The power, roar and exhilaration of a bubbling V12 engine is somewhere beneath your shoe and yet road conditions conspire with the laws of the land to ensure that the prancing horses stay in their paddock.
But then very few people get the opportunity to even hang a foot over the accelerator of such an exotic Italian machine, so I should count myself very lucky indeed.
For one morning last week I was a participant in a unique event marking the 60th anniversary of the construction of the first road-going Ferrari to be built by the legend with the same name.
A baton has been created to mark the moment in history and has been circling the globe in a convoy of Ferraris since January as part of the Ferrari 60 Relay.
Last Thursday, the baton reached the Mottram Hall Hotel, Cheshire, where a reception had been organised by Manchester dealership Stratstone to welcome more than 25 Ferraris which would join the five official relay cars on the next leg to Nottingham.
Daytona
Among the (mostly red) cars was a rare Daytona and even rarer 288 GTO with a rumoured value of £250,000.
In Nottingham that was trumped by two £650,000 Enzo Ferraris, one owned by an internet millionaire with a further four Ferraris at home.
The Manchester convoy was led by the world’s first Ferrari police car, a fully liveried machine driven for the day by GMP traffic cop Mike Shortall, who normally drives a Vauxhall Vectra around Wythenshawe.
The remaining relay cars were a two-seater 599 GTB Fiorano and four-seater Ferrari 612 Scaglietti – and I was fortunate enough to get behind the wheel of both.
There were a couple of occassons when the convoy broke sufficiently for me to press on and enjoy the yowl of the six-litre engine in the 599 and the slightly smaller hulk in the 612.
I learned that the sporting tweaks aped on the cheap by so many production cars are there for real in a Ferrari, with race- spec brake calipers worth £15,000, lightweight aluminium panels and carbon fibre interior parts all in the mix.
But perhaps the most heartening revelation of the day was the way super-rich individuals love and cherish these automotive trinkets in the same way that the owner of a classic Mini worth less than £1,000 does. Bolton pals Rik Bayes and Gary Creswell had taken a couple of days off work to join the convoy in a 360 Spider.
I felt honoured, privileged and fortunate to be among car fanatics with far fatter wallets than my own. But I still wouldn’t have minded discovering what a couple of cars worth more than £200,000 can really do.
What do you think? Have your say.
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