Nice article in the Toronto Star

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1135858314822&call_pageid=970599119419


Italian stallion needs `amore'
Specialist nurses exotics back to health Owning the marque is a serious businessSpecialist nurses exotics back to health

Owning the marque a serious business
Dec. 31, 2005. 01:00 AM
IAN HARVEY
SPECIAL TO THE STAR


There are cars and there are cars. Then there are Ferraris.

Is there ever a more magic marque to set hearts racing?

And that's perhaps why you find kids with their faces pressed up against the fence at the east-end Toronto shop Rocco Solmito runs with his brother Peter.

The onlookers' eyes are wide open in awe at the gleaming collection: Dinos, Spiders, Boxers, all in various stages of assembly.

A body shell here, stripped to the metal, a gleaming engine on a stand there, awaiting attention.

"You know, owning a Ferrari is pretty affordable," says Rocco, brushing back his salt-and-pepper hair without a trace of irony in his voice or eyes.

"You could buy a good used Ferrari for about $40,000 to $50,000 and if you treat it well, make that back and maybe more."

Not much more than, say, an SUV. But owning a Ferrari is a serious undertaking. Patriarch Enzo's standards must be upheld to the fullest.

"You can drive them maybe 5,000 to 10,000 km a year, but watch the weather," Rocco nods, firing up the espresso machine in the clinically clean shop. "The electrics don't do well in damp weather, so you have to have a good dry storage garage."

He's dead serious and you believe him because he knows his stuff.

These are not just cars: they are statements on wheels.

It's clear from the respect the Solmito brothers take in painstakingly restoring, repairing and maintaining these vehicles for their clients that this is no mere corner garage.

They're curators of automotive art, fastidious about each nut and bolt — literally fussing over whether the car left the factory with a zinc-plated bolt in that position or a black one.

Each step is carefully recorded with a digital camera, each part removed, logged and tagged for future reference.

Rocco swears he can tell if a car has been "tampered" with just by looking at it.

Rocks Auto Restoration (416-686-8700), as the six-year-old business is called, is a true craftsman's shop.

No signs, no showroom of cars for sale. Just a small family garage with Rocco's wife working the books, ordering parts, and the brothers doing what they love: Working on Ferraris and, save for the odd favour for an esteemed client who will trust a Jag or Lamborghini to no one else, just Ferraris.

"I've been working on cars since I was 12, helping the neighbour who was a mechanic," says Rocco, who studied mechanical engineering but drifted quickly to his love of cars.

His first shop opened in 1989, specializing in tuning muscle cars, when, one day, a client asked him to change the oil on a Ferrari 328.

Now, his clients stretch across the U.S. and Canada, shipping their vehicles to him and him only. There's the 1973 Daytona Coupe once given by Enzo to F1 legend Niki Lauda as a signing bonus, all but written off in a fire and now more than a year into restoration.

Over there, a 308 GTB being relieved of a few excess pounds as part of the prep to convert it to a race car with a beefed-up engine. Beside it, a 246 stripped to the shell for repainting.

Anxious collectors send Rocco pictures of prospective purchases, and he often flies out to give cars the eagle-eye exam to assure the buyer all is as it should be, creating an eight-page assessment.

"With these cars, it's not about what's on the odometer," he says. "It's about how it was treated."

The original 1950s and early 1960s Ferraris are out of reach, fetching millions, he says. But the mid-1970s to late `80s have some hidden gems, especially the 308 to 328 models, which he rates as good buys.

"After that they get very expensive for parts and to fix because there's so much more to go wrong," Rocco warns.

His best-buy pick is a 308GT4 with its classic Bertone body.

While the newer 355 and 360s are more driver friendly, he's a fan of that first decade or so after the 1969 takeover of Ferrari by Fiat, which ramped up production from 1,000 cars a year to today's 5,000 units.

"It's like they've gone mainstream, like BMW or Mercedes. They're still great cars but it's not the same.

"You have to appreciate them for what they are. The heating and the air conditioning are not great; they're a sports car to be driven."

Rocco, whose daily driver is a mid-'90s BMW M5, cautions that owning a Ferrari means no cutting corners on service.

"You have to change all the fluids once a year; oil, two or three times a year," he says. "Maybe $1,500 for basic maintenance. Then put away a couple of grand a year so that when something does go, you have the money."

A Ferrari, he says, is "a race car for the road, and it's meant to be driven. But things will break eventually and have to get fixed