My Last Fcar drive of 2003... :-(

Had a slight break in the weather here in Michigan, and I took the opportunity to take one last drive in the Testarossa. I went over to a friend's house to help work on his '68 Dodge Charger with a 440 6-pack motor. As a reward to helping he let me take it for a drive...whew what a bunch of torque! I then took him for a his first ride in a Ferrari. It's like night and day, the Charger is loud mean nasty straight line car, and the Testarossa is so tight, solid, and responsive. It was a great contrast that reminded me just how nice the TR is to drive. He lives out in the country, and as I was leaving we were both in our cars...and well....boys will be boys! We did an imprompt little race up to around 90mph....and to my amazement the ol'e TR ketp up and was just getting it's wind (starting to pull away)...I truly think I could take that Dodge in the quarter mile. It surprised Phil that my little 301 cubes could hang with his 440 of them, and me too! I am so proud of the ol'e girl..she made a good showing and the muscle car guys present have a newfound respect for Ferraris! (....I can't stop grinning.....) I took some pics even though the car is dirty. It just saddens me that this is it for this year. We are getting snow on Tuesday - Yuck!

 

Car is dirty but oh well...

 

Another shot...

 

...the heart of the beast...

 

Just a follow-up...a couple of guys that watched our imprompt drag race want me to race their cars now! One has a highly modded Mustang and the other a blown Firehawk that's really nasty. I of course politely declined and reminded them that the Testarossa is NOT a drag car. But if they really want to see what the car will do lets go "cruising" through some nice twisty roads and see how their cars handle keep up with me? Needless to say THEY then politely declined.

 

Thanks for the engine bay compliments...the intake runners are simply aluminum paint. When I was restoring the engine I attempted to duplicated the factory light gray/silver crinkle finish but finally gave up after a couple of tries. It was tons of work to prime, paint, strip down to bare metal, prime, paint, strip down again....I was very upset the second time I failed. So I said that's it, it's getting plain aluminum and I'm done with it. So I bead blasted the plenums once again, washed them with soap and water and flushed them very good, zinc primered and painted them. Once painted I baked them for a few hours at 250F. They did turn out pretty good, just a little more "tarty" looking than stock. Oh well, my car will never be a concours car anyway.

 

Thanks...and you have a good eye for color by the way...most people say it's just "black"....but it's actually nero black metallic. I've never seen another one this color yet. I am located down in the small redneck town of Coldwater, similar to living in Mayberry.