Anybody like exotics?

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Rob

Rob

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Any of you like older Ferrari's and Mercedes 300SL's? I was over at a local restorers last night and took some pictures of some of his older Ferrari collection and some 300SL's that he's restoring. I can put some pics up if anyone is interested but I though I'd ask fist before getting slagged with WTF are those doing here on a Mopar site :munky2:
 
Well here you go, this guy is one of the premier restorers in the world, specializes in Mercedes 300 SL's. All the Ferrari's you see are in his pesonal collection, there's alot more at another location, this is at his house. Most of the Ferrari's were campaigned so there's a nice bit of racing histroy sitting there.

The shop at his house is where they do the dissassembly and assembly of the cars they restore, amazing how clean and organized it is in there, they do absolutely everything in house except chrome.

Hope you enjoy these, I sure did even though I'm more of a muscle car/hot rod kind of guy, still made me drool :-D


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This is the shop, note the bare frame of a 300SL

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what a lucky man to own 2 250 gtos, 250 swb, TR, the benz, and that one ferrari the 7fyo i have only seen one other one of those and it belong to rob walton who has an airplane hanger in scottsdale.

Does he ever drive them or start them up? hearing those 12 cylinders sing is amazing.
 
71dustar said:
what a lucky man to own 2 250 gtos, 250 swb, TR, the benz, and that one ferrari the 7fyo i have only seen one other one of those and it belong to rob walton who has an airplane hanger in scottsdale.

Does he ever drive them or start them up? hearing those 12 cylinders sing is amazing.
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Actually there's 3 GTO's, a 56 and 59 Testarossa (the two with the hoods off) and yeah he drives them, quite a lot actually. He took a couple over to the mainland last weekend for a children's hospital fundraiser, parked them inside the hotel for display, he took one and his buddy took another one, lucky bastard, I want to be his buddy too :-D There's a lot more too, this is just at his house, he has another property not far away with many more, I haven't been there yet but hope to one day. I first met him just over 30 years ago, he had started the business about 6 years before that and it was already a very big deal then. The people that work for him love it, the newest guy has been there 17 years, that says a lot :-D
 
I work with a guy (Andy Falbo) who worked for ferrari for 20+ years, testing, driving, engineering all sorts of ferraris. If he ever needs a service, we'd be glad to "test" drive them down here and do an oil change. haha

Does he ever go to any historic races? Last historic race I went to was at Laguna Seca in Aug. and it was an unforgettable experience to see these kinds of car racing.
 
He's a Mercedes mechanic by trade, trained in Germany, he started a business here repairing and maintaining very high end cars and then drifted into the restoration of them, mostly 300SL's but also Ferrari's and other interesting cars.

I don't think he does any historic racing but he does drive them around town quite a bit, the area he lives in has some nice twisty roads. I sure would love to get behind the wheel of one of those on the road. I've sat in them, some of them are a right bear to get into :munky2:
 
The Testarrosa's and probably all of the open cockpit cars weigh about 1800 lbs, that's a lot of hp per lb :-D
 
I DO have a kind of "closet admiration" for the exotics--don't know too much about 'em but they ARE gorgeous. Somehow they always seemed/looked fragile to me even though I know many of them do run long distance races at high speeds (obviously). Can anyone explain that? Here we have big engines, big cars, lots of space to drive yet most of our American cars lack the,errrrrrrrr, "sophistication" & hence the road worthiness of these exotics which, IMO, are ridiculously priced. I'd LOVE to own an "exotic" But A) I can't afford it & B) even if I could I find it hard to justify the expense for a "wimpy" (?) 300-500hp. that most of them have. PLEASE convince me of the "excitement" of an exotic over a good 'ol American musclecar.......
 
hemicop said:
I DO have a kind of "closet admiration" for the exotics--don't know too much about 'em but they ARE gorgeous. Somehow they always seemed/looked fragile to me even though I know many of them do run long distance races at high speeds (obviously). Can anyone explain that? Here we have big engines, big cars, lots of space to drive yet most of our American cars lack the,errrrrrrrr, "sophistication" & hence the road worthiness of these exotics which, IMO, are ridiculously priced. I'd LOVE to own an "exotic" But A) I can't afford it & B) even if I could I find it hard to justify the expense for a "wimpy" (?) 300-500hp. that most of them have. PLEASE convince me of the "excitement" of an exotic over a good 'ol American musclecar.......
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Ever hear a Ferrari winding out at high RPM's :-D

As I mentioned at the beginning of this thread I'm more of a muscle car/street rod kind of guy but I love cars in general if they have something special about them. The design is pretty impressive to me, most of these cars are from the 50's, compare that to a 50's Chrsler 300 :-D

To say these are ridiculously priced is only partially true, they start ridiculously priced and stay there. To me a hemi car that cost 5K new selling for over a million now is far more ridiculous if you know what I mean.

I don't think you appreciate what a wimpy 300 - 500hp feels like in an 1800 lb car :-D The beauty is they go around corners too, try that in a muscle car at light speed. :munky2:

If had a gazillion dollars I'd buy one but as I don't and never will I will cheerfully stick to the muscle car/street rod world, there's more than enough thrill there for me. :-D
 
Okayyy, you're right---I've never been in a 1800lb/500hp car that can actually make turns--my 1900lb/900hp car is only good in a straight line. And Hemi cars that bring 6 figures is just downright stupid, IMO. I'm just trying to wrap my mind around a six-figure car that makes turns, when I can go by a 'vette, Viper, re-po Cobra for less than half and possibly do all the same things..... I guess I just have to find someway of catching a ride in one & see
 
Pictures of your 1900 lb 900 hp car please :-D That would be WAY too scary for me, what is that, a rail?

In my opinion car collecting has a lot to do with how rare and beautiful a car is, otherwise why would you bother when as you said, you could go buy a new Vette and outrun, out handle any muscle car ever built. If you want to get all practical, why should anyone buy any expensive powerful car at all when you only need a little 4 banger to get you around. My wife asks me that all the time, silly woman :-D These are very rare cars that only people with crazy money can afford so if it floats their boat why not :munky2:
 
hemicop said:
I DO have a kind of "closet admiration" for the exotics--don't know too much about 'em but they ARE gorgeous. Somehow they always seemed/looked fragile to me even though I know many of them do run long distance races at high speeds (obviously). Can anyone explain that?

These cars are very "Maintenance Intensive". This really means that if you don't have the know how to work on them yourself, the maintenance will kill you. I've heard that many exotics require engine removal for spark plug changes. Acckkk!

They look fragile only because every bit of metal that doesn't do anything has been removed. They use very sophisticated trellis frames that are incredibly light yet tremendously strong.

Here we have big engines, big cars, lots of space to drive yet most of our American cars lack the,errrrrrrrr, "sophistication" & hence the road worthiness of these exotics which, IMO, are ridiculously priced.

No market here for a car that can cruise at 140-160 all day plus brakes and handles. In europe on the Autostrada or Autobahn, there are no speed limits and the roads have curves. Our major interstates are straight as a board. These cars are mostly hand built, here we have unions and mass production. People here wanted luxobarges that floated to your destination with a huge trunk. People in Europe had almost nothing after WWII that they could put in a trunk.

Their racing sanctioning bodies limited displacements to what would we would consider laughable. Because of those rules the Europeans had to limit the weight of their cars and had to become quite adept at coaxing relatively huge amounts of HP from very small displacements. This required a tremendous amount of engineering and spawned things like desmodromic valves, fuel injection, super/turbo charging, overhead cams, engines as stressed members, etc.

It's just a different way of doing things and how they believe a car should perform.

I'd LOVE to own an "exotic" But A) I can't afford it & B) even if I could I find it hard to justify the expense for a "wimpy" (?) 300-500hp. that most of them have. PLEASE convince me of the "excitement" of an exotic over a good 'ol American musclecar.......
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A reliable 500hp in a 1800 lbs. car that stops on a dime, gives you change and will run circles around a plastic corvette in the mountain twisties would knock your socks off.

BUT! I could never own one for these reasons:

1. Price of car
2. Price of insurance
3. I'd look really stupid in one
4. Price of parts
5. I'd kill myself in the mountains, lol. Sure would be a fun way to go though..

It's just personal choice. I loved all my muscle cars, but I would love to have one of these stashed in a mountain hideout that I would take out once or twice a month to get the andrenaline flowing. 8)

Watch Top Gear on cable sometime and see how these guys rate cars. It's all about handling and braking. I have to turn it off sometimes when they start raggin' on our stuff, but interesting to see the contrast.

Victory by Design is an excellent show that's hosted by Alain De Cadenet. Watch, listen and learn.

Bottom line is I would never try tell someone that what they like is wrong and what I like is right. I like a very broad spectrum of vehicles and can appreciate the viewpoint of engineers that designed them (the European Exotics as well as our Muscle cars) from a professional and historical standpoint as well as from a hobbiests point of view.

I hope this makes sense. :)
 
Try this one. 1 of 4 made 1955 Ferarri LM 121 LeMans team race cars. I laid my hands on this car in the mid 60s in Ohio when it was still being raced in SCCA...and driven on the street.

3.4 Million Bucks

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ramcharger said:
A reliable 500hp in a 1800 lbs. car that stops on a dime, gives you change and will run circles around a plastic corvette in the mountain twisties would knock your socks off.

BUT! I could never own one for these reasons:

1. Price of car
2. Price of insurance
3. I'd look really stupid in one
4. Price of parts
5. I'd kill myself in the mountains, lol. Sure would be a fun way to go though..

It's just personal choice. I loved all my muscle cars, but I would love to have one of these stashed in a mountain hideout that I would take out once or twice a month to get the andrenaline flowing. 8)

Watch Top Gear on cable sometime and see how these guys rate cars. It's all about handling and braking. I have to turn it off sometimes when they start raggin' on our stuff, but interesting to see the contrast.

Victory by Design is an excellent show that's hosted by Alain De Cadenet. Watch, listen and learn.

Bottom line is I would never try tell someone that what they like is wrong and what I like is right. I like a very broad spectrum of vehicles and can appreciate the viewpoint of engineers that designed them (the European Exotics as our Muscle cars) from a professional and historical standpoint as well as from a hobbiests point of view.

I hope this makes sense. :)
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Sure makes sense to me :-D That was very well explained, people here are right about you, you do write well.

The only thing I disagree with is 3 - you'd look stupid in one, nobody looks stupid in one, well maybe Shaq would :-D In fact I'm sure if you drove by some ladies in one they would think differently, your looks would probably increase tenfold in one of those :-D
 
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