Club / Sports car therapy
The unique bond that the founding members share at Scuderia110 is that we all love to drive our cars. And it drives the point that for many of us, driving our favorite Classic or Modern Sports Car provides us a true joy and pleasure leading to a certain euphoria, much akin to a great work out or perhaps just as therapeutic as that hour session with your therapist. Our Classic Sports cars can also take us through memory lanes allowing us to reminisce and be nostalgic, which is the food for our soul and mind if you are a true Motörhead and have petrol coursing through your vein. In reality, everyone of us who has cherished our bond with our cars, to a degree has experienced and benefited from “SportsCarTherapy”. If this concept makes sense, then I will tell you that Scuderia110’s ethos is providing a SportsCarClub vibe to make the best “SportsCarTherapy” experience possible and available for the local Sports Car enthusiasts.
More than ever before, during this time of “virtual reality” “artificial intelligence” “selfies” and “Influencers”, we want you to step back a few steps and come by our shop which carries the spirit of an old time Ford dealership dating back to the 50’s, and fully immerse yourself in a stable of some of the best Classic and Modern Sports Cars ever designed to stimulate all of your natural senses as intended by the Engineers who designed them. To this end, we would love to welcome you to the Scuderia110 Community regarding any services we can provide from annual fluid services to bring it back to life from a long hibernation in your garage. If you yet own one, stop teasing yourself looking at your favorite cars being driven by someone else on YouTube, over and over again. Instead come by Scuderia110 and see and perhaps even feel and experience that special Classic or Modern Sports car which you can hopefully call your own one day. Hopefully in so doing, it will put a big smile on your face and help to channel your inner self to reminisce and re-discover why you had fallen in love with everything related to Sports cars in the first place.
For me it all started when I was about ten years old, walking down the street in the early 70’s with my Dad and his mechanic friend. Amongst all the big cars on the street, all of a sudden there was this small green car blasting down the street with lots of “good” noise. The mechanic friend commented “That MGB is so small and fast that it drives like a bullet”. To a young impressionable ten year old kid, the idea of driving a “bullet” sounded very appealing at the time.
Ever since that time, whenever I saw a MGB or the likes, I said to myself that guy is driving a bullet. As I got a few years older, I was now able to tell that MGB was a bit different in shape from let’s say the likes of Fiat 124 Spiders vs. Alfa Romeo Spyders. Seeing a bright orange Fiat 124 Spider everyday on my block on my way to junior high, etched an indelible mark in my memory bank that I will always remember like it was yesterday.
Soon after, as I entered my high school years, I realized that bullets will forever be faster than cars and also there exits a “coupe” versions of all these bullet wannabe convertibles. I even began to notice that there was this cool looking coupe with part of the roof missing with a wing sticking out of its round tail where the engine was, just like my Dad’s VW 412 station wagon….. called a Porsche 911 Targa. In no time I realized that the “coupe” versions looked even better on some cars and almost felt guilty that my allegiance to the “bullet” convertibles was beginning to sway. Being an “influencer” ahead of time, I even got my brother two years younger to like all these MGB’s, Alfa’s, and Fiats. So much so that in 1979, I scraped up all my summer earnings to buy a beat up 1973 Alfa Romeo GTV coupe. Soon after, my younger brother not to be out-beaten, bought a 1976 Fiat 124 Spyder, yeah you guessed it… in orange red. Though neither cars were perfect by any means with a shoe-string budget, we both learned so much about the art of driving a manual transmission, feeling the dynamics of handling, and appreciating the importance of driving these small “bullet” cars, safely.
One vivid memory of my 1973 Alfa Romeo GTV was driving it along the east bound service road on LIE between exits 33 and 37 in freshly falling snow and feeling how wonderful the car felt (it didn’t matter that one cylinder was down on compression and that I couldn’t afford to fix it at the time)… just me and my Alfa in the midst of a winter wonderland… I won’t ever need a video to retrieve this amazing drive from my memory bank. What I remember about the 1976 Fiat 124 Spyder was borrowing the car from my brother one weekend and driving it like I stoled it along the curvaceous Riverdale section of Saw Mill Parkway on my way back down to City where I was attending College. Of course I did it to impress my passenger at the time, but for those few minutes, I really felt like Juan Manuel Fangio. A few month later I found out the car had previously gotten into an accident and the front suspension welding points were a bit soft. This was a wake up call and very humbling, especially when you are dealing with not only your safety but safety of others in the car. To this day, integrity of suspension, brakes, and tires remain the paramount safety items in any car, new or vintage, I drive. But oh boy, how fondly I remember that Fiat 124 negotiating the turns along the Saw Mill Parkway. If you never have, you owe to yourself to get a vintage sports car and negotiate the turns through the Riverdale section… on a warm balmy night… in a convertible… with someone next to you squealing all the way as you negotiate the turns.. Food for our Souls…
These two cars have ignited a passion for all things car related, especially cars of Italian persuasion, which has lasted over 40 years during which time I have accrued thousands of hours driving Classic & Modern Sports Cars, mostly Alfa’s and Ferraris. Serendipitously, I was introduced to the German marques by my soon to be wife who was driving a spanking new ‘87 BMW 325IS automatic at the time… Oh… how I wished it was an e30 M3 instead. When we got married in ‘89, we received as our wedding gift, a 87 Porsche Carerra Coupe in silver…. yes, with the whale tail. But as much as I love driving the German cars, they never stirred my soul like the Italian cars could. Fiscally speaking, it turned out to be a good thing, since we soon sold the Carrera and used it as our “seed” money for our first condo…. and then our first house… and so on. But looking back, I sure wish I had kept that silver Carrera with 12k miles on the odometer.
During the 90's
During the 90’s, now in my 30’s I managed to drive an Alfa Romeo almost everyday, rain or snow. I became a devout transaxle Alfa guy and drove mostly GtV6’s and a Milano Verde The Busso 2.5 V6 is the sweetest engine you will ever experience… and when mated to a smooth driveshaft connected to a transaxle with progressive clutch and synchros that are all working, I promise you there is no driving experience any better. Milano Verde with 3.0 liter version just heightens to the experience with 30 extra horsepower. Back then, I must have checked out more than a dozen E30 M3s but could never get myself to buy one because my Milano 3.0 Verde felt so much better by the seat of my pants… if only my tuchus was less partial to my Verde, I could be up $30k with one of these Munich cafe racers…oh well..
I felt I had finally arrived at the pinnacle of my car passion of all things Italian when I pulled the trigger and bought an European version of 1986 Ferrari 328GTS back in September of 1998. With only 3k miles on the odometer, the car cover was dusty from being parked in a public garage in front of the Brooklyn Court House for the prior 12 years by a single owner. Underneath the filthy car cover, however lied a brand new looking red car with no flaws to speak of, at least to my eyes. When the engine roared to life, I thought I just died and went to heaven. There is an old article from Road&Track in 1986 where it describes the transmission as being “slicker than cocaine dealer’s lawyer”…. that’s once the synchros have been fully warmed up. Sure enough after about 5 miles of driving, I was able able to first-hand experience exactly what the Road&Track editor had written about back in the day… oh and how rewarding it felt. But the most unforgettable moment came the day I arranged to pick up my 328GTS from the Brooklyn Court House and then, made a quick pit stop to pick up my newly born son from the hospital on the same day. Yes! My son’s first ever car ride was in a Rosso Corsa 1986 Ferrari 328GTS!
For the better part of the past two decades, I have been fortunate enough to own and drive various Ferraris, Maseratis, and Alfas. Through out this period, I have even kept my trusty 1998 BMW E36 4dr M3 5speed and 2010 Porsche 997.2 GT3 to keep my sanity in check. But truth be told, my passion and love affair for all things Alfas and Ferraris are still burning as brightly as the first day I laid my eyes on my first Alfa Romeo back in 1979.
If you have drudged through this entire blog, that means you are as passionate about these cars and have gone through perhaps a similar car experiences as I have. In fact, I am hoping that you even like the same cars as I do because then Scuderia110 is the perfect SportsCarClub for you to partake in, either through maintaining, reviving, or restoring your special Classic and Modern Sports cars.
The SportsCarTherapy at Scuderia110 is then a philosophical concept of how we want to run our shop and be able to provide this tangible, visceral experience first hand, for the Sports Car enthusiasts who can access our Facility. The experience will be all encompassing and even includes a small but very informative library containing various car journals from the hay days of print publications as well as old factory advertising pamphlets and factory manuals and tuning guides. In the near future, for those interested, options will be made available for opportunity to rekindle your love for these visceral machines of yesteryears by taking them out for a spin under guidance of Scuderia110. We have to emphasize that the driving experience is not about going all out fast but rather a rare opportunity to reconnect with how visceral and mechanical these Classic Sports Cars used to feel by the seat of your pants and how the suspension dials in direct message to your hand. Even if you are not a seasoned piloti of Vintage & Classic Sports Cars, you can still partake as Navigators of these beautiful machines.
We will make announcements to everyone interested in our various offerings through SportsCarTherapy on a periodic basis through website and Instagram. So please follow us and add yourself to our mailing list if you would like to be part of Scuderia110 Community.
Forza SportsCarClub & SportsCarTherapy at Scuderia110!
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