Published: December 1, 1995
original ferrari artwork graciously contributed by member dave maestrejuan.
color christmas cards of this cover illustration are available in sets of 24 for $20.00. send check to dave maestrejuan, p.o. box 9836, brea, ca 92622.
these are old. click here for a current calendar of events
boyd coddington is a legend among hot rod enthusiasts, having designed and built some of the best looking street machines around! the facilities include the "hot rod" shop, where construction is under way on a variety of cars. next door is the wheel plant, where large computer-controlled machines make the famous "billet" custom wheels. in the complex is a complete paint shop and several retail stores, where custom designed items are for sale.
the facilities are located just off cerritos avenue, between beach blvd. and dale street in stanton. we need your reservation by january 15th - no walk-ins will be allowed. please use the form below or call tom brockmiller at (310) 530-1004.
we arrived at the goldfeder's beautiful home and were met by a great group of ferrari enthusiasts. the rodeo drive banner hanging outside the front door was enhanced by numerous ferraris parked outside. represented were two 348 spyders, two 308s, judd's 365 gtc, cy yedor's 365 gtc/4, and others.
we were treated to a super barbecue, with judd and cy as our very able chefs serving delicious burgers and chicken with all the trimmings. the sunset that night was spectacular, arranged by judd, no doubt!
sunday was a glorious day for the brunch at prego in san diego and the event was a great success with many members of both the fca and the foc in attendance. a special thanks to diane streckert of the ferrari owner's club for her great planning and orchestration.
just a few of the fine ferraris that showed up at prego.
prior to the brunch there was an informal concours, with about 25 ferraris. beautiful placques, donated by prego, were awarded to the winners and prego had special posters designed and printed especially for the event. these were later auctioned off, with the proceeds donated to charity.
una molte grazie to vito gambini and his staff for overseeing the sumptuous four course brunch. no one left hungry!
fca and foc members enjoy a fine brunch at prego.
other wonderful restaurants owned by spectrum food inc. are chianti, prego and harry's bar in the los angeles area, tutto mare and prego in orange county and tutto mare in san diego.
november 4th and 5th saw the final fca track event of the year - and it was a great success. as usual, we partnered with the alfa romeo owners of southern california (arosc) to participate in their time trials and race at willow springs international raceway.
we've said it before but we'll say it again - if you don't try driving your ferrari on the track once in a while you're missing the opportunity to have the time of your life in your car. ferraris were designed to be driven. they are famous for their long and lustrous competition heritage. who are you to jeopardize that hard earned reputation by creating a "garage queen?"
gassing up with the good stuff - 115 octane (at italian petrol prices).
fortunately, our pleas haven't fallen on deaf ears. we had the largest ferrari turn-out of the year. while it only amounted to about 10 ferraris, it's still better than we've been doing and we were missing a couple regulars like arthur trejo and nick paris so there were lots of new faces. we hope the trend continues and that we'll see you at willow next february.
ferraris at willow november 4th and 5th
denise stillman gives a "thumbs up" at she sits on grid in her 328 gts.
it has been particularly enjoyable to see the "racing bug" bite a fellow ferraristi. joel quaid has been mentioned in these pages before. he owns a drop-dead gorgeous metallic blue 348 ts with cream interior - and he races it. joel has followed the path of many before him. he started out getting his feet wet in the introductory follow-the-leader sessions. he liked driving his ferrari at high speed without fear of the authorities so much that he invested in a 5-point harness and fire bottle and moved up to the novice time trial group. from there he bought a nomex driving suit, some racing shoes, etc. and kept time trialing.
joel quaid smiles at the thought of turn 9 on slicks.
this month, however, he went completely over the top.
what shows up at willow this time but a sport utility towing a brand new (blue of course) flat bed trailer, complete with scuderia ferrari emblem on the storage box and joel's 348 on top? not only that, but as soon as he gets parked, he drops the tail gate and pulls out a torque wrench. inside the sport ute is a brand new set of f355 wheels with pirelli slicks from the ferrari challenge series mounted on them! he definitely has the bug.
joel's new wheels and slicks. these are the tires pirelli developed specifically for the 348s in the ferrari challenge.
other ferraris included drew kelly's 330 gtc, joe maddock's 512 bbi, vance maddock's 308 gt4, joe kunz's testarossa, the 308s of joe san paulo and dave candle, denise stillman's 328 gts, neil miller's mondial, and a 348 from gary st. amour.
as usual, special mention has to go out to competition chairman, marv landon, who came out to the track bot
a month or so later the transporter delivered the talbot to my driveway and i saw the car for the first time. yes, the top was fully upholstered, in and out, but the dealer who traded it to me had not wanted to risk cutting the vinyl cover to check whether or not it was a "false" or real convertible.
ron's talbot lago before restoration - on its way to the wood shop and engine restoration.
my first act was to take a razor blade to the top, and sure enough, under that vinyl was a convertible frame, tack welded here and there with wooden stays nailed to its rotten bows to make it a fixed head. some california tuck and roll artist had done the dirty deed and left his trade mark tucks and rolls over every part of the interior, while gluing two inch square walnut paper-thin veneer over the entire dashboard.
remnants of the top frame - a welcome find.
the car had also been lightly hit on the left front door, crumbling the inner wooden frame and had been repaired with fiberglas and a one inch thick outer coating of bondo.
as i removed the various panels, the disgusting sight of rotten wood was everywhere. the only solution was to remove the body and replace the entire frame, top-bows, door panels, etc. the next step would be to sandblast the chassis and suspension and oh, by the way, to try to find an original transmission to install where the "updated" g.m. hydramatic had been cleverly fitted in without damage to the engine panels or frame.
i was aware when i purchased the car that the correct original transmission was being stored in its trunk. what i didn't know was that the original trans, a wilson pre-selector, was incomplete, with broken bands. as luck would have it, i was able to purchase an entire 1947 talbot lago sedan which had been parked under a tree in riverside county for forty odd years. as the entire chassis and running gear were identical to mine, i was able to scavenge all the linkages and other parts which i needed.
believe it or not, this parts car was 99% complete but the wood had rotted away to the point that the old saying applied "all four doors had literally fallen off", as well as the trunk and other areas which had been supported by the wooden frame.
the rotten wood body before restoration...
a quick ad in hemmings dispatched the remainder of the spare car to holland, leaving me with a free spare transmission and other spares. it took two of us about three hours using duct tape, bailing wire, rope and chewing gum to tie it together in order for the tow truck to haul it off to the port.
back to the veth and zoon! a couple of months later, pete brunelli (formerly of scott restoration) returned the chassis with fabulous new wood (way too nice to cover up with metal panels). we began returning the engine to the chassis and hooking up the transmission (now with the correct original linkages) to the output shaft from the engine with its incredible couplers, to the rear driveshaft. i restarted the engine and wow, it all worked thanks to my dear friend al cortez of alfa romeo restoration no
lyle and kathy, like most of us, were impecunious but adventuresome. and they loved those early ferraris as much as anyone!
let me try to explain what i mean by the use of those adjectives. few of us had enough money in our bank account to go out and buy a ferrari, even a used one. but we would scrape together whatever modest resources we could lay our hands on, and borrow the rest. a ferrari that was a few years old would usually sell for around $3,000.00; perhaps a bit more. that was about 25% of its original price. the adventure came in not really knowing what we were going to get until it arrived. we were buying a car strictly on description, and if we were lucky, a photograph or two. and i had already learned that the descriptions were sometimes misleading.
so here we were, sending everything we could scrape together over to some guy in italy, hoping that we would get our money's worth! it was a crap shoot! to this day i can remember how excited i was the day a car arrived from italy, ready to clear customs and be driven away. i could hardly sleep the night before!.
lyle and kathy financed their "goldoni ferrari" with the sale of their first ferrari, a 1955 250 gt "europa".
but it was a europa with a difference. (time for another history lesson, boys and girls). the first ferrari that approached anything resembling a "production-line model" was the 250 europa, made on a 110" wheel-base. my first ferrari was one of those. in 1955, ferrari started producing the 250gt europa with an almost identical body, but on a shorter (102") chassis. the 250 gt's featured the new front suspension utilizing coil springs instead the transverse leaf spring, and were considerably lighter and more nimble to drive. also, they used the "small block" or colombo engine rather than the large lampredi-designed engine.
the europas, like most of the ferraris that preceded that model, featured an oval, almost round, radiator grill, but the tanner's "europa", which bore serial no. 0407 gt, had a completely different and much lower grill. also, the rear-end treatment and the tail lights were somewhat different from the standard europa. there had been a few pinin farina show cars (notably 0393 gt and 0403 gt) that featured the much lower grill, but these were essentially one-off cars. to this day, i have never heard a rational explanation as to why 0407 gt was different from the other 250 gt europas in the series. it came about 25% of the way through the production series, so would not technically be considered a prototype.
the tanner's first ferrari, s/n 0407 gt, when it was new. (pinninfarina photo).
lyle and kathy had purchased o407 gt from "a guy in long beach", when they discovered that they could buy a used ferrari for $2,500.00, the price of a brand new triumph that they had been contemplating. there were plenty of reasons for the low price. the grey-green-silver paint could only be described as "drab". the salmon vinyl and grey cloth interior didn't help. first one head gasket blew, then the other. and there was the day that the carburetors caught on fire when kathy was driving to work.
most of its life with the tanners (a period of three or four years) the car did not want to seem to start on the battery. so one would find kathy out in the driveway, in her 3" heels, pushing the car and then hopping in to pop<
the analysis presented here is the simplest i could come up with, and yet is still quite complicated. my calculations went through about thirty steps before i got the answer. don't worry, i won't drag you through the mathematics; i just sketch out the analysis, trying to focus on the basic principles. anyone who would read through thirty formulas would probably just as soon derive them for him or herself.
there are several simplifying assumptions i make to get through the analysis. first of all, i consider the corner in isolation; as an abstract entity lifted out of the rest of a course. the actual best driving line through a corner depends on what comes before it and after it. you usually want to optimize exit speed if the corner leads onto a straight. you might not apex if another corner is coming up. you may be forced into an unfavorable entrance by a prior curve or slalom.
speaking of road courses, you will hear drivers say things like "you have to do such-and-such in turn six to be on line for turn ten and the front straight." in other words, actions in any one spot carry consequences pretty much all the way around. the ultimate drivers figure out the line for the entire course and drive it as a unit, taking a zen-like approach. when learning, it is probably best to start out optimizing each kind of corner in isolation, then work up to combinations of two corners, three corners, and so on. in my own driving, there are certain kinds of three corner combinations i know, but mostly i work in twos. i have a long way to go.
it is not feasible to analyze an actual course in an exact, mathematical way. in other words, although science can provide general principles and hints, finding the line is, in practice, an art. for me, it is one of the most fun parts of racing.
other simplifying assumptions i make are that the car can either accelerate, brake, or corner at constant speed, with abrupt transitions between behaviors. thus, the lines i analyze are splices of accelerating, braking, and cornering phases. a real car can, must, and should do these things in combination and with smooth transitions between phases. it is, in fact, possible to do an exact, mathematical analysis with a more realistic car that transitions smoothly, but it is much more difficult than the splice-type analysis and does not provide enough more quantitative insight to justify its extra complexity for this article.
our corner is the following ninety-degree right-hander:
figure 1 - our mythical corner.
this figure actually represents a family of corners with any constant width, any radius, and short straights before and after. first, we go through the entire analysis with a particular corner of 75 foot radius and 30 foot width, then we end up with times for corners of various radii and widths.
let us define the following parameters:
r = radius of corner center line = 75 feet
w = width of course = 30 feet
ro = radius of outer edge = r + 1/2w = 90 feet
ri = radius of inner edge = r - 1/2w = 60 feet
now, when we drive this corner, we must keep the tires on the course, otherwise we get a lot of cone penalties (or go into the weeds). it is easiest (though not so realistic) to do the analysis considering the path of the center of gravity of the car rather tha
got to work this morning and received a call from john.
"chris, i think you should pass on this car. i called around and was told that doing the front suspension will probably be $2,500-$3,000 in labor alone. depending on the wear in the kingpins, it will either require having new bushings made to fit or finding new pins to install.
"plus, i went over there this morning before they had a chance to move the car. i had seen some sort of leak, thought it might be head gasket, but andy tried to tell me it was something else. anyway, i went over there and saw about a 10 inch puddle of coolant under the car, off the left bank.
"doing a head gasket on these cars can be miserable; i'm sure you've seen it in your british cars. people use tap water for the coolant, the lime builds up, there's electrolization damage - i've had cases where it's taken me four days to get a head up a quarter inch and then had to cut off the studs and use a hole saw to remove them. you don't need that kind of grief.
"call andy and tell him you're going to pass. he's going to call and give me hell, but just tell him that for the price he's asking you should be getting a completely restored car, not a driver."
"listen, there are people who put $100k into restoring cars like this and got caught when the bottom dropped out of the market. you might be able to find such a car, a restored concours winner, for $40k; you just have to look."
wow. ok, i call my girlfriend and tell her about this, and we both feel like it's too bad, but we really don't need this kind of grief with a car. too many unknowns.
call andy. refresh his memory of who i am, and tell him we're going to pass. "ok, chris, that's fine, but can you tell me what john found?"
sure, go through the list with estimates. start a long story: the salesman's view of mechanics instead of the other way around. the short version is that mechanics don't really get much in life, once in a while they find a way to control a situation and take advantage of it. that seems to be the case here. he's vastly overestimating - andy can do the suspension for $250/side, replacing everything but the shocks. of course they'd do a carb and valve adjustment before the car left the shop. they'll fix the shackle and the donut. "show me any 20 year old ferrari that hasn't had the front subframe tweaked."
"you know, we've been in this business a long time. i didn't see the inside of a high school classroom very often, but i've been selling and driving italian cars since 1968. we race these cars. we know what it takes to keep them on the road. john and i went out and drove this car hard. there's no water in the oil - it would have shown up. look at the compression numbers; if there was blown head gasket, there would either be water in the oil or no compression in one of the cylinders. there's neither of those.
"john said himself that the engine pulled well, the gearbox worked nicely, the diff was quiet. those are the important things in the car. the steering box can be rebuilt. tell me, if we were to make the car right, and guarantee the work, would you reconsider?"
that's the short version. the long version was half an hour long and delved into andy's history with a scca national competition license, the vagaries of pricing labor rates and parts markup, and putting 110,000 miles on his 275 gtb/4 selling vacuum cleaners in new york (i'm not kidding, and i don't think he was, either). we briefly touched on price, leaving me with the impression that he thinks that his $39,500 price is reasonable and fairly firm.
i said we'd talk it over and get back to him.
i don't kn
the 1995 formula one season is now officially over. of course, the silly season is in full swing. to wrap up another so-so year for ferrari we bring you a blow-by-blow account of the last race and a statistical, fact-filled analysis of the year on whole.
but it didn't last long. schumacher got past alesi on the first lap and passed berger on lap 4. the running order is: coulthard, hill, schumacher, berger, alesi, frentzen, herbert, irvine, barrichello, brundle, blundel, panis, morbidelli, salo, katayama, lamy, inoue, moreno, diniz, gachot, wendlinger, montemini.
by lap 11 coulthard begins lapping the back markers and on lap 15 inoue slides into the wall while being lapped by schumacher. on lap 18 herbert dives in impossibly late to pass frentzen but over runs the corner and frentzen retakes 6th.
pit work begins on lap 19 with hill going in first and taking only 9.1 seconds. berger also comes in on lap 19 but takes 11.2 seconds. most interesting of all, coulthard also heads for the pits but comes in too hot and slides into the wall on the pit entry corner and retires. talk about an embarrassing way to end your season! (it was later determined that oil was on the pit lane entry road.)
this put the running order at: schumacher, hill, alesi, frentzen, herbert, irvine. on lap 22 schumacher goes into the pits and his stellar crew does their thing in an amazing 6.9 seconds. he just misses alesi as he rejoins the track but he's going to miss that benetton pit crew even more as he moves to ferrari next year.
schumacher can't stand being behind the ferrari and out brakes alesi but jean turns in anyway and hits schumacher's benetton pretty good. both cars keep going with schumacher seemingly fine and alesi with a broken front wing. alesi pits and gets a new nose cone in only 21.4 seconds, coming back out in 7th. perhaps the altercation had more effect on the benetton that was first thought because on lap 23 schumacher comes into pits for a long 27.1 seconds to check the rear suspension. he goes back out but is in for good on lap 25. meanwhile, alesi also retires due to damage to his car from the incident. with this retirement, alesi loses all chance of regaining his 4th place position in the driver's championship, taken by herbert with a 3rd place finish in the grand prix of japan two weeks earlier.
making coulthard feel a bit better i'm sure, moreno crashes in pit entrance on lap 24. hill now has a 32 second lead over herbert and irvine pits for 9.7 seconds, making the order: hill, herbert, berger, frentzen, brundle, irvine. apparently, the pit boards aren't letting the drivers know about the slick entry to pit lane because herbert tries to come into the pits but locks up and slides across the concrete strip and back onto track. no damage done and he makes it into the pits on lap 31 for 9.0 seconds, back out in 4th place.
berger is now in second place but he's 47 seconds behind hill. on lap 34 blundell pits for 8.7 seconds and berger retires with a blown engine. so much for ferrari this year.
this makes the running order largely devoid of the big name teams: hill, frentzen, herbert, irvine, panis, morbidelli. frentzen gets stuck trying to lap blundell and nearly gets passed by herbert, with all 3 cars nose to tail. finally, on lap 37, the frentzen/herbert train gets past blundell and frentzen's in car camera neatly reports the universal gesture that he gives to blundell as he goes by, one hand on the steering wheel.
frentzen retires with a mechanical failure on lap 39 and by lap 45 there are only 11 cars left in the race. h
christmas cards: color christmas cards of the cover illustration are available in sets of 24 for $20.00. send check to dave maestrejuan, p.o. box 9836, brea, ca 92622.
for sale: 1984 400i. black on black. automatic, 16,211 miles. private collection. excellent condition, maintained weekly. call evenings. jason (818) 353-8536.
for sale: 308 exhaust system. u.s. version with catalytic converter. barry (818) 609-9119.