Hell of a V-dub

For some reason I don't seem to have any early pictures of the car I have owned the longest...the Porsche 914 I bought in 1970. It was not exactly a college graduation gift to myself, but then again it sort of was.

I graduated in 1967, and left Grad School at the University of Georgia in 1969. At that time the only car Marcia and I had was the 1966 Austin Healey Sprite MkIII...and I do have multiple photos of that, including one “serious” black and white which dates from 1968 (see BRG and the Five Speed Brown Bag). I got blown out of my first full time job after only three months so my confidence level wasn't all that high when I took a software services sales position with the First National Bank of Miami, as talked about in that article.

But by 1970 I was a full-fledged and respected software developer (things happened as quickly in the business then as they do now, to the incredulity of both my boys), and feeling pretty secure. I was also a full-fledged sports car enthusiast, and we really needed a second car.

While the motorcycle was OK for commuting to work it was entirely possible to be caught in some quick tropical shower or violent and painful rainstorm...surprising how badly those big Florida raindrops can hurt. There were times I was gong to be late to work or getting home, as I was hiding out under an overpass waiting for it to stop raining.

So there was that practical aspect....which I at first attempted to fill with that crap Datsun wagon. It was cute, and it was junk. No more of THAT, thank you very much. I'll have something a bit more...exciting, please.

I wasn't really looking, not really. And I certainly would have had no designs on a Porsche. At that time I might as well have wished for one of the Saturn Vs heading to the moon. Even a 912 cost way too much as a percentage of my $9500 annual salary.

And then there was that article in Road and Track. And don't I wish I'd hung onto it? They didn't exactly fall in love with the 914. They sniffed at the lack of straight line performance, and the only thing that really sticks in my mind was the nastiest car photograph I've ever seen, an obviously biased attempt to present the car in the ugliest light possible. I've alluded to it in the eariler post.

It was a shot of only the front left quarter of the car. It was shot with the camera propagandist kneeling so he was at eye level with the fender. The retractable headlights were raised so it looked like a frog someone had squeezed. It included the ugly “hockey puck” afterthought side marker lights the company was forced to add only for the US market (and since deleted in the refresh of my car, by the way). It was atrocious.

I didn't care. I was a photographer and I knew what they had done and how that picture lied. Give me the right lighting and I can make Beyonce look ugly. It had those seven magic letters in its name (and on the engine deck lid), and it was going to sell for under $4000.

I bought it from a brochure. The dealer didn't even have one in the showroom I could look at, no less drive. I still have the brochure, and it is the only period shot of a 914 I have. 

Porsche was pretty proud of the new engine layout
and the car...even with the hidden headlights open
And yes, I kept this brochure for almost 50 years
What's your point?

The brochure is a bit battered as it was taped to my cubicle wall at work for three months. Oddly, the car pictured is white, and note that it is a European model, as it lacks the hockey puck marker lights and has the European turn signal lights....just like my newly refreshed old friend.

The brochure sat on my wall because that's how long it took for my name to hit the top of the waiting list. For those who think the car was not a success, it became the best selling Porsche model between 1970 and 1976 when it went out of production, with over 120,000 built. And that there was a waiting list to buy one ought to be some sort of clue about its popularity.

The Datsun became expendable...no, wait. It was already expendable as it seemed intent on returning to the earth from which its constituent materials originally were mined. I owed more on it than the trade in De Maria Porsche in Coral Gables was willing to give me. It cost me $199 to get rid of it. I would have been better off just funneling it into one of those landfills which, in South Florida, are the biggest “mountains” around...complete with scores of what should be the state bird...the Turkey Vulture could easily replace the Mockingbird.

Got sidetracked there for a moment. I took a lot of ribbing about the wait. No one, best I recall, commented about a lack of attractiveness (the car's, not mine...that these jokers were all too willng to comment about).

The car I ordered was a deep blue, with a tan interior. While I don't belong to the national Porsche Club (and until recently there was more than a bit of snobbishness about admitting 914s anyway, but now that they are going up in value and getting at least a bit of the recognition I have always thought the car deserves, they are more welcome)...but I have never seen one done like that. Tan interiors are rare, and apparently blue was as well.

I have two invoices for the car. The first seems to be a preliminary estimate, while the second is the final one. They are dated a day apart...July 8^th and 9^th, 1970. The fact that the car simply survived this long is deserving of respect.

Soo...along about October, I would guess, I got a call from Tom Sherry, the salesman. With a name like that and a car which has been a part of my life for that long, of course I remember his name. Tom started by saying:

“We got three cars, and your're at the top of the waiting list.”

I was excited, of course, and asked him to tell me about them.

“One of them is white,” he offered.

Oh...kay, that's interesting, as he had told me they were not receiving any white cars. Why had he told me that? No idea or recollection.

“It has the Appearance Group.” he said.

I had not ordered this, one of the few options for the car. It consisted of vinyl covering on the top and outsides of the built-in crash bar, chrome trim around the back of it, chrome rather than painted bumpers, and fog lights behind grills in the front bumpers. About the only other factory options you had in these first cars were tire choices (Michelin or Pirelli), slightly wider wheels with 165 instead of 155mm wide tires, and a Blaupunkt radio. I could afford none of that. Sooo...

“One of them is white,” he repeated...with the said Appearance Group option.

“Tom, what are you trying to tell me?”

“One of them is white, “ he almost whispered, rather dejectedly. He gamely offered to let me pass on the cars, but there was no guarantee the one I ordered would be on the next boat load either, and I was tired of waiting (it will be interesting to see how many of the folks who plunked down a grand on the Tesla Model 3 will actually still be there at the projected year out delivery date).

“Don't tell me they all have radios, too,” I pleaded. As it turned out, there was one which did not. It did, however, have Pirelli tires, and I had him switch with the Michelins on one of the other two.

Now all I needed to do was figure out where I was going to get another $200. Put that aside for a moment and let me tell you why this car is so special, other than those seven letters, which I suspect may have been a larger factor in my lust back then than what I am about to say, though I was not totally unaware of the following.

This was 1970, remember. Think about it. Though a TR3 had 15 more horsepower, it was a tractor. An MGB in stock form looked nice, but was equally crude, though better handling than the Triumph. The MG might as well have been steam powered. A Jaguar was priced, by then, in the same stratosphere as the rest of the Porsche line. Alfas were lovely but unthinkable. And not one of these had the whole combination of the relatively exotic features of the 914. In fact, the only car which came close was the Lamborghini Miura...at about $12,000...and without the Targa feature!

Dig it..

Mid engine?                                                                                      Check

Five Speed transaxle...the same one as the 911                                Check

Four wheel disc brakes                                                                     Check

Removable fiberglas top                                                                   Check

Electronic fuel injection                                                                   Check

Top stows in rear trunk with no loss of usable space                       Check

Two trunks with real, practical space                                               Check

Incredible, “riding on rails” handling                                               Check

So, ok, it wasn't quick. But it was really not much slower than an MG, and when you got to the next corner...goodbye MG! Besides, I have always driven it like the devil himself was chasing me, and when you do that, it takes someone who is very serious, and very good, to stay with you on any sort of curvy road.

And that fuel injection? While I have learned lately, and the hard way, that it is really “electro-mechanical” (some would say “electro-maniacal”), it was a real revelation at the time. It was first used in the VW Type 3 of 1968, and was the first mass market EFI system in the world.

Not bad for “under four grand...”though mine did not come in at the targeted $3600 but instead was $4078, and that was still $200 more than I had. But my buddy David Rosenstein came through with a short term loan, and I have no recollection of how or when I paid him back, though I do recall that I did.

So one day when I first got it some of the folks at work asked to see it. I had parked it on the street rather than in the employee lot, though I have no idea why I did that. It was on a shady street and I think I even took the top off and put it in the trunk to show my admirers how neatly that worked.

But there's always a critic. One guy sniffed that it didn't look like a Porsche and really was just a new version of the VW Karmann Ghia. He had obviously been drinking from the same Kool Aid as the guys at Road and Track.

Listen...the car was never intended as a replacement for the Ghia, and in fact that car remained in production through half the seven year run of the 914. Counting Brazil, Ghia production ended only one year before the 914s demise. And the 14 was badged in Europe as a VW-Porsche

Even the expensive and better performing 6 got the VW-Porsche Badge in Europe
I guess they are not as hung up on badges as Americans are
And better at recognizing and respecting the engineering of both firms at the time

, indicating quite clearly that both companies viewed it as something apart from the Ghia and designed for a different constituency. Any model of the 914, with any motor, will also run cicles around the Ghia.

My new 914 became, for many years, a ratty semi-derelict. But I never sold it, and more than once mused about “restoring” it. When I actually decided to try that I at first, along with my friend and Porsche guru Llew Kinst, thought it might be too far gone. But after closer examination it looked to be quite savable, and without major fabricating of new and critical body and suspension parts.

Three months and $7000 we thought.

Two and a half years and about 18 grand later: 

After market, rare but period correct Pedrini Wheels
Euro turn signal lenses
Removed Hocky Puck lights
Front lower ari dam
140 Pound Rear Springs
Front anti-sway bar
side shift transaxle
New injectors and various EFI and tuneup components
All new fuel liens
New Clutch and Disc
New cabin carpeting
New threshold plates
Lots of replaced weatherstripping
New paint
Partial upholstery replacement

And, as I am quite a bit more advanced in my knowledge and driving skills now than I was in 1970, it is bringing me even more joy today.

So why didn't I photograph it back then?

I have no idea...

So how do you get started in working on cars?

So how do you get started in working on cars? And what kind of pain...or fun...is the experience?

My dad liked cars, but by far his interest was owning and driving them and not working on them. For a kid growing up in the 1950s I got what I think was a wide exposure to brands which were not exactly the norm in mainstream America. While there were many which could be seen in a large number of American garages (not that anyone ever really used their garages as...garages), but I remember a neat little Hillman Minx convertible whose top could be either partly or fully rolled back, and which in that intermediate configuration made it into a mini-limousine look.

Cute, but very odd for 1950s America
I found no photos of the car with the top in the "mini-limo" position

There was also a Simca Aronde,

I never saw anything attractive about the car

 and, by the time I was a driver, not one or two, but three Corvairs, as I spoke about in an earlier post. Yeah, these were built by Chevy, but c'mon...they were small, air cooled, rear engined oddballs in the era.

We also had more “normal” machinery, of course, starting (at least in my memory) with a post war Buick Roadmaster.

As shown in this Hemmings Magazine Cover
The thing was all teeth about to eat you
and iconic, though silly, portholes

This was in 1948 or so when we returned to New York from Chicago, where I was born and where the family spent the war years. This thing was a monster, with that big toothy grill and a motor which might not have been a killer in terms of horsepower (144), but was an impressive lump as it was the straight eight that was more typical of the pre-war luxury cars than the V8s which were to become the wave of the future, leveraging off of Ford's leading edge offering in 1932. 

Dad had a thing for luxury cars at that point, and the next one was a 1950 Cadillac Series 60 Fleetwood.

Pretty impressive even today

He never bought a new car for himself, which makes his gift to me of my 1966 Sprite all the more poignant and impressive.

I also remember an Oldsmobile Rocket 88, A 59 Ford, and, for my sister and me, a 55 “Plain Jane” Ford, my 54 Dodge, my 57 Chevy, and others. Even at his death he was still a sort of car guy...his last ride being one of the last Bill Mitchell designed Chevy Camaros. 

Dad's was pretty "plain jane"
and certainly did not have big, wide wheels
But I always thought this style, particularly from the rear
Was more awkward compared to the first Camaros, from the 60s

But I only remember his head under the hood of a car once or twice. So I suffered through a series of mechanical disasters feeling that cars were somehow magic...or maybe even voodoo, with no clue how they functioned. Since we were barely scraping by at the lower end of the middle class, the cars were always at the needy, and perhaps even end of life, part of their cycle of utility. That didn't help calm down my fears.

It was only when I got my Corvair Monza Gold Bug, described in an earlier post, that I suddenly decided to become, at whatever level I could, mechanical. I have no idea why. Perhapa I was just tired of being scared to death of something I was coming to love...the joy of driving. Or maybe it was just the influence of delving into the pages of magazines like Road and Track, Car and Driver, and Sports Car Graphics. But then, I have no clue why I started reading those either. But they quickly got me hooked on the idea of nimble handling machinery, and you didn't have to do much “reading between the lines” to see the clear emphasis on DIY maintenance.

Of course, the nature of these little beasts in terms of build quality, lack of dealer support, and poor parts availability sort of made a level of individual competence a necessity. Just ask anyone with a British MG or Sprite how long it took to learn to carry a hammer to give the fuel pump, which lived just on the other side of the bulkhead behind the seats, a whack every so often when the points got stuck. It was either that or wait by the side of the road for a tow to whatever dealer might or might not be within a hundred miles of you.

It's hard to remember that far back, but I think I began with oil changes...and racing stripes. The Corvair wasn't the MG I really wanted, but I could do a bit to make it somewhat more “cool.” And I managed to do a pretty straight and decent job laying down the vinyl...in fact I even think it was a double stripe, though perhaps that is just the way stories age to make a person look better over time.

I do know I managed things like changing plugs, which was no big deal, and points, which of course involve a bit more skill. They are fussy little things and were the start of that sort of gynecological precision needed for so many automotive tasks. Of course, once you changed points you were into resetting the gap, and then, if you were wise, measuring and adjusting dwell, and checking and adjusting the timing. So it must have been about then that I purchased the SunPro electronic tach and dwell meter I still have and, on occasion, use.

This was pretty brave stuff for a 20 year old kid who had never before more than looked under the hood of a car. It meant buying a decent tool set, for example, and some pretty sophisticated items like timing lights and dwell meters. I still did not own a pair of jack stands, no less a jack, but I did manage somehow to scrape together the $100 it took to buy a Craftsman tool outfit which included both metric and SAE (“American," to me) open end and socket wrenches. The set had feeler gauges and even included a set of points wrenches.

Of course, I had to learn what “dwell” was before I could set it. Wonder where I managed to do that?

The next challenge was that the Corvair was a pretty basic Monza, without options like...a tach. So I used the one in the SunPro to adjust the idle and also get the right RPM at idle for the dwell reading. I rather doubt I had the tools, skill, or knowledge to do anything about full advance timing.

I even bravely got into the electrics...at least a little bit. Again, I was probably after the “cool” factor a bit, though less so than with the stripes. With my reading of sports car magazines I could not imagine how to drive effectively without a tach, so I got an aftermarket one, built a console for the Gold Bug out of plywood, covered it with woodgrain-look contact paper, cut a circular hole in it (how the hell did I manage that?), and hooked that baby up. Wow...it actually worked!

From that meager beginning to doing my first car rebuild (and first engine build) was many years, but doing basic maintenance on the Corvair, two Sprites, and the 914 laid the groundwork and built my confidence. That maintenance added things like setting valves, which required getting into the innards of a motor for the first time and, in the case of the 914, also meant figuring out how to connect a remote starter, since you could nor simply use the old put-it-in-gear-and-roll-it-until-the-valves-close...as those valves are...underneath the car!

And talk about bravery? Timing a 12 cylinder Ferrari with 24 valves, throttle linkage which ran right down one of those lovely cam covers, two coils, two distributors, twin points per...and what I recall as at least four timing marks on the flywheel. Once I learned to look at it as two six cylinder motors on a single crankshaft, and to time those “motors” separately, things got a lot easier. But it did take my mentor Ernie Mendicki to tell me that.

A lesson that came out of these experiences was the development of a mantra of mine my friend Lee Cohee reminded me of the other day. Seems there was this rather lovely Ferrari 550 Maranello which had just listed at Bruce Ternery's “Fantasy Junction” for under $90,000. Lee thought this was a (relatively) inexpensive way to join the Ferrari “club.” I don't know a lot about the model, but I don't think, just given the era (1999), that minimization of maintenance costs was yet on the mind of Ferrari designers. So I told Lee the mantra goes “it is often easier to buy them than maintain them.” In other words, better figure out what it is likely to take to keep a classic running before your lust gets the best of you (I guess that could be applied to other social situations as well, eh?). Which resulted in Lee reminiscing about his own experience in that regard. I'll let him tell it in his own word, about the E Type Jag he owned (briefly) as a young man:

“When I saw that red E Type roadster with chrome wire and an instrument panel full of toggle switches maintenance never crossed my mind.  I opened the bonnet a couple times and looked at the three 2” SU carbs and thought how pretty they looked never thinking about whether the mixture was correct or whether they were all drawing the same amount of air.  I had no experience whatsoever with maintaining cars and didn’t even own a wrench.  In fact, my first socket set that I bought for the MGB was metric me not knowing metric from SAE let alone Whitworth.  Fat, dumb, and happy until the first repair bill equaling my monthly salary at IBM.  Your mantra is spot on.

 it was the second repair bill again equaling my monthly salary that caused me to put it up for sale less than three months after I bought it.  DiMaria* was kind enough to let me out of the Jag for only $500 less than what I paid for it , $4,500, provided I bought a new MGB from him.  Easiest sale he ever made.  At $69/month in payments and no repair bills I was a happy boy.  I still remember how tight the drivetrain was when the MGB was new and the engine felt peppy enough even after coming out of the Jag”.

There's not much I can add to that. It ended on a happy note for him. My own happy memory about my growth in mechanical knowledge came all those years later, when the engine I built for the Siata started . It leaked everything it could leak at first, from everywhere it could leak it, and later proved to have no more than stock power (which is likely the same grunt or lack thereof it had when being raced in 1952), but I was so ecstatic I was literally hopping around the driveway grinning like the Cheshire cat. One of the best days I ever had.

*This was DiMaria Sports Cars in Miami, Florida. Lee and I connected through another friend, largely due to two facts: we were both “from” Florida, and we both were car guys. We later learned there were more ties than that...both went to UF and therefore lived in Gainesville for a time, and both bought cars from DiMaria, though mine was from the Porsche dealership in Coral Gables.

Dead Truck

Dead Truck

The truck sits…clogging up the driveway, and due to a relatively simple issue…is for all intents and purposes…dead

I had been hearing a clicking that sounded like a pulley going bad. Like most modern vehicles (God, I love air-cooled engines) the Dodge has a single “serpentine” belt which is long, and drives multiple items off the crankshaft…the alternator, the water pump, the air conditioner compressor, and the power steering pump in my case. The belt tightness is controlled by moving and locking down an idler pulley. Gee…that is five different pulleys. I had also gotten a whiff of hot anti-freeze at times, but the beast has had a tiny leak somewhere for ages that the service guys have not been able to track down.

The noise was intermittent, and I could not isolate where it came from. Like other modern vehicles, there is a lot of shrouding and ancillary “stuff” in the way of seeing what is actually going on. I was hoping it was the idler pulley as that is an easy (?) fix, though as I looked at it this morning there is “stuff” in the way which would make getting a wrench on the adjusting nut tough…I be there’s a damn proprietary tool Dodge created just for this purpose..as well as to keep us amateurs from saving money by doing our own work. 

Anyway, the noise was not consistent enough to justify bringing it in for service. I figured it would get more constant and then I would do so. At least that was my experience when our old Ford Explorer did the same thing while I was visiting Jason in college at Chico. Took it to a dealer in Orland and was back on the road in no time.

Well…it got consistent all right…fast! We took some junk to the dump the other day, and when I got back there was copious anti-freeze leaking from somewhere. I could only see the top hose and that was not it, and it was coming from behind the radiator so that was not it either. My guess was the water pump, which would also isolate where the noise was. 

With this as a preliminary hypothesis I made an appointment at my regular shop for this morning. 

I got as far as the end of the drive when all of a sudden I had no steering. The leak was bad enough to soak the belt and throw it. After irritating my back standing on the bumper and trying to see if I could finesse it back on, I am now waiting for Triple A to come and tow it to the shop. For $38.60 (my membership only pays the first five miles but then it is only $8 a mile. Given that the last time I had anything towed I was 30 years younger it was not worth the “Premium” membership costs.

At least the 914 belt only drives the alternator and is brand new and there is no anti-freeze to leak on it. On the other hand, it is a total bitch to get to.

This is pretty mmuch what the beast looks like
Though more streamlined mirrors..
these are likely more useful when towing than what I have

So Why Did I Sell That Car?

So Why Did I Sell That Car?

Hanging around the Ferrari Club was fun...I came to love the people, many of whom became casual, though lifelong, friends. I should explain that...as many of them moved into Vintage Racing I followed along, purchasing the Siata and starting to participate while the sport was still quite young...the mid 1980s. But without the unifying and local Bay Area focus of the FOC, I generally only connected with these folks at races, and since I only did the local events at Laguna or Sears Point, even in my most active racing years this was no more than perhaps five times a season. There were exceptions of course, with whom I built closer relationships, first among them being Ernie, with Gary W. a close second. And though I did not see the rest very often, for me as well as Adin they became and will always remain “family.”

Hanging around was fun, but there was the delusion which set in at some point, convincing me I could actually acquire one of the magnificent machines needed for club membership. I lusted after something sexy...if not a short wheelbase California  then at least a Cabriolet.

 Alas, financial reality quickly brought me back to earth. While today either of these models brings seven or eight figures, at the time the $20,000+ they went for put them into what would be that same stratospheric realm as today.

246GTB
For Some Reason I Love Them in Yellow
Should be badged as a Dino and not a Ferrari

I was fixated on a front engined, V12 model, as to me this was the most famous and successful motor Ferrari had built, one which dominated the sports car racing circuits from the first LeMans winning 250 Sport of 1952, owned even then by Ernie

The First 3 liter Ferrari
The 250 Sport
Mille Miglia Assigned Number
1952 and c1982
Bob Rubin and Ernie Mendicki, Piloti

 to the radical for its time pontoon fendered Testa Rossa of the later 50s,

My first instructor and good friend David
Doing what he did so well
in his 250TR Testa Rossa
(from Tam's Old Car Site)

 the SWB (pic) and the all conquering GTO of 1962-63, 

250 GTO
About $100 million in this shot

ending finally with the scam of the 250LM, a 3.3 liter mid engined car (thus really a 275 and not a 250) Ferrari tired unsuccessfully to pass of f as a continuation of the GTO. 

250LM
1965 LeMans Winner

That, unfortunately, eliminated one of the sexiest cars ever...the 246GT(pic). While I still could not manage the “S” or open version, the coupe was selling for the same $10,000 as the car I ultimately bought, a Le Sancey grey (the official factory name for a mildly metallic paint that was not glaringly silver) 250GT Pininfarina Coupe 2+2. Quite an awkward moniker for a car that is anything but.

While panned by arm chair wannabe pundits and those who can afford today's models (though rarely by the true collectors who have those landmark cars mentioned above), let's look at what the automotive press thought of the car in its day...as discussed in this  R&T road test of 1962 which I pulled out of my archives when I decided to sell the car.

The R&T test of the Series I 250 "GTE"

I want to “tell stories” in this article, but first I want to feature my own car, as noted in the ten shots at the end of the post. Note that the grill does not match that in the article. Nor do the headlight surrounds, the dash, and the rear lights. Though these cars were built as production models, they came out in three series. The article features the earliest variant, mine was the last. There were 954 cars in all-the largest production of a single Ferrari model at the time, and that production was evenly split between all three series. In addition, though I do not know the early history of my car, it was clearly first sold in Italy, as all the legends on the metric gauges is in Italian. Though by the third series the overdrive no longer shared the same oil as the transmission, my car nonetheless did have a rare option...electric windows. In all these years I have only seen one other with the feature.

Convincing Sherri we could indeed afford the car was a challenge...solved by leasing it (Ferrari “buddies” are all too happy to help provide information on ways to divest you of your money), though I bought out the lease a couple of years later when our finances allowed.

And then...a couple of days after purchase...the motor put a rod through the block.

But not before I accumulated my first (and only) speeding ticket in it. I had packed a young guy who worked for me and his wife and kid into the back seat and took them for a ride on Caῇada Road, which parallels I280 on the SF peninsula. As I floored it and wound to about 85 in third I was hit with

LIGHTS!!!!!

RED AND BLUE FLASHING SIGNALS!!!!

A FREAKIN' ROADBLOCK!!!

Seems I had stumbled into a setup of multiple county sheriff units waiting to nab participants in the regular Saturday night teen drag race. The cop was actually laughing as he approached the car-I naturally just took my foot out of it and immediately pulled over as soon as the set came to life. When he accused me of doing “Warp 3” I held my tongue to avoid bragging that I wasn't even wound out totally in third, and had another gear plus that overdrive (I dispute the claim that the car was faster in fourth than OD, though I am not going to tell how I know. Quicker, yes...faster, no).

As noted in the article the car was totally docile to drive and you could indeed drive away from 10MPH in 4^th. Hell, you could even (in first) just take your foot off the clutch, feed it no gas at all, and it would burble happily away. But the fact that there was no redline painted on the tach should have made you aware there was something else going on here. How big are your...cash holdings?

While 0-60 in 7 (not 8 as in the article) is mundane today, that was far from the case in 1963. And look what happens after 60. From there to 100 was 17 seconds. The faster it went the faster it seemed to want to go...and it never lost the solidity and poise which makes driving a true GT such joy.

Then there were those brakes...Lockheed discs on all wheels, with a weird extra slave cylinder between the two front ones and vacuum boost. No matter what the speed the damn thing stopped in an absolutely straight line no matter how hard you stood on them. And don't think it tried to stand on its grill, either. No squat, no dive, no drama. And no car I have driven since gave me the same sense of solid, modulate-able control.

Sooo...we were taking a ride to Santa Cruz one weekend...kids in the back seat, Sherri by my side. Jason looks like he is about ten in the photo Sherri has in an album...maybe as old as 12 (he was a slow grower until he hit about 14 so it's hard to tell)...and Adin looks like maybe 4-6. I, of course, disdained Highway 92 to Half Moon Bay and instead opted for the far more challenging, and convoluted, route up Kings Mountain Road and down to Pescadero. Stop at the top required so the kids (well, I think mainly Adin) to recover their cookies...or at least to keep them from losing them.

Swoop down the other side of the mountain to the sea, then down an open ans widening Highway 1 to the outskirts of Santa Cruz, whereupon I backed down from my 100MPH+ pace....to a more sedate 50 or so outside of town. Both kids immediately awakened, and Jason asked why we were going so slow.

Indeed.

By that time Sherri had figured out the metric speedometer dial. Try as I might to convince her that an indicated 160 was not all that fast, she was onto the gag and told me that 100 was a bit too enthusiastic.

Spoil sport.

I guess I should explain the rod-through-block. Seems the prior owner had somehow gotten lost during his last oil change and only put in two of the ten (yes, that is not a typo...Ferraris were more oil than water cooled back then) quarts the sump held...and then said that, despite an ad claiming all the gauges worked, upon questioning, that the oil pressure always read zero. But then I did not pull the dipstick either, being so anxious to get the car that I was all but stepping on my tongue. Naive idiot and a lost law suit...though the fact that the guy and the judge were on a first name basis wasn't an issue, was it? Nah...not even when he said “you have to expect these things when you buy exotic machinery?' Really? So Ferrari became famous in racing...by engines self-destructing?

The current version of the club still runs a hillclimb in Virginia City each September. Back then the FOC partnered with the Cobra Club for the event. I don't know whether that is still the case. It is the most dangerous course I ever hope to have been on, but I was too stupid to know it then. As it says on the map,

Believe me, it's nastier than it looks
Turn 17 is deceptively evil

 it is 5.1 miles long and climbs 1200 feet. The map also shows the 20 twists and turns but, though it is a topographical map, it does not show the hard rock cliffs on your right as you climb, nor the sandy embankments and 400' drops on the left. Oh...and that mild looking turn 17 is literally a potential killer. It had negative camber, and other than a scenic overlook on the outside, there is nothing between you and California but a lot of nasty downslope.

The times I inked on were from my runs in 1980...but not all five of them. You see a dash between run 2 and 3? That dash was me spinning 180 degrees into that scenic overlook. Of course I did not tell Sherri...I'm not that stupid. I screwed up, had no idea how, and you note my “back off” comment...from then on the turn became a second gear event to be treated very cautiously and not with the third gear enthusiasm which resulted in that 4:51 time and a class win. While 64 MPH average may not seem that fast, look again at those turns and remember this is a carbureted car which starts out with 240 Italian ponies at sea level and is now trying to muscle its way up 1200 feet, starting from over 4000 feet above that sea.

At the awards banquet Sunday night Jules Moritz came up to ask what the noise and smoke was from me on Saturday. Nice guy, huh? Sherri gave me the ol' stink eye and said “Weren't going to tell me, eh?'

“Nothing to tell,” I said. “I screwed up, I don't know how, it was over, and I'm not going to do it again.” While I did (I think) run the event again, I kept that promise...like I said, it became a second gear turn.

You might miss a couple of interesting things about the course. The line starting from the lower left is the boundary between Lyon and Storey Counties. Also note the dotted line? That is the return downhill to the start line. Like the course, which is on the closed truck route, that road crosses the county line. It was always a giggle to bbe coming back down that, in a car with numbers on the doors and wearing a helmet, stuffed in between two "Ma and Pa" motorhomes. The looks on those folks faces was just priceless. 

The logistics of running the event involves two county supervisory boards, two sheriff's departments, the state highway authority, and the highway patrol. No small deal. I once accompanied Doug Fonner, who was president of the Bay Area Region of the FOC at the time, to manage some of this. It was a very long day. And of course we all took turns manning corners for hour-long shifts, with a full complement of flags. More about that later.

The first time I ran the event, which may or may not have been in 1980, I vividly recall that the route was up the very highway we now live just off...CA88. In fact, I can swear that Sherri and I met up with a group running up the hill in front of the police station/city hall in Sutter Creek. Perhaps that was on the trip where we spent the night in the Murphys Hotel? Too many years, too many events.

Anyway, we were with perhaps six other cars. Recall that Nevada either still did not have speed limits outside the cities in 1980, or perhaps it was that they did not enforce any. At any rate, CA88 become NV88 at the border, and also becomes a long, very gradual downhill straight many miles long before you hit the towns of Minden and Gardnerville.

Bill and Judy Morton were ahead of us in their silver 330GTC when we crossed out of California...and apparently into hyperspace. At 120 I was still loosing ground rapidly to Bill, and at 145 indicated my car was topped out.

I caught the group at the stoplight in Minden. “Silly me,” I shouted. “I thought the event started tomorrow!”

I think I did the event at least three times, each time “caravaning” with a small group of cars. I recall one time we went up CA4, a route that is actually so twisty it is not all that much fun to drive. And we always stopped somewhere just at or after the top of whatever pass we were on, for lunch and a leg-stretch. Everyone brought picnic stuff to share, and some of this, being Ferrari folk, was much beyond PB&J sandwiches. In fact, an award called the “Wretched Excess” award became at least an informal running joke...it sort of got out of hand when Tom and Teresa Jones somehow stuffed sterling silver (including candelabras), crystal glasses, linen tablecloths, lobster, and drawn butter into their yellow 246GTS.

John Lewis was campaigning his AC Bristol, featured in an earlier blog, by then. Sherri and I were taking a shift on the hill during his run, with the full complement of signaling flags mentioned above. The most important of these were yellow for caution, and red for stop. The event is a time trial, so there is not wheel-to-wheel competition. It is you, within your class, against the clock. But to expedite things for the large number of entrants, a following car is started on the course before the preceding car finishes its run...in theory far enough behind that, no matter how fast the second car is, it is impossible to catch the first car in 5.2 miles. Unless something goes wrong with the first car that is. Thus in reality the only flag that matters is red and green, since for safety an incident of any time requires totally shutting down the course until it is cleared. The green allows any cars on the course to restart, though except at the start line it would be used for a restart along with the yellow, so drivers would proceed to the top of the hill under non-racing speeds.

I think it was at turn 4 where John lost it...though just enough to kiss the outside wall of rock. Not good for the car, but not life threatening. We clearly heard the scrunch and saw the dust it raised. However, storming up the hill behind John was 1966 SCCA National Champion Dick Smith in a 427cubic inch Cobra. The entire hill echoed with the exhaust from that car, and I swear it brought pebbles down off the hill.

“Crap,” I yelled, “We gotta shut him down.” One of us grabbed the red flag and started to wave it. It waved and waved...immediately exiting the pole it was attached to and blowing off the hill, leaving us looking dumbstruck at the bare and very naked looking pole. The staples must have pulled out. Without a second's hesitation we grabbed the yellow and waved that! Hell, when the only tool you have is a hammer...

Did I mention that Dick was a former SCCA Champion? Yeah? Well he was also the smoothest driver in a 427 I ever saw. This is a beast with so much power and so little traction and handling by comparison that most guys, at least at the vintage racing level of skills, honk it around a corner in a series of short, straight squirts, until it is fully lined up on the straight and they can put their foot down, after which Oh Mother does that thing fly!

Dick was so smooth you'd have thought the car was my 750cc Siata. He was also pretty savvy and was not at all confused by the yellow, instantly braking the car to a halt. Whew!

On this or another journey Adin, who would have been no more than five at the most, decided to ride with his “best friend” back from Virginia City to San Mateo. Yes, Adin really did consider John his best buddy. I once got called into school to discuss this with his teacher, who realized Adin's stories about John sounded suspiciously like he was an adult (well...maybe not). The discussion was about imaginary friends not being appropriate for school assignments.

I laughed so hard I was in tears.

Anyway...John wanted to race “like it was back then.” Drive to the event, race, drive home. Except coming down off the Sierra Crest that September the temperature was frigid...one of those El Niῇo years where the snow never melted. We stopped for hot cocoa at some little inn and John could barely get his hands off the wheel. Adin, on the other hand, had curled up on the aluminum floorboard under the car cover and was quite toasty. The floor of an AC can melt your shoes if you're not careful.

There were other Virginia City memories

There was also Steve Tillum's incident with his 275GTB/C Competitione...but I think I related that story elsewhere. If not I'll add it here later.

Joe alphabet gave us all a hell of a scare as the candidate most likely to become our first event fatality. As it turned out this happened years later. Odd name, you say? Actually one that was well-known among motorcycle guys back then, as he made really nice after-market bike headers. Joe said his family got the name as Ellis Island, though I saw a show recently which claims names were not changed there and that they had language experts on duty who knew how to deal with names which, according to the story Joe told, “had too many letters in it” and thus was arbitrarily changed to “Alphabet” by the Immigration Officer.

Anyway, Joe had a 308GTB or S, and spun it on some turn or another. He wound up backwards with the car having been stopped by the sand it plowed up. This was more than fortuitous as it had rained the previous week, thus softening what would otherwise have been dry and crumbly and incapable of stopping the car.

Problem was, Joe was crazy panicked, and exited the car on the downhill side! We got there just as this was occurring and pulled him back to safety...and sanity.

The final hillclimb story I can recall is about a crazy Italian (wait, is that redundant?). Alessandro Pedani was the kind of guy who would dress up in a red driving suit, start jabbering in the Italian he spoke fluently at anyone and everyone, and talk his way into the inner sanctum of the Ferrari garage during the years Long Beach was an F1 event.

Alessandro and his then girlfriend Patricia were on duty as corner workers at #20, the last turn on the course. At least that was what was supposed to be happening. 20 is not particularly dangerous, except for one item. It exits into a languid semi-straight which crosses a bridge...over the Virginia and Truckee Railroad below. Obviously the bridge surface of concrete is a change in grip and temperature from the rough asphalt of the course. The turn (any turn) can bite. I once watched a guy in a new to him real 365BTG/S (65 made, the others were coupes with the tops cut off) wipe his car first along one guard rail and then, trying to correct, on the one on the opposite side of the bridge. Disheartening.

I was driving someone's van, picking up corner workers to either switch to a relief crew or end the day, with Sherri. We get to 20...and there is no one there. We lean on the horn, and out from under the bridge crawls Alessandro and Patricia...both in their underwear. They were bored, and hot, and then...hot and not bored. Dangerous abandonment...but funny.

I ran the old Riverside Race Track twice, but only once with the Ferrari. The first time I caravaned down with a half dozen other Ferraris...though all I remember are Bill and Judy Morton leading in the GTC, “Crazy” Bob Epstein in a 250LM, and (I think) the Thinessens in their 246. Marshall and Nancy Matthews were also along, I think, but in a Porsche Speedster. I was driving my 914, and had a hell of a time keeping up. I was rowing gears as fast as I could and barely hanging on...I'm sure I was at the ragged edge of what my skills were then, though I did elicit a comment of respect from Bill about keeping with the group.

Bill, by the way, decided the “Road Closed” due to flooding sign on CA33 was bogus, and we merrily wrapped our way around it and proceeded at warp speed. The road parallels I5 for a long stretch, and we were flying low...until the CHP intervened. Seems the sound of our cars outraged the cows and farmers. We got a lecture and instructions to “get back on I5 and keep to the speed limit.” Of course as soon as he was gone we put foot to floor and continued larking down 33. How the hell Epstein convinced the cop that car was street legal is a credit to his attorney-ship...but I thought he was a corporate dweeb! In fact, on one trip he got clocked at 140...and asked the cop to please not mess up the ticket cause he planned to frame it!

I don't recall much of the event itself, but the trip back was a bit memorable. First there was the stop for fuel (this time we did stick to I5, possibly America's most boring road...if you really want to deaden your nerves...). As the six or so of these exotics (ok, that is stretching it a bit for the 914, but...) pulled in we could not help but notice, and nod a friendly greeting to, the officer in the CHP cruiser at the next pump island.

We carefully pulled out and were judicious about re-entering the highway at a respectable and responsible speed. We didn't get ¼ mile before he pulled Marshall over. Of course the rest of us stopped to learn what heinous crime he had committed and to keep the group together. He and Nancy had given a lift to a friend, so Nance was sprawled out, sans seatbelt, on the parcel shelf of the Speedster...no small feat. Was it that? Nah...he was nailed for not having a front license plate.

Are you kidding me? To this day one out of every five cars in California (hell, I've got two) leave the plate off. In many cases it this is due to aesthetics, and for the rest it just probably got loose and fell off at some point and was not replaced.

Sigh

My second time I motored down by myself in the GTE. I only managed a 2:07.71 on the 2.547 mile track, and was the 7^th slowest car there. But the next one behind me was three seconds slower in a 308GTS, and it got worse from there, with a Daytona only managing a 2:14 and another the slowest car at the event, with a sleepwalking 2:27. I could have beat that in my 77 Oldsmobile!(track pic)

But the highlight for me was not spinning the car, as I did coming out of the last turn when I zoned out and confused an access road for the track, nor being split at 140 by two cars between the chicane and turn 8, not having to find someone to rebuild the oddball Lockheed brake caliper when I failed tech with a leak.

No, the real giggle had occurred on the way down. It was a hot day, and between the drone of the exhaust, which is lovely...for about 90 minutes, after which it can become annoying, the absence of AC, or the fact that the car is a thinly disguised race car, about which a famous local painter had said, at a club event, that the only reason they put a body on it was to keep the flies off you.

I had stopped for a break somewhere in the middle of...nothing. Perhaps somewhere around what is called “Lost Hills.” No Kidding. I'm sitting by the side of the road, and it dawns on me that the car is sipping fuel at the second best rate of anything we owned. Normally Ferraris of the era are do over-carbureted they slurp fuel like a horse at an oasis in the desert. The 2+2 only sported three twin barrel downdrafts rather than the six twos used on the hotter versions of the motor such as the GTO. Still, the normal mileage per gallon was...eight. It mattered not how you drove it...that's what you got. Foot to the floor, or an egg on the throttle pedal..no difference.

But that day, cruising on I5 in overdrive, I got a staggering (by comparison...stick with me) 18 miles from a single gallon of high test.

And then a fixed-wing CHP plane circled me and, on a bullhorn, asked me if I needed help. Are you kidding? I'm getting 18 freaking miles per stingy little gallon in a Ferrari and you think I might nee help? Other than a bottle of champagne I rather doubt it.

But that's not the end. I purposely left this one for the end.

I don't remember where we were returning from, but once again I had the only four passenger car in the group. OK, so two of the passengers needed to be either kids, midgets, or adults with no legs, but still...

The president of the Bay Area FOC region was an interesting wisp named (seriously) Memory Hughes. Memory of what? She had grown up in, of all places, Zimbabwe, and spoke with a charming ( and believe me, not all of them are) British accent.

She was always...on the prowl I'd guess you'd say, for a rich guy. And quite open an honest about it. To her credit.

Anyway, for some reason Memory needed a ride back to the Bay Area. Did she, as required for membership in the FOC, actually own a Ferrari. I honestly don't recall. But there she was, scrunched across the rear buckets of the car...a feat in itself as there was a non-moveable arm rest between them.

It was yet another blisteringly hot day...just the usual summer burn in the Central Valley. Memory decided she needed to ditch the long pants and change into shorts. She had a small suitcase with her in the cabin, so no problem, right?

Well, small as she was, this required quite a bit of contortion to exit the pants and stuff herself into the shorts. In fact, it required a few moments of a very cute little ass plastered against the rear window of the GTE...upon which we seemed to have acquired an escort...an elegant, though rather gargantuan Rolls Royce Silver Cloud (pic), piloted by a 60 something bald, pot-bellied, grey-haired gent chewing furiously on a big stogie.

I let this continue for a few seconds figuring, why not let him enjoy himself, assuming he doesn't:

A. Have a heart attack and crash or

B. Forget to steer and crash and/or

C.Either one of these taking me out as well

And, I admit it, I was enjoying the view as well.

I finally gently pointed the situation out to Memory, still struggling though I don't recall if it was getting the pants off or the shorts on.

Her comment has stuck with me forever:

“Ahhsshole” she articulated in that sophisticated sounding Brit, “only dead people drive Rolls Royces.”

Indeed.

So...why did I sell it? All these memories and more were packed into the three year period starting in 1979 and ending in 1982. The club changed...I changed...and vintage racing arose.

The region disappeared into the bowels of the Ferrari Club of America, and somehow that seemed...different. At club events I often had the oldest, and only “classic” Ferrari there. Events became more show-offy, more costly (when raising the dues above $100 a year the justification was “We should charge more because we are the Ferrari Club!), and it finally ended when a guy told me he would not bring a 308 to the club picnic because it was “too valuable to drive.”

Listen...it is not the cure for cancer and it doesn't make your...thing grow longer. It is a wonderful pile of metal, rubber, plastic, and glass that is meant to be used. And that brought me to...how much of the car was tired and needed rejuventating.

It needed brakes. It needed a clutch. The exhaust had been patched with epoxy by me so many times I think that was all that was holding it together. The paint was sad, the chrome more so. The seats needed re-stuffing and re-stitching. There was a part of the floor pan that the previous owner had “fixed” by making a replacement out of fiberglass. The carpets were shrunken and did not fit. Ditto the door panels. The wind on/wind off cables spools for the windows failed every 20 days like clockwork.

The car deserved the $50,000 or so it would take to put it right. It deserved better than I could justify putting into it.

But God...do I ever miss it and the fun we had.

Boranni Wheels of Course

Understated Elegance
Never Needed to Scream "Look at Me!"

That Early Prancing Horse and Hood Badge Says it all

A few words needed:
Single Overhead Cam per bank
Also single dual point distributor per bank
Three two barrel downdraft Webers
Twin Oil filters
24 valves-setting clearances was an overnighter
You time the beast as if it is two separate six cylinder engines

Yes, it is a Nardi Wheel

NO "leatherette" anywhere
Just the most lovely hides available

The Series 3 Dash was different that the earlier cars
Note the 300kph speedometer and the Italian small gauges