How many of you were influenced by Magnum PI when you bought your 308/ 328?

Nope.

Magnum copied my mind.

Art copied reality and I bet I saw less then 5% of the 'Art.'

 

I was not influenced by magnum. Just the opposite for me. Like the Corvette, if I saw a 308 gtb or gts everyday I would have very little interest in them.

 

Hard to say. Watched Magnum every week as a 10-18 year old during its eight year run and loved his 308. Wasn't thinking about Magnum or trying to be him when I bought mine at age 42 but it was a red 308 GTS. As a teenager I said I would have one some day. Took me almost thirty years but like you guys, my dream came true. Bucket list I guess. Still the prettiest car ever made in my opinion.

 

I remember looking at one in a stereo dealer parking lot when I was an 8th grader back in 82 (in fact, it's the red one in the set of pictures on my "vintage pictures I took...", thread but I took those pictures about a year after I first saw it there). The point being what else on the street in 1982 looked anything like a red Ferrari that also had that celebrity status from Magnum? So looking at it was the same as meeting a TV or movie idol to me because I never saw those things in real life, just on TV every week and keep in mind, I was just a kid.

I remember thinking it didn't even seem real. That gated shifter, leather smell, barely off the ground, that big air scoop in the doors and I wondered what those "slow down" lights meant like that was some super mega heads up speed warning thing to go with that 180 mph speedometer. Nothing else had anything like that that I ever saw in the flesh. It was a red race car from another planet.

It was an unbelievable thrill standing there touching that car after watching it on TV for all those years. I didn't move until the owner came out to leave because I wanted to hear it start.

So, like many of you reading this, here I am now, 34 years later with one in my garage for the past 19 years and I am actually grinning as type this, thinking back to that day.

Yeah, that car was really THAT big of a deal to me and few things have equaled the thrill of seeing it that afternoon in 1982.

 

Guess I should be embarrased to say I've never seen an episode...but I'm not

 

I was not influenced by Magnum in the slightest. In fact, I watched my first episode on Netflix after buying the car just to learn what I missed (which I thought seemed to be a pretty good show actually).

Too funny. My 1987 BMW has a little 1987-style computer (gas mileage, outdoor temp etc), which has a "Max Speed" option; the computer will make this polite little "ding" sound to let you know when you've exceeded the pre-set speed. I have it set for 150 mph.

 

Definitely. I grew up watching the show and still vividly remember how excited it was to see the 308 on TV. Of course, the poster on my wall added to the desire as well.

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk

 

Count me in the "Not influenced" bucket. I've seen a few episodes.
I had a Corgi car collection. And on the top of my love list was a Dino 209 Sport. Next, the shark nose. I still have both. My 308 simply found me and I'm glad she did.

The only cars I liked on TV were the Mach 5 & RacerX shooting star. Its all about the curves. Unlike, say a 60's ford fairlane.

I do like a 69/70 Charger & the early series Jag E

 

The car that "Got Me" was the Countach.

The first time I ever saw one moving was in the Cannonball Run.


A Day Dream probably never realized.

But I did get the 308 which I wanted long BEFORE Magnum.

 

have to admit it ... yes, I was really influenced a lot
never seen a 308 before the show - and watching a PI, living in Hawaii, driving around in a Ferrari, carrying a gun and having a new chick every other week ...

well, it couldn`t get any better than this

 

I don't have a 308/328 yet because I am watching prices soften, but I would have been influenced because I just loved the look of the car and to be able to see it often on the show just made me love it more because I could study the lines often. Just have to mention I really liked Higgins.

 

Me too; I saw one in the flesh for the first time at 17 or 18, from a bus I was seated in, while waiting at a red light in the city of Metz, precisely "boulevard de Trèves"; it was green in color.
It was the weirdest, strangest and coolest, most beautiful car I have ever seen, and it will ever remain so.

Rgds

 

I saw pictures of Ferraris in magazines in the late 1950s and was hooked.

Magnum did not influence me since I was in Asia most of the time it was on so missed the programs until I caught them in reruns many years later.

The lines of the 3x8 cars, the 328s in particular grabbed me...

I only wanted a Ferrari for 60 years before getting one....just got back from a 1,573 mile trip to New Mexico and back to my home state of Texas a week ago today.... still wearing a S-E grin - it might last for weeks.

 

LOL

I remember exactly where I was when I first saw that red/tan GTSi I mentioned in post #30

Spring 81 and I was with two friends and their mom in her brown Pinto wagon driving south on Oporto-Madrid Blvd and it was behind us. We turned left on Cooper Hill Rd and I watched it drive by. The top was on.

Funny, like knowing where you were when Kennedy was shot or when the Challenger exploded.

 

I haven't made it through a full episode...but this hasn't stopped me from driving my car while wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

 

Yep, and it also makes the newer cars fade somewhat; I mean, you - more or less - hope, or expect to feel that erie sensation again when a new car is announced, and when it is shown it does not work of course; because you are older, have seen more things in life, etc...
I don't know if its me, but after the 550, there isn't any other new Ferrari that has given me any sensation like that, even remote.

(I have to say that in 1972, when I was 12, a cousin of an uncle of mine, who was working for a certain french tyre manufacturer, came to a family lunch in a 365GTB/4, alias "Daytona"; that made a big impression on me. As he is from a distant branch of the family, I never saw him again and was more or less thinking, as the years passed by, that I must be wrong and that I have forged all this memory; it so happened that I met him again this August. I had to ask him about the car and he answered: "but of course I had a Daytona"; I was relieved somehow...)

Rgds

 

A couple of years ago, Ford did a big 'reveal' of their new GT at the Monterey Motorsport Reunion. For me, that came close; a radical car that was a complete surprise. Too bad it was a Ford. ��

... And when I think about it, I guess another one was seeing the then-new McLaren F1 the first time in a Mayfair window in London.

 

612 Scaglietti did it for me. I need to sit in one to be sure of the interior but the exterior is gorgeous. I can't say the same for any of the V8s for a long long time, 458 excepted.

 

my interest in the 328 started from a poster back in 1986 along along with the Countach and the F40 being some of the coolest sport cars back then, either seen in magazines or on TV.

watching Magnum a few years later emphasized something, the 308 just stood out the crowed and boosted the desire for me.

 

Saw the 308 on a magazine cover in '77 or '76. Knew it was something I wanted. Magnum had no impact. The car was a sensation worldwide years before the show. Magnum aired in the states and when you tell people that the car was in the show because it was "the" car (and after a spat with Porsche) and wasn't made popular to the rest of the world by the show, people stare at you with a blank look.

 

I would say yes the show Magnum PI did have an influence on me. Not to buy a 308, I was more of an obsessed helicopter fan and I got a pilots license before a Ferrari. I even named by black cat TC. I have watched every episode multiple times and own the series on DVD. I actually always thought I would look like a poser driving a red 308 because of the show. My wife is a big Tom Selleck fan so I bought the red 308 QV GTS for her and bought myself a GT4. Now I think I'll watch a few episodes tonight and then take her car for a spin when it's dark. Da da da dah...

 

I was already in love with the 308 before Magnum ever started. It was a love/hate relationship for me. I loved that I got to see the car every week on TV, I hated that now EVERYONE knew about my car.

 

That same impression of "walkin' in the air", all alone by yourself, completly impervious to the external world, not hearing a thing, tunnel vision totally focused on the thing in front of your eyes? And your mother / wife / whomever saying to you: "it's time to go" and yourself answering: "can I have five minutes more?" and the answer "but you have been watching this thing for an hour an a half!" (A glance at your watch: it is true!)

Or stopping to fill your DD with gas, at a highway station, and catching a 308/328 stopped a few meters further, the owner being occupied with the bill...
And thinking to yourself: "Gosh, I still do not own one, and it hurts. It hurts badly".
And it still hurts days after that?

Been a long time for me; the 550 Maranello was probably the last.

Rgds

 

To the OP... 99%. The older cars looked boring to me at the time, and it wasn't as if I was exposed to anything in person.