"Great nations have always acted like gangsters and small nations have always acted like prostitutes." - Stanley Kubrick
Posting has been thin recently, sorry for that. I've been working a long string of shifts - 3 days, one off, 3 nights, one off, and 6 days. There's 108 hours on this two-week time sheet, so about 35% overload. I'm not complaining, because the pay is good. But the quick turn-arounds leave me run down and scatterbrained, with little time to do more than work and sleep. They are also getting harder by the month now.
Story time again...
I used to work with a guy who was a huge fan (today he might be called a 'fanboy') of the band Rush. He'd often plug a Rush cassette into the car's tape player on the commute to work. One day we had just listened to the song "Red Barchetta", which we both enjoyed. I've always loved the intro with the cool harmonics (harmonics throughout, really), and the chorus with the dive-bomb bass. I'm probably out in the wilderness here, but I've never been a fan of Geddy Lee's vocals, although otherwise I appreciate Rush from a musical complexity and talent perspective.
Anyway... On that particular day, once the song finished, he stopped the tape player for a second, and he asked me in all seriousness what a Barchetta was. I almost didn't know what to say :( ...Which makes me wonder how many other people don't know what a Barchetta is - while pondering that long-ago question. Just in case... It's a Ferrari.
The official name for the Barchetta was the 166. If you are familiar with Ferrari's old
naming practices, you know that 166 is the displacement of one cylinder
in CC. Multiply the 166 by 12 cylinders in the 12 cylinder engine, and you get
1,992 - just call it 2 liters of howling cams and growling V-12 exhaust.
The Barchetta was not Ferrari's most beautiful, powerful or successful car by a long shot, but of course it was a bad-ass road vehicle - like an MG, but with a V-12 engine. It was also a winning race car. The coupe and the convertible shared the same drivetrain. The convertible is the Barchetta.
I was once a Ferrari (and classic Maserati) fanboy. I'm still pretty fond of them - particularly the older vehicles.
If I was an extremely wealthy man, I'd own a 1961 Ferrari Superamerica 250, like the one in Ferris Bueller's Day off. It's one of the prettiest of their vintage street vehicles - the covered headlights and chrome trim in just the right places make this one of the best-looking Ferraris.
But of course Ferrari has a rich racing history, so if not a street car, I'd have a legitimate mid-engine race car like the 1967 330 P4
Perhaps a front-engine one like the 1960 250 TR. Elegant, beautiful, and... fast.
Or maybe a stripped-down open wheel race car like the 1969 Ferrari 312...
Who could forget the old Magnum PI Ferrari? This was the Ferrari 308. It sported the US Department of Transportation mandatory 10 mph black crunch bumper, which was tastelessly tacked on for the US market. By this time Ferrari had changed how it named the numbering of its vehicles. "308" now meant 3.0 liter, 8 cylinder. Not Ferrari's proudest vehicle, at just 202 Horsepower. The final engine design for this model eventually made 240 Horsepower. This was incredibly lame for a Ferrari, but it was still better than most cars of that Horsepower-forsaken era.
Ferrari redeemed themselves with the much more expensive F40 Below: 1989 F40. 2.9 liter twin-turbo V-8 with 488 HP. Installed in a car that weighed just a little bit more than a beer can.
The F40 driving experience seems pretty intense.
Unfortunately it's become difficult to now tell a Ferrari from a Lotus from a Corvette from a McLaren. There now is a sameness to these fast cars that did not exist in the past.
Give me a sweet curvy 1958 Testarossa over these transformers-looking cars any day! It may not have the handling, braking or power of a modern car, but it certainly has more character and elegance.
Yeah, I like old Maserati cars too...
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