The day of the Dino

I am often asked what first got me into cars, to which the honest and automatic reply is ‘my father’. This is a man who given the choice of becoming an accountant or lawyer chose the former for the sole reason he’d get to drive between audits.

Pressed a little harder to name an actual event, I’ll talk about the day he and I were passing the then Ferrari importer’s dealership in Egham in around 1974 and he was kind enough to stop and let me drool briefly over a Boxer with no fewer than six exhaust pipes. But while that took place as described, it wasn’t my first exposure to the wonders of Maranello, because by then he’d already owned a Ferrari. Briefly. Sort of.

Don’t ask me why, but one of his main aims in life was to buy a new Ferrari before his 40th birthday. I don’t think he even particularly wanted one, but instead saw it more of a yardstick by which to measure his career progress, something at which to aim to tell him he was on track and able to provide for his family in a way that had never been possible for his father.