Satan's barge - 1983 Ferrari 400i

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Dawn broke over Surrey.

Much as it does everywhere else, I suppose.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. So, I prepared travel essentials for the arduous 20 mile trip ahead, with versatile, high value items that, in an emergency, I could eat, trade or play with


And Brooklands was splendid. Very well organised. Brilliantly marshalled, nice atmosphere, friendly crowd, and what a wonderful site to fill with classic cars. It was really something to see for the first time the banking I knew so well from photographs in books.

There were yellow British cars. One of the best colours for an E-type

not a bad colour for an Interceptor, but I think orange was an option back then, which would be more my thing

and a bold choice for a Bristol

More Bristols than you could shake a stick at, including TWO(!) Brigands, out of a total production run of probably two. These are the turbocharged coupes, which were one of the fastest cars of their day. I drove a Beaufighter a while ago, which is the turbocharged ragtop contemporary of the Brigand, and it was great fun. I also tried a Britannia, which is the slightly more common, normally aspirated version of the Brigand. But, the Bristol Brigand - what a name, what a car, what a number plate!

Had a quick chat with the couple who arrived in this, and they said there was a silver one around somewhere

And this mint 603, the Britannia's precursor

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A horde of Scimitars.



A couple of lovely Astons


Peak British wedge

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Prestigious and rare Euro metal, such as this gorgeous Borgward Isabella.


Hewn from gilt and chocolate



Some early 928s

A superb Lancia

Sporty LHD Visa, which looked new

And from more exotic places, a V12 Century

the future, back then

er,

Rollers and planes. There must be some kind of connection here

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carinaman said:

Thanks for the photos. I am not sure about the Bristols. Interesting but....

I almost went looking for yellow cars on Autotrader.

That yellow Bristol was for sale while ago. It's a wonderfully slinky piece of design, but I have to say it is better suited to more subtle colours.

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A poignant reminder of how a one proud British brand became a third rate, tarted up, outdated joke. But, enough about British Airways, look at that Vanden Plas!

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It made a nice change from Bicester, and was well worth the trip

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Some real gems in the museum. This ex-Whitney Straight Deusenberg

The ex-Malcolm Campbell straight eight Delage, of the sort I saw hammering around Angouleme in September

And the 8 litre Barnato-Hassan special

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And some fine 80's Ferraris.

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bolidemichael said:

. I’m curious, were the jelly babies left untouched?

They didn't all make it. I'm not familiar with Surrey. I panicked, and used them to bribe my way through the checkpoints.

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bolidemichael said:

Camber Sands Yellow on the e type.

I knew of primrose yellow. Hadn't heard of that one.

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Mr Tidy said:

It is very special - you don't realise quite how steep it is until you start walking up it!

Thanks for posting some great photos.

Must have been a phenomenal spectacle back in the day.

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The colours for the 400 were mostly, or possibly all, named after racehorses. Hence, Arancio Vaguely Noble, Celeste Gainsborough, Rosso Sir Ivor and others. Courtesy of the definitive Ferrari 400 blog https://erwin400.blogspot.com/2018/10/ferrari-400-...

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Highway Star said:

You wouldn’t have been on the A44 between Chipping Norton and Woodstock on a Sunday a few weeks back by any chance? A silver 400 passing the opposite way stood out and I’m sure it was your plate. Stunning car.

Probably was. That is my manor

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bolidemichael said:

I suspect that the Brown Testarossa belongs to ‘Duke of London’

To quote Withnail and I

Brown kind of works on a GT4

and really works on a GTC/4

but on a mid-engined Ferrari, it confirms all I suspected about those metropolitan deviants. All of it. And more.

The Sunday after the Brooklands trip was the first Bicester Scramble of the year, with a dry day forecast. The afternoon before, I gave the 400 a good clean inside and out. Went to start it at sparrowfart, and it didn't want to play. Turned the key, dash lights came on, but no bananas. This had happened a couple of times before, also on cold mornings, and on the second attempt it had fired up as normal. Not this time. It was the coldest night it had ever spent outside, not exactly brass monkeys but cold enough for this to probably be temperature related. Tried jump starting it to no avail. Borrowed a hairdryer and went at the injectors and a few other bits with low expectations, which were met. It was early afternoon by the time we had all guns blazing. Too late for Bicester, so I took it for a run to Moreton and back.

When it's cold, it runs fine. But when it's up to temperature, it's running rough under 2k rpm and sometimes not pulling completely cleanly above that, although it's barely perceptible. It had been fine all the way to Glasgow and back. Some diagnostics required to keep this jewel of an engine purring as its creator intended.

Largely unrelated, I found myself reminiscing about my old 380SL and got in touch with my friendly local classic Mercedes specialist to ask them to keep an eye out for a budget classic smoker barge. The Ferrari has proven very useable, except for the parts supply these days. By way of an extreme example - as I don't need a whole engine - Eurospares are listing an engine for a 365GTC, basically a detuned Daytona engine and a smaller capacity version of mine, at £65k. And a 365BB engine (for non-Ferrari nerds, that's the early Berlinetta Boxer) at £130k. However, even at that level, the main problem is not actually price but availability. I'm not bothered about having to replace stuff, but I am bothered about not being able to. It wouldn't have been such an issue twenty years ago, but it genuinely is now.

Fortunately, I'm finding this such a delight I won't mind wrapping it in cotton wool more than originally envisaged. I'll still max out the mileage allowance. But it's such a treat when I do use it, I'm content to restrict it to mostly sunny days. But, with the onset of galloping old age, that's also kind of how I'm starting to feel about other things in life too , so I'm probably just projecting that sentiment onto the car.

Hence, tapping into the still plentiful supply of old Mercs for mundane duties. I don't need anything more modern than that. When I looked at a car rental website a few weeks ago, it was bizarre to see that about half of the options were full electric things. I'm just not ready for that sort of st.