Did I hear a boy whisper zoom zoom?
Giving two kids a spin in a $260,000 Ferrari is enough to launch dreams
into overdrive.
By Dan Neil
Times Staff Writer

October 20, 2004

Carlo and Valentino are 10 years old — I know just enough Italian to ask
the question and understand the answer, but not much more.

I passed them as I drove into town in the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti. In the
rearview mirror, I saw the two boys exchange stunned looks and turn
their bikes around to follow the big red car.

Fastened to a low bank of the Mincio River, Peschiera — named after its
peaches — is a tourist town without any particular tourist attractions.
Sightseeing cruises across Lago di Garda leave from here; cheap hotels
and trains make it convenient for college kids visiting Mantua, Venice
and Verona. Peschiera is oriented along an axis, a 1-kilometer road
between the church and the cemetery, and the people who live here cannot
fail to understand that this is their final trajectory.

By the time the boys catch up with me I have parked the Ferrari, fuming
and ticking as it cools, in front of the church, where I want to take
pictures. This car — a $260,000, 533-horsepower four-seat GT with
shallow drafts in its sides, like the hollow cheeks of a supermodel —
turns heads wherever it goes. But for two bored schoolboys it must seem
like a visitation. They drop their bikes on the pavement at a cautious
distance and watch me. Has anything in this town ever been so red?

Valentino is the bolder of the two. He walks up to look inside, asking
permesso. I am happy to show them the car. In a sense; they own it.
Ferrari is more than a company in Italy; it is a national trust, the
national team.

On the autostrada between Modena and Verona, kids looking out of tour
buses shook their fists at me — Forza! — and I obliged, downshifting
twice and spinning up the 5.7-liter V12 to pass in a snarling fury. Now
you see me. Now I'm gone.

I raise the 612's long hood so the boys can look at the engine bay. The
heat waves fluff the bangs on their foreheads. Valentino gestures: Can
we get in? Sure. Valentino takes the front seat; Carlo climbs into one
of the back seats, the tan perforated leather shaped like an ice cream
scoop. I make sure the boys have seat belts on before I start the
engine. Khe-WEEE-bbdddrrum. I envy them this moment when they first feel
a Ferrari V12 between their shoulder blades.

I switch off the traction control and pull the right-hand gearshift
paddle into first. Goosing the throttle, I make a tidy, noisy
black-rubber circle on the pavement. The world swivels. The boys squeal.
The pigeons scatter aloft. Then I gently pull onto the tree-lined street
and drive around the block, making sure the boys get to wave at their
friends — the girls? — who watch, not quite fathoming.

Uh-oh. Mamma. The mother of one of the boys — I'm not sure which — waves
us down. She is frowning. The boys talk anxiously through the open
window, yet she seems not at all reassured that some stranger in a
quarter-million-dollar car means the boys no harm. I smile, feeling
guilty. The boys get out with oaths of gratitude — grazie mille, ciao,
ciao — and wave as I head for the motorway.

How long will that memory last? How many times will that story be told?
How will it be enlarged, made fantastic with a schoolboy's imagination —
will the stranger in the red Ferrari take them on a dangerous adventure,
shooting it out with the carabinieri?

Will Carlo and Valentino bore their grandchildren with the tale? And
will the car — redder in memory than in life — be the last thing they
think of before they make that shady traverse between the church and the
grave?

MC