1260 miles in 36 hours to get the car.



I found this car in Hemming’s Motor News. I called the guy on a Tuesday, traveled down to Virginia on that Saturday, and put a deposit down that same night. Now as usual, I wasn’t planning on buying another car, let alone a Ferrari, but the opportunity presented itself, and you only get chances like this once! It took me about a month to get all the money together, so I could rent a truck and trailer to get the car.

What is a 330 GT America?

We left on Friday morning, and didn’t arrive in Roanoke until 9:30 pm. It only took us an hour to load the truck with all the loose pieces including the V-12 sitting in the guy’s basement! Luckily he had an access door to his side yard, so we heaved the engine onto a hand truck, and dragged it across his lawn. An engine hoist, and some serious grunting, got the motor onto the truck.

Saturday morning we left for the guy’s body shop where the car, and some other pieces still needed to be loaded. When I say “body shop,” I use that term loosely. The cinder-block shop was in the back of a residential house. Besides being at the top of a hill, the shop did not have an actual driveway. With some fancy truck driving, one of my friends who came down with me, got the truck up to the garage. In an hour, we were on our way back north!

We arrived back at our shop at about 8:00 pm, and began unloading all the parts. After dropping the car off, and the returning the truck, I got back to my apartment in NYC at about 1:00 am. I was exhausted, but it was a “good” tired!

The next morning, I took the hour and a half drive back up to the shop to sort though all the parts. My Ferrari expert, François, went through all the parts, identifying everything. Most all of it was there. The only major piece I’m going to have to look for is the heater box that houses the fan motor. I plan to devote at least one day a week to getting this car back on the road. I will try to make it a budget restoration (if there is such a thing with a Ferrari), and with François’ expert help, I will at least save money and time!