I can’t drive this Ferrari Dino | Thank Frankel it’s Friday

That was March 1972 by which time I had reached the grand old age of six. I had been bundled into the family 1.3-litre Ford Escort GT with my parents and taken to a garage a few miles south of where we lived on the island of Jersey. There, on the Esplanade, overlooking St Aubin’s beach sat Henry Linton Cars. And parked outside was quite possibly the first Ferrari I had ever seen in the flesh. Or Dino, if we’re going to be pedantic about such matters.

You can imagine. I was grateful to my father for bringing me to look at this peerless, priceless jewel of a machine, more so that I’d been allowed to stay outside on the forecourt by myself while he went inside to talk to about something to persons unknown, but I couldn’t quite figure out why my mother was driving off in the Escort. How were we going to get home?

Of course you know the answer. Back then I did not. Even though he’d owned a series of Porsche 911s, it never occurred to me that my father might buy a Ferrari. Or Dino. These were cars for film stars and racing drivers. He was a Chartered Accountant. When I was told he’d just bought the car and that we were going to take the long way home (a relative term on an island nine miles by five) I cried with joy. Almost half a century later, I remember all of it: hooking my finger behind that tiny, exquisite chrome door handle, sinking down onto those black vinyl seats, soaking in the sights of its Veglia dials, those spindly column stalks, that exposed gear box gate… all of it.

And then that noise. To this day I still find it haunting and unlike any other engine designed by Ferrari or anyone else. Rich but raw, complex and ever changing it fascinated and compelled me like nothing else: a V6 to make Porsche’s flat-six seem two dimensional and dull. I sat there, captivated by that sound, looking at the way the front wings rose up beyond the windscreen, barely believing this car was not only going to join the family, it was going to stay forever.

Well I got the first bit right. Disappointingly, the six year old me failed to see the stock market crash coming but when it hit, it hit hard. We were forced to sell everything – save the house and that bloody Escort. Although Girardo’s records suggest we had it for a year, I suspect it spent most of that time back at Lintons on SOR. The idea had always been to use it in France because Jersey is a stupid place to keep a fast car. But it never happened: the Dino stayed just long enough to infect me with a love for them that has never left, and then it was gone.

It sounds pathetic, but I got quite and unexpectedly emotional seeing it again on Max’s website. It had left something within me all those years ago, something with which I’d never suspected was there despite plenty of encounters with other Dinos since. I’ve always loved the way they look, the way they drive, the way they make me feel, but this one was, is and will always remain different. My first Ferrari. My father’s first Ferrari and, once it had gone, seemed very likely to have been his last too. Thankfully I was wrong about that too.

Of course I could ring Max and I’m sure he’d let me take it around the block. When my father’s last Ferrari – a 1988 Testarossa – resurfaced a few years back I did exactly that and really enjoyed the reunion. But I never wanted the car and was far more glad to have made its acquaintance once more than I was sad to see it go again.

It wouldn’t be like that with the Dino. So far as I can see the car is original and unrestored, the same today therefore in all important regards as it was back in Jersey 49 years ago. Still my late father’s car in other words. If I saw it and drove it, I’d have to buy which, sadly, is beyond me.

It's strange that a car I hardly knew, that was in my life for such a short period of time so long ago should still possess the power to move me as this Dino has, and to be able to do so even from the computer screen in front of me. I’m looking at it now, poking out of the corner of my screen. Still it is spellbinding. I just hope that whoever does buy it uses and enjoys in a way me and my dad never quite managed to do.

Images courtesy of Girardo and Co.