A Visit to Ferrari of Los Gatos

I just ran across the FLGstory.com site when I read your comment on velocetoday.com. It triggered a memory.

In the summer of ’77 or ’78, I drove from Southern California to Los Gatos in my ’64 VW bus. I’d moved from Palo Alto to La Jolla a year earlier and came up north to visit friends and have dinner at Pedro’s restaurant.

At 22 or 23 years old, unless shoes were required, I went barefoot with flip-flops in my back pocket. I had never heard of Ferrari of Los Gatos, but when I walked by the showroom window, a grey Mercedes Benz 300 SL gullwing looked back at me. Before I got all the way through the front door, a young salesman said something to me about the leg of the dog.

“What?” I didn’t understand his comment.

He explained that it referred to me walking in with bare feet. I figure this guy must think I don’t own a car and perhaps I’m homeless–this is important for the rest of the story.

My dad still owns his 1963 Triumph TR4, and I still have a shelf full of books he gave me as a lad. I learned a lot about cars from those books.

The salesman tells me about the features of the 300 SL, that it includes an original matching luggage set, and is priced at $80,000. I notice a Lamborghini Miura SV priced at only $28,000 and that’s the one I want to look at. I was making about $4.25 an hour back then and knew I could not buy these cars, and the salesman knew this as well.

He said the only thing possible, “Wanna take it for a spin?” And he was dead serious.

I was so unhinged by this–pure sinful desire, weird overriding fear that I might crash, did I need to leave a deposit–I could barely stammer a response. What came out of my mouth was something like, “I, uh, I gotta go meet my friends.”

I’ve done dumber things in my life but could count them on one hand.

Submitted by Craig W.