My latest Ferrari.

[sladey]

Think its a bouquet - same thing really

[Mike]

Is that woman in the background holding a gun ???

That's the Mother-in-Law.

[210bhp]

Is that woman in the background holding a gun ???

No, just the one in the car

Regards
Mike

[Mike]

So, back to the hunt for a car. It always seemed to me that the very best cars sell privately by word of mouth, so I thought I'd put
the word out about what I was looking for. Using the internet forums I manged to contact a few of the owners asking for help as
it's fellow owners that often hear first if anything is coming up for sale.

One of the owners I approached I knew had a very nice original car with a great history, and while hearing nothing back to begin
with after a few weeks he got in touch to say after thinking about it long and hard he might be tempted to sell himself. This was
a break I had been waiting for and I asked him if he would send over a few pictures to give me an idea of his car.

As I studied the picture below that came up on my screen, I began to look not at the car but at the background. Then I realised
there was something familiar there.....and so started a chain of coincidences that gave a new meaning to the word serendipity!

[mycar]

This is starting to get Hitchcockian.

Mike.

[72911E]

Is ther aerial in the rear quarter standard? .......disturbs the line a bit

[mrg3.6]

Doesn't seem to have been updated for a year, but it would seem that you fibreglass boys have your very own registry:

http://www.glass308.com/default.aspx

Martin

[markh]

There was a very nice one at the last Goodwood breakfast club - tucked away in the paddocks.

[Mike]

is the aerial in the rear quarter standard?

It was a dealer fitted option. The prototypes had the single swept back aerial mounted on the centre front of the roof which I never liked,
the 246's tended to have them there as well. It came from the factory with no radio but interestingly had the electric aerial switch fitted,
again one of the lovely period Ferrari chrome toggle ones.

you fibreglass boys have your very own registry: http://www.glass308.com/default.aspx

yep the cars on there, but probably the best reference for the Vetroresina serial numbers is the 308GTB Register: http://www.r-design.net/308/index_e.html

There was a very nice one at the last Goodwood breakfast club - tucked away in the paddocks.

[Mike]

I had known that the car was in the West Country, but it was only on looking at the picture and recognising the Taw Estuary
that I realised the car was just a mile away from where I went to school! Considering it's the back of beyond down there, what
a coincidence, maybe this was meant to be....

We exchanged more details and it was just what I was looking for, a very original matching numbers early version of the fibre-
glass car, production number 30 in fact, which is stamped on quite a few of the various parts. With 35,000 miles on the clock,
it had a continuous history from the day it was ordered in December 1975 and was delivered via Maranello the UK importer to
Ferrari dealers Cooper Car Sales in Leicester in May 1976.

The salesman there who actually sold the car from new was Tony Willis, who is now the Archivist for Ferrari in the UK and the
man who does the Ferrari Classiche inspections. I had met Tony earlier in the year when he inspected the F40 I was selling,
another coincidence, and he remembered the car well.

So it was in the car and a day trip to North Devon to check it out. Here is the moment I first saw it as the barn door opened,
I say barn, more a big garage really but for the sake of the story that's where I found it, so it's a barn find........sort of



It's actually the view from the back that tells you it's a Vetro. As one of one of the early fibreglass cars it has reversing lights in
the bumper, they moved on the steel cars to the center of the indicator units, and the other giveaway is the single exhaust pipe
that denotes the dry sump weber carbed engine underneath that rear lid.

[scalino65]

i thought i recognised the view. is that out over Instow?

[Mike]

Yes, looking from the top of Heanton Hill, you've got Barnstable to the left and Braunton my old home town, to the right.
We went over the river to Instow for lunch when I went down for the weekend on the second visit, more of that later.

[Mike]

I'm going to post here a link to a short iphone movie clip, apologies for the crap quality but I wanted you to hear what it sounded like
as it reversed out the garage. I had read about the distinctive noise they make but this was great, listen as the note changes as the
car goes past, that burble you hear as you draw level with the door and A post is the induction noise coming from the air intake in
the drivers door.

It's that noise the driver hears as you drive with the window open, the intake being right next to your ear on the rhd cars.

Turn it up and have a listen http://youtu.be/cBczOWXohsI

[scalino65]

so was the school West Buckland?

[dragonfly]

That sounds great, Mike.
It's surprising how narrow those rear tyres look compared to contemporary versions.

I know its a world apart from this model, but I have good memories of driving a 328 back from Germany for a friend some years back. Lovely looking cars