308" not too far from here, I took a second look to verify that mine is the genuine article! No doubt about it; no Fiero here!