She was sleek and curvaceous and there was almost a glow about her. She crouched under the spotlight looking as if ready to pounce on an unsuspecting admirer like me. Her skin was smooth and flawless. I walked around her admiring the curve of her flanks and the rounded rear. It was love at first sight for me and I could hardly wait to\u00a0know her intimately. My first Ferrari experience was about to begin. Most of us will go a lifetime without ever driving a truly high-performance car, let alone a supercar like a Ferrari, Maserati or Lamborghini. I was one of those fortunate ones who, without making the huge investment, got to enjoy a number of drives in a truly great car.<\/p>\n
I was the new sales manager for an old Ford dealership. The owner was a high-performance car enthusiast and we were one of the few dealerships that inventoried and sold the limited production vehicles produced by Ford Racing Division. One of our high-performance salesmen was a former racing driver, Paul O\u2019Shea, who had been with both the Ferrari and Mercedes-Benz teams in the nineteen-fifties. Paul had located and bought with the boss\u2019 money, a retired Ferrari Gran Prix car that had once won the Carrera Pan-America, the Gran Prix of Argentina.<\/p>\n
\u00a0The Ferrari red body was crafted of aluminum, light and easily dented. It was right-hand drive with a headrest that sloped back into the rear deck. Next to the base of the headrest buttress was the huge, spring-loaded cover for the sixty gallon gas tank. Originally equipped with a Ferrari V-12 of about four litres, the car had been bought for a pittance with a rod through the aluminum block. Not being a purist, though he did own two other Ferraris, the Ford dealer had the shop install a Ford seven litre racing engine with a highrise manifold and two, huge four-barrel carburetors. Blueprinted, the Ford engine produced 575 horsepower in a vehicle that weighted about 1,900 pounds with sixty gallons of gas aboard. It was awesome!<\/p>\n
The clutch was very heavily sprung and hard to depress at first, but once underway it was fast and had a very positive grip. The shop had rigged an Austin-Healey windshield in place of the tiny windscreen that had sufficed for racing. The red beast looked street legal, but lacked windshield wipers a horn and a few other unmentionables that would have passed a motor vehicle inspection. It was important not to attract the attention of the traffic policemen while operating on the public roadways.<\/p>\n
\u00a0I drove the red beauty every chance I got, the excuse being that I was promoting our High-Performance Division. I drove it to the gym, picked up my girlfriend for lunch and cruised the local drag-racing strip parking lots.<\/p>\n
\u00a0My romance ended when my promotional drives produced results; the sale of twelve racing Fords and one former Ferrari race car.<\/p>\n
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