So then, look here. Curtis Mannisto's got a nice little 1991 bright-red two-door with AC and radio that he'll let you have for--let's see--$79,000. Plus tax.
It's a Ferrari.
For millions of Italians and countless dreamers in the rest of the world, those three syllables have been magic for half a century. In Formula One, the glamorous, high-strung top circuit of international motor racing, Ferrari has been in a relative slump for more than a decade now. But the blood-red cars from Maranello have won more world championships than those from any other manufacturer, and they are legendary on sports-car circuits from Le Mans to Daytona. Alberto Ascari. Juan Manuel Fangio. Phil Hill. Nicky Lauda. The names of great Ferrari race drivers resonate through history. But the name of their mount is shouted even louder, especially at the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza, the treacherous, ultra-high-speed road course where F1's Italian Grand Prix is contested each year. Here in the "Vatican" of Italian motor sports, the tifosi--Italy's passionate hordes of racing fanatics--don't genuflect to any mere human being. It's the car itself they worship. The Ferrari.
Curtis Mannisto loves it, too. The 29-year-old is a blue-eyed Italian-American from Evergreen, but he embraces Ferrari like a real paisan. During the Grand Prix season, he even gets up at 5:30 on Sunday mornings to watch his beloved "Reds" race on ESPN. On one particular Sunday in September, he says, he "went bonkers, just like when the Broncos win."
That was the day the finest racing driver on the planet, Ferrari's Michael Schumacher, who had otherwise suffered through a miserable season, flashed his oft-troubled F310 to victory in this year's Italian GP. For Mannisto, as for the tifosi in Italy, all the breakdowns and mishaps and technical gaffes of 1996 were suddenly forgotten. The bellowing throngs no longer resented Schumacher's $25 million annual salary, which makes him the world's highest-paid athlete. They didn't care about his spats with the Ferrari team's high-living, night-clubbing number two, Eddie Irvine. At that moment, the faithful didn't even mind that Schumacher is a German. Because the hot-blooded Ferrari, emblazoned with the famous Prancing Horse emblem, had once more draped all Italy in glory. For the first time in eight long years, "Schummy" had won for Ferrari at Monza.
How can a car--an inanimate hunk of metal, glass, leather and rubber--provoke delirium in an entire nation and excited awe in the rest of the motoring world?
For the answer, it helps to drive one.
But before you do, forget all those weary cliches about evil testosterone unloosed in the male ego by the lure of horsepower: Women love Ferraris, too. Don't even think about gas mileage. Set aside all political correctness, the 65-mile-per-hour speed limit and any second thoughts about status-seeking materialism. While you're at it, dump all those worries about what soulless technology is doing to our beleaguered society.
Drive a Ferrari once, initiates say, and you'll understand. Even if you don't know a carburetor from a distributor cap.
Curtis Mannisto, our car salesman, doesn't offer test drives. He doesn't have to. Virtually every customer at Ferrari of Denver (located in Englewood, actually) is a repeat customer and so understands. The confirmed Ferrarista who drops by the dealership with a $10,000 deposit (nonrefundable, of course) for April 1997 delivery of a brand-new, $220,000 Ferrari 550 Maranello...understands. The hard-working doctor who's grown weary of his old 308 GTS--you know, the Magnum, P.I. car--and wants to trade up to a swift new 456GT... understands. Even the fellow shopping for what Mannisto calls an "entry-level" Ferrari--an F355 Berlinetta, say, for the bargain price of $127,000--is starting to...understand. When you're in the market for a Ferrari, you don't need a test drive. Chevy buyers demand test drives. Volkswagen volk kick tires. Ferraristi understand.
"No one has ever brought one of these cars back and said, 'I don't want it,'" Mannisto explains. "There's nothing like a Ferrari for attitude adjustment."
And there's never been an adjuster quite like the F50.
Since 1947, when an imperious perfectionist named Enzo Ferrari began hand-making exotic sports cars--never more than 3,500 of them a year--each model has been directly inspired by Ferrari's famous racing machines. Until now, though, the company hasn't put an actual world-class race car on the street. Introduced in December 1995, the F50 is just that--a twelve-cylinder, 520-horsepower, near-Formula One car that you can put license plates on. About the only luggage this sleek and brutal two-seater will accommodate, Mannisto points out, is the driver's credit cards, and among all Ferraris--many of which can be snarly and ill-mannered in the hands of average drivers--this one demands particular respect. Zero-to-60: 3.7 seconds. Top speed: 202 miles per hour. Sticker price: 710 million lire, or 487,000 hard-earned American dollars. Before Uncle Sam tacks on his 9 percent luxury tax.
Don't bother fretting over the F50's idiosyncrasies or trying to get a good rate on your car loan, because you can't buy an F50 at any price. All 349 of them have been sold--55 to Americans, two to Coloradans. No more will be made. In view of that, we can probably pity poor Clay Regazzoni. Once a top F1 driver for Ferrari, Reggazoni put in his booking for an F50 a year ago, but when performance of the F310s turned sour last summer, the outspoken Swiss piped up with criticism of the powers that be in Maranello. In July the company promptly canceled Regazzoni's F50 order in favor, as the public-relations department put it, of "other customers who desire a Ferrari more than he does."
What the hell. Maybe the man will figure out some other way to spend half a million bucks on personal transportation.
As for the rest of us, the ones looking for used cars, Curtis Mannisto and Ferrari of Denver can provide some alternatives. There's a nice red 308 GTS with 47,000 miles on it that you can pick up for $33,000, and a pair of lovely 1991 348s--one for $69,000, the other for $79,000. In other words, entry level incarnate. Moving upscale a tad, there's also a sleek, panther-gray F355 with only 6,000 miles on the odometer--yours for the bargain price of $114,000.
But hold on a minute. "I tell people that their first Ferrari has to be red," Curtis Mannisto says. "After that, a black one or a yellow one is okay."
Unfortunately, neither of the two rare, dazzling red F50s hidden away in the back of Ferrari of Denver is for sale. They belong to unnamed Aspenites who are storing the cars here for the winter and getting some repairs done. The radar detector in one of the cars is worth more than my Honda, and the paint jobs on their carbon-fiber bodies are smoother than any movie star's complexion. However, you can buy a 1/18th-scale die-cast model of the F50--racing red, just like a first Ferrari ought to be--right there at the dealership, for $29.95.
That won't turn you into a true Ferrarista, of course, or even enlist you in the mad ranks of the tifosi. It certainly won't help you...understand. On the other hand, this little symbolic object of desire won't burn much gas, and you'll be able to test-drive it to your heart's content--on the living-room carpet.
The Jameson-drinkers are moping in South Bend this week because Lou Holtz has quit. At least some of them are moping. Others remember that Lou Holtz lost to Colorado. Lou Holtz lost to Northwestern. Jesus, Mary and Joseph! This very season, Lou Holtz even lost to Air Force. Just like that mortal sinner Gerry Faust used to do. So maybe it's time Lou Holtz picked up his check and split for the Minnesota Vikings.
In the highly ritualized, not-always-enlightened world of college football, people say that head coach at Notre Dame is the best job in the world--and the worst. The priests who run the place never put on shoulder pads, but they like to call plays. As long as he's winning, the coach gets his way, and he basks in unmatched glory. When he loses, he learns all about priestly tough love.
Buddhists in Omaha are devoted to Notre Dame. So are agnostics in Albany, and most of the world's Catholics. Jack Dempsey was never a cult as large as the Fighting Irish, and Michael Jordan never will be. NBC Sports clings to Notre Dame like the Holy Grail discovered. Touchdown Jesus, arms outspread, oversees each extra point.
Lou Holtz--Boo Hoo Lou to his detractors--was a great Irish coach. He won 99 games in eleven seasons--six short of the great Knute Rockne's all-time record, a record he says he was loath to break next year. He was a brilliant game-day coach, a great halftime analyst, a great strategist. He also got great players--kids in love with the Notre Dame myth.
But Boo Hoo Lou was also a transparent whiner. Give him the East Alaska A&M Midgets as Saturday's foe and he'd cook up a scenario for the Irish to be outclassed. Put 1-8 Purdue out there and you'd think he was facing the San Francisco 49ers. Unseemly, false, tiresome stuff.
By contrast, hear one Rockne tale. Born a Norse Protestant, he was persuaded by the priests to convert to Catholicism in 1925. But no submissive soul was The Rock. Upon entering Notre Dame's Log Chapel for his baptism ceremony, the story goes, he was quizzical about the lone candle burning on the altar. When the priest explained that that's what the ritual called for, Rockne couldn't help replying:
"Yeah, but it seems to me you guys are awfully tight with the wax.
