1982 Ferrari 308 GTS

Not a bad price at all when you take inflation into account.

Lovely car. I was "this" close to buying a black and tan '82 308 GTSi Quattrovalvole for $29K back in 87 that was pristine and had 7K miles on it. I took it for a test drive around Newport Beach with the salesman, we HAD to remove the Targa Top for me to even be able to sit in it. Driving it, the top of my head was above the windshield cross member putting such directly at eye level. So in order to actually see where I was going, I either had to sit unnaturally upright and look over the windscreen, or scruntch down uncomfortably too see under it. Deal breaker.

Sure, I could have had a custom seat put in that would cure that, but the already harsh ride would have been brutal, and I'd be messing with it's authenticity. Not to mention, it would either have to perfectly match the passenger seat aesthetically, or I'd have to replace both. Either option would have cost thousands that had zero ROI and would actually decrease the value of the car. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I was so disappointed. My dream car didn't love me back.

So I ended up with my 930S that cost 4x as much, and tried to kill me every time I drove it. Go figure.

As for the Dino, one of my all time favorite cars. Absolutely gorgeous. There was a time when you seriously couldn't give them away, or when a showroom new condition example would fetch $10-12K max. Now they're going for more than a Testarosa.
 
Only 18,000 miles since 1982? Maybe I don't understand the world of high-end cars, but it seems crazy to me to spend such a large amount of money on a car and then not drive and enjoy it. idn_smilie
 
Only 18,000 miles since 1982? Maybe I don't understand the world of high-end cars, but it seems crazy to me to spend such a large amount of money on a car and then not drive and enjoy it. idn_smilie
Some people might buy something like that when they were relatively cheap, and then find out how much routine maintenance costs on them :zoinks:

I think I read somewhere, back in the '80s, that just changing out the struts on a 308 GTS (or whatever they have) was on the order of $5,000+ And that was '80s dollars.

I can see some people garaging the cars and driving them very little when they find that out. Heck, I knew of guys when I was in the military that told me stories of them buying exotic sports cars for cheap when they were stationed over in Europe, only to find out how much the upkeep on them was.
 
Yngwie enjoys a Ferrari.

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I think this Ferrari is from the make's era of real crappy build quality malaise. It is also slow by any modern sports car measure, and even slow compared to some minivans. It is low, uncomfortable, has shitty visibility, crappy seats, cheap looking and feeling plastics, stupidly heavy steering, and very narrow footbox. Of course, it looks fantastic and remains an iconic Ferrari for styling reasons alone. So, there are plenty of reasons that there are low mileage garage queens out there. Also, you can ignore all the bad stuff I said about the design, as the car has an awesome gated shifter and an awesome rev-happy, small displacement aluminum V8 right behind your ass. So, even if you get dusted from a stop light by a Toyota Sienna minivan, you can simply give it some revs and drop it down a gear and enjoy the Italian symphony that you can create on demand. I want one.
 
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