Motivation
Since my website has come up for discussion, thought I’d explain a bit here concerning my motivation for posting and maintaining it, which I hope ties back directly into the discussion at hand.
First off, I never intended my site to be a 308-specific website, but rather one which showcases all of my Italian cars. But the problem with this thought is that, since I bought my X new in 1978, those many years of X “refinements” and modification work have mostly passed, done independently during those pre-internet days (engine work, tranny final drive swap, etc.). So I unfortunately don’t have a wide assortment of digital pictures to post which relate back to this early X work. Nowadays I only have recent X work pictures available (the aforementioned Whoa Brake kit perhaps being the most notable of late), so the scope of my X work appears at first glance to be much smaller than the 308’s work, which is not at all the case.
My motivation behind my website is several-fold, but the key one is to try to take some of the mystery out of 308 ownership, and to show the “real world” side of their care.
To explain, I’ve found that the majority of modern Ferrari owners that I encounter strike me as mechanical neophytes, not becoming involved with the mechanical work required for their cars - their work is often limited in scope to cleaning and waxing, for instance. These folks are generally keenly focused upon maintaining the car’s factory originality (note Bernice’s comments earlier about a modified Ferrari becoming a “mongrel” with “little desirability”), which is perhaps understandable on the one hand considering the very high cost of a new model Ferrari
By contrast, there’s a small handful of wacko geezers like me who view the 308 as just another 30 year old used Italian car which requires a fair amount of sorting to become reliable and to personalize it to my tastes. And that’s the primary focus of my website – to show that these cars are not mysterious at all, and are well within the range of any capable DIY’er to maintain.
Any seasoned X head, well accustomed to working on their X, will immediately feel right at home wrenching on a 308.
If you look at the modifications that I’ve done to my car, with –very- few exceptions, all work done is relatively minor in scope and easily reversible should some purist other than me someday want to revert back to OEM. I carefully store and label all OEM parts that I remove for such future potential use. So I don’t feel that I have painted myself into a corner with this car by creating a “mongrel” ( … nice word, that!) which deviates too far away from OEM.
And that brings up the whole philosophical justification for owning a car like this in the first place. If maintaining the car in pristine showroom condition is your main motivation as an owner, then you tend to begrudge every mile put on the car as “deteriorating” this condition. So, the car quickly becomes a Garage Queen that you pull out every other month to wash and to wax, and to put onto display at the local car show, since driving it might make it dirty (again, to use as an example).
Using myself as a contrast to the above, the most fun that I’ve ever had with my 308 was turning laps at full competition speed at Mid-Ohio, as I’ve showed on the website. And yes, the car was plenty dirty at the end of those track days …
It’s extremely gratifying to hear of Duane’s use of my website as a 308 Buyer’s Guide of sorts. I really would have liked to have had such a resource available to me back in 2003, so if it has enabled Duane, and any others, to become more knowledgeable concerning the model’s quirks and idiosyncrasies prior to purchase, then I’ve accomplished my goal.
Finally, to bring the discussion back full circle, the whole idea of comparing the X to the 308 is sort of a flawed premise to start with, again as Bernice has noted earlier.
It’s just like asking a father which of his children is his favorite – one loves them all equally, recognizing their differences which make them unique, as well as their similarities.
And so it is with me.
Cheers - DM