My latest Ferrari.

[DustyM]

I owned a 308GT4 for a while a couple of years back, I like the shape, it ain't no 911 though, didn't really warm to the driving experience, sounded nice though.

[Mike]

Thanks for the comments guys, I do hope you find this all interesting!

Assuming you are following Harry Metcalfe's activities ??

Hi Dan, Harry's a fellow owner, bought his just before I got mine and we're in touch about the cars. More about his shortly.

308 GT4 is probably closest in spirit to a 911

Thanks Martin and to all for the GT4 comments. To me a Ferrari is all about flowing lines, from the early race cars like the Pontoon
Testarossa through to the GTO's and SWB's, the Lusso's and then the 246, it was all about the sweeps of the curves along the car,
the raising and falling lines creating a thing of great beauty. So the Bertone design GT4 to me went against all that with all straight
lines giving a wedge like boxy shape which is not for me. The Pininfarina GTB kept true to the ethos of that flowing Ferrari design.

The tires looked quite big.

The look of the wheels are one of the reasons I love the car so much, on the small 14" original Campagnolo or Cromodora wheels
the big balloon Michelins XWX's look fantastic, especially with the optional wider 7½" wheels. Sadly many owners changed up to 16"s
with low profile tyres for a more modern look and better handling, to me it destroys the look of the car.

Is the GTS a GTB with a targa top ?

Yep pretty much. The targa top version came out in 77 and made famous by Magnum, he of the big mustache! Again to me it ruins
the lines of the car though, rather like the GTS version of the 246GT, those flowing lines are suddenly interrupted halfway through
the car and it doesn't look right. Maybe I'd think differently if I live in California or the South of France though.

i like the 512 tr monkey Harris is running at the mo.

The 512 was too new for me, although incredibly undervalued when I started looking a year ago, they've crept up a little now though.
Again this to me was when Ferrari lost their way with design, straight lines and a boxy shape especially in the interiors a really 80's look.
And they are WIDE, it's a big car to drive!

[Mike]

So the search for a 'Vetroresina' was underway. As the Vetro as the cognoscenti call them (fibreglass sounds so much better in Italian...)
is a rare car I knew it wasn't going to be easy, especially as I had decided after the 6 year Martini car project that it had to be an original
matching numbers car with the minimum amount of work needed to bring it up to scratch.

Only 4 had come onto the open market this year, one of them from our very own Robert Barrie. His was a very nice low miles example
which popped up overnight on his web-site. I rang him at 9.30 the following morning and he said someone else was on his way to look
at it so ring back later. Sure enough the first guy bought it on the spot, and it was then that I began to realise I wasn't the only one to
recognise that these cars were something special and until now had been really underestimated and off the radar.



It was all very reminiscent of my search for the 246 all those years ago, in the 9 months I spent looking then the prices went up roughly
30% and I was worried that the same was happening here. I knew from my experience with the F40 I sold for a friend earlier this year
that classic Ferrari's are in a world of there own when it comes to buying and selling, at one point F40's were going up £20,000 a week!

Neil at Hairpin had this one for sale, a great example but white even though it was it's original colour was not for me. Harry Metcalfe on
the other hand fell in love with it and added it to his collection. Harry, as the founder of Evo talks about it in the magazine occasionally.

[Mike]

The other two that have been for sale this year both suffered from the same fate, they had had colour changes. A red one that
was originally silver, and a yellow that was originally black.

The red one at Nick Cartwrights I went to see, he forgot to mention the colour change on the phone before I set off for
Derbyshire....having said that a colour change on a Ferrari is not the end of the world due to their tubular chassis construction.
All the underside and chassis, the engine bay and under the front hood is all black so re-spraying the top side is a lot easier
than on a 911.

I quite like silver as a classic colour but there was a lot of other stuff that needed doing so passed on it. It later sold to another
enthusiast who I correspond with, and it will undergo the work though not the re-paint this winter.



The last one around at the time was this Giallo fly one with Mike Wheeler at Rardley Motors. Needed way to much work for my
liking and as it was originally black which I don't think works on the GTB I didn't bother going to see it, another restoration
project was the last thing I wanted.

Mike mentioned he had brought it in from Ireland and it was only in conversion with DDK'er Jon (DustyM) that he mentioned he
had looked after it for it's then owner, small world. Still for sale, but I see that it's gone up another 20K

[Mike]

I have a treasured copy of Supercar Classics with Steve Cropley's F/glass 308 on the cover - a truly beautiful design.

Thanks so much Ian, I'd totally forgotten about that one. Just had a rummage through the magazine collection and yep,
found it!

[Mitch]

Enjoying the story so far Mike

Go back a bit further in your collection and you'll find this issue

[bjmullan]

Funny that Ireland and fibreglass Ferrari's are mentioned in the same story. First time I realised that Ferrari made a fibreglass car was when a 308 crashed less that a mile from my home. It was a red one and it must have been 1976/77.

Love the 308 and even got to drive one a few years back.

[Mike]

Enjoying the story so far Mike Go back a bit further in your collection and you'll find this issue

That was the one at the top of the pile Mitch, also the most thumbed!

[Lightweight_911]

I can tie that edition of Supercar Classics (still, in my view, the best car magazine ever produced) to Ferrari - back in the early '90's I wnt to look at a 365GT 2+2 that was for sale (privately) in Holland Park. It turned out to belong to the next door neighbour of Anne Johns (?) who owned the Gulf Orange RS at the time.

[911hillclimber]

Great to read another 'Mike thread' and the fact it is not a 911 matters not.

When I started hill climbing in 1991 my first event had a 308 in the class and it was quick and easy to drive the class winner said.
I still see John Dobson every now and then, now into circuits and Alfas.

The 308 is a nice car, and not in your face, very clean lines and a 6 pot too.
Several race well in various series so must be quite strong?

Look forward to the gradual unfolding of this tale!

[Mitch]

Great to read another 'Mike thread' ......... Look forward to the gradual unfolding of this tale!

Yep, but not tooo gradual, the last one was 6 yrs!

[Lightweight_911]

The 308 is a nice car, and not in your face, very clean lines and a 6 pot too.

Engine is a V8 Graham ...

[Mike]

Thanks Andy, as with most Ferrari model designations 308 means 3.0litres 8 cylinders.
Do we know what ever happened to the Supercar Classic RS?

[KS]

Ferrari's model designation always used to be the capacity of a single cylinder from what I remember. When did things change (which they clearly did)? And then there's the 400, which doesn't fit anywhere! Four-litre, no cylinders?

[Lightweight_911]

Do we know what ever happened to the Supercar Classic RS?

It's still in the UK - was part of the RS line-up at Hedingham last year.