My second Ferrari Berlinetta Lusso...

 

My second Ferrari Berlinetta Lusso was silver with black leather like the one pictured here which I bought from a rich kid in the flatlands of Beverly Hills south of Sunset. He and I had very little in common. When I took the Lusso for a test drive, he wasn't keen on my driving the car but I wasn't interested in telling him this wasn't my first Lusso or that I'd owned a GTO--I'm not certain he would have known what a GTO was. I explained that if he wanted to sell his car to me, I would be getting behind the wheel and he relented.

 

As I drove along Sunset Blvd. where I'd been driving exotic cars of various descriptions at speed for years, the young man nervously and emphatically alerted me when I should be shifting gears. I ignored him, of course, but to put his mind to rest, I told him I'd never driven a stick shift before and was finding his coaching extremely helpful.

 

This did nothing to alleviate his discomfort and I could see and feel the wheels turning in his mind as he tried to work out which he wanted more--to admonish me for what he thought was inappropriate driving or to sell his car. My suspicion was he had never come close to the 7,000 r.p.m. redline during the time he owned the car and the sound of the V12 reaching the upper ranges made him very uncomfortable not to mention my lines through the corners were disconcerting him, to say the least. "You're coming awfully close to the curbs," he pointed out. No, I mean he was literally pointing to the curbs on my turn-in and exit points.

 

He'd made the mistake of showing me his new car--a Jaguar XJ6 saloon--before we went on the test drive thinking I'd be impressed with his upgrade. I like Jaguar XJ6 saloons as much as the next fellow (mine was charcoal grey with Bordeaux leather) but I know as well as anyone the significance of 'south of Sunset' even if he didn't and no doubt Mater and Pater were eager for the noisy Italian thing to be gone and the coffers replenished.

 

I made him a derisory offer with a look and tone that suggested I was happily doing him a favor--something along the lines of Idiot's Delight--and the following week I was on my way with the Lusso to Virginia City for the hillclimb event along with the Ferrari Club mob.

 

As Sun Tzu often joked, “Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”