(bright electronic music)
- Well, we're talkin' about my 1983 Ferrari 308 GTS today.
I've only owned it a month.
I've always been a fan of these cars,
never had the opportunity to own one before.
Found this car and it was actually in Tucson, Arizona.
Contacted the owner, talked to him a little bit.
And we came to a deal, so I now own this car.
It's one of the only cars I've ever bought
that was better than I thought it was gonna be.
And I was really, really surprised.
The more I've driven it and been around it,
the more I love this thing.
(engine revving)
What I think's unusual about it,
it's pretty low mileage, it's about 38,000 original miles.
It's silver with what they call a black Boxer bottom,
which is a pretty rare paint scheme.
And I can actually prove that this is the original
color because I have all the paperwork
back to original window sticker, which is really cool.
(engine revving)
One of the biggest things people have asked me about
is what is this car like to drive?
And that's really my favorite question to answer
because it's my first Ferrari.
I really didn't know what it was gonna drive like
until I've been playin' around with it for the past week.
I've got a Sunbeam Tiger and a Jaguar E-Type at home,
and to compare it to those, it's so radically different.
You lay back in the seat as you drive it.
That's the way you can see the instruments
and the little binnacle ahead of you.
You look down the hood and your hands just naturally fall
right to that shifter, right to the gate.
And it just accelerates nicely,
everything is weighted very nicely.
It's really a lot of fun to drive.
And its 230 horsepower is not a lot these days.
You don't feel like you're slow,
but I wouldn't race a lot of cars
out there (laughs) in this.
You hear a lotta really nice exhaust notes
as you're goin' up through the gears.
(engine revving)
Corners, you can just turn a corner in it.
It's absolutely flat like a Go Kart.
It just feels really solid, its got nice wide tires on it.
Suspension is nice and tough.
It's a fantastic handling car.
I really, really like it.
There are a few cosmetic things.
That's really all that I wanna attend to.
For instance, one of the options on the car
is this European front spoiler,
which is really cool, but it's very susceptible
to (spoiler crunching) when you go through gullies,
ditches, really any little tiny lip
in the road, speed bumps, whatever.
It just had new tires put on it.
That's something that's really important
because these are metric TRX wheels,
so it takes one kinda tire
sold by a specialty manufacturer,
and they're pretty expensive, so I'm very glad
that they don't need to be replaced.
One of the things according to some Ferrari experts
that have looked at the car this week
that I may want to research a little further
is the tail lights on the back of the car could very well be
opposite from a lot of other 308's
of this era that they've seen.
This is an '83, so it's kind of a transition year
between the two-valve cars and the later quattro-valve cars,
so for all I know, my car's right, the backup light
is indeed supposed to be on the inside on mine
versus the outside on some later ones.
I don't know, I'm gonna research it
and have a little fun with that.
One of the things that really drew me to this particular
308 was that the original owner had it in California
and then moved it here to Arizona with him when he retired.
So, it's got all its original body panels.
There's zero rust in it,
and that's really important in an '83,
which didn't galvanize the panels yet.
So, I couldn't be more happy with the condition of it.
It's a real keeper.
(engine revving)
(bright electronic music)