A Day of Racing our Ferrari

The next few posts will be based on memories of driving our Ferrari up to the Monterey, CA area for events centered around the Laguna Seca Historic Car Races in the early 1980’s. So until we find our programs and/or more photos I’ll post a follow up if and when we have corrected info.

In August of 1981 we belonged to the Ferrari Owners Club. In those days the Historic Car races took place on Saturday/Sunday so The Ferrari Owners Club had the Laguna Seca race track for Monday.

Ferrari owners belonging to the club, and who wanted to race their cars on the track could sign up to do that. We had to install a fire extinguisher in the car, and wear a helmet. We could bring any passenger we wanted as long as they wore a helmet as well.

There were two sessions so I took the morning session and Dale took the afternoon. We each had to first drive the track behind a professional driver to learn the line, and then could drive on our own,

racing against the clock.

Dale tells me, but we can’t find our photos, that he believes a black GTO belonging to Bob Price, was behind me. I was only concerned about driving so wasn’t caught up with the other cars. All I knew was that after we were finished, the GTO driver behind me told me that I’d done well as the he had never caught up to me!

The track has a fairly sharp corkscrew turn on the back side and turn #9 was nearly a hairpin. Coming down the corkscrew we couldn’t go really fast but had the RPM on the redline, engine screaming! What music!!!

Driving home on Hwy 101 that evening I remember hitting about 100mph and telling Dale that it was boring driving on a straight highway. Dale and I agreed that it was much more exciting red lining the car on the track. I guess it wouldn’t have been boring if I’d been caught by the CHP.

Time For A Larger Car

When we were about to have our 3^rd son we knew that we’d clearly outgrown the Jag and our truck. It was time to do some serious car shopping and we were really considering the Maserati Quattroporte.

As we looked at cars we realized that the Ferrari 308GT4’s were going to be replaced with a new and slower model. We found that there were only 8 308’s left for sale in the U.S., one being in Los Gatos. A quick trip to Los Gatos found a kind of aqua color 308 that they really wanted off the lot. Well it was time to help them out and the Ferrari was ours.

Driving the Ferrari was so much fun; we’d never experienced the cornering like that before. The speed on the straight away wasn’t so much of a thrill as we had to keep it down into the 90’sMPH, although we’d go over 100MPH when encouraged.

We couldn’t fit both cars into our garage so put our Jag into a friend’s barn. We still drove it occasionally so we didn’t put it into complete storage.

Dale was approached by a couple of people who wanted to buy the car but we loved the Jag and wouldn’t sell. Driving the Jag was a fun drive, different than the Ferrari, but a thrill: the open air, the purr, the power.

After a couple of years Dale did offer the Jag for sale to a guy. The Jag hadn’t appreciated much and we were not driving it so it seemed to make sense. As I took the guy for a ride I turned to him and said “I’m not selling the car, it isn’t for sale.” The guy replied that “my husband said it was for sale.” I told him that I’d changed my mind and wouldn’t be signing the Pink Slip, and as the car was ½ mine I could make that decision. We had an unhappy camper but I didn’t care.

A couple of other people tried to convince me over the next few years, offers to give me flowers every day and other nonsense. But we kept the car knowing that it would come back to life again.

Cars in our Early Years

When we were children, each Dale and I were taken to the car shows in L.A. Each of our dads were interested in cars and passed on their interest to us. My goal was to buy a Masarati. Dale’s, I believe, was to own a Ferrari but that is not clear.

My first car I bought for $500 a Ford Galaxy. From there I went on to purchase, on my own and brand new; a Plymouth Cricket, and then a Ford Pinto. Granted these were not the great cars but I did buy them with dreams of buying something better.

Dale’s dad gave him a car after college, a Lotus Elite which unfortunately got munched after a year.

We met at college, poor college kids. By then Dale owned a VW bus and I had my Pinto. On our 1^st date we went straight to the Ferrari showroom and looked at our new loves. We started dreaming of how we could buy one.

We got married, the poor college kids with our VW bus and our Pinto.

Many years ago, about 1973, a kid received a Jaguar XK 140 from his father. The kid decided to sell the car for the price of an airplane ticket to Europe and listed it in the paper. At that same time a pair of we, the newlyweds, decided to see if we could pick up a sports car. Not having much money we decided to look in the classified ads. Seeing the ad for the Jaguar we quickly rushed off to Household Finance and got a loan to cover the Jag plus a little extra to make sure it was ours.

The newlyweds got their Jaguar the very next morning and drove their car all over. A couple of years later they had a baby boy. Since there were no seat belt laws or child seats their baby was held by mom or dad whoever was sitting in the passenger seat of the 2 seat car. Top down the little family tooled around in style.

The Jaguar owners grew older and the family larger so a Ferreri seemed like a good fit for the growing brood. The Jaguar was put into storage for a later day and the 308GT4 was turned into a family car/nursery. Which role it served flawlessly.

Alas there were life issues, life got in the way, and the cars were put into an early retirement. But there was a plan that someday the cars would come out to purr again.

This is the story of our cars reemergence.