Ferrari Mondial . Net

Given the unpredictable nature of the UK spring weather we were fortunate to be blessed with a beautiful warm and sunny Saturday for the first big national Ferrari Owners’ Club (FOC) event of the year. Blenheim Palace is situated in picturesque Oxfordshire countryside, and it’s dramatic grounds and architecture provided a yet another stunning backdrop for an impressive turnout of FOC Ferraris. Parked centre stage in the main palace courtyard was a historic mix of supercars, both old and new, including F40s, an Enzo, a yellow Daytona, three 250 SWBs (one confirmed to be worth around the £2 million mark) and an amazing 4 cylinder 500 Mondial racer from 1954.

There was a good turnout of Ferrari Mondials, as always, I was pleased to see again the Mondial cabriolet I had viewed when looking for my one over a year ago, good to see it had found a new home (hi J & J!). I also saw the sera blue Ferrari Mondial I had declined to look at back then due to it not being Rosso red, that colour, for me, seems compulsory for a first Ferrari. On inspection I regret a little not going to see it, and a glance at the odometer did indeed confirm a mileage of only 14k miles in 23 years!

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Whilst heading off to the second classic show of the year at Shuttleworth House in Bedfordshire I spotted a Ferrari at the South Mimms M25 roundabout. Pulling up alongside it at the lights confirmed my suspicions of it’s tipo… a Ferrari 599 Fiorano, wow! That’s the latest two seater Grand Tourer from Ferrari, with the engine lifted from the Enzo and tuned up even more, making the 599 the most powerful production Ferrari ever made. This give it an awesome set of stats: top speed 205mph, 0-60 3.2s, 611 bhp.

That wasn’t the end of my geeky Ferrari spotting induced excitement, as looking in my rear mirror I could see at least 4 other Ferraris behind me in the queue at the lights. Pulling away from the lights it really was my lucky day as they all followed me onto the A1(M) towards Hatfield. It was a pleasant drive, they were clearly a group of Ferrari friends or club members out for a Sunday drive, maybe off to an event too. The other cars were two 360 spyders, a black F430 and a 355 spyder. So it must have looked an impressive convoy. To top it all off we soon arrived at the Hatfield tunnel… the noise that reverberated through the tunnel as it filled up with six Ferraris was deafening, and put a smile on my face for the rest of the day!

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I had been looking forward to this event as it was the first one of the year. The weather was warm and this seemed to bring out lots of traffic on the M25. Finding the historic Brooklands circuit was also a little challenging, I was a first time user of a (borrowed) satnav system, and had to turn it off when we arrived at our so called destination…. a row of small shops in a village?! Anyway we somehow found the venue in the end after asking the gatekeeper at Mercedes-Benz world for directions. You would have thought the Auto Italia event organisers would have put up some temporary signs along the routes off the main motorways and A roads.

My other gripe was the parking stewards at the event were awful, on entering we were given a badly photocopied, ultra confusing map: it would have helped if it had some kind of “you are here” marker, or the steward point out where we were, then given us some instructions on how to get to the Ferrari parking (ie a simple “take the first left, parking on right”), and also some signs would have helped (eg at each junction car makers’ names with arrows pointing which way to go, or even a steward intelligently directing marques). I rolled into the event, went right (as did numerous other Ferraris) and ended up being told by a steward to park in a line of neatly arranged Fiat Coupes…. not very good for me or the Fiat Coupe owners club. After parking and having a wander round the event I finally found Ferrari parking with ample spaces left and was able to move, but the whole thing could have been organised a lot better to save hassle, and in total I had to move my car three times!

The event itself was not bad, if I hadn’t been moving my car around so much I’d probably have enjoyed it more, but there was a big plus point: it was the first event I’ve been to which had the modern ‘big three’ (in my opinion) Ferraris… yes there was an F40, F50 and Enzo all present (if only they had parked them side by side!), accompanied by a great collection of other Ferraris and Italian cars.

Photos from the day can be found here.