A few weeks back I was approached by Arriën and asked if I was willing to drive his son to a school gala as he passed his exams. As they are true Ferrari enthusiasts I knew this would mean a lot to them, so it was a no-brainer for me. By surprise I received last week a Facebook reminder that I visited them with my 400 exactly 12 years ago.What a coincidence. See this blog:
https://erwin400.blogspot.com/2014/06/boys-driving-400.html
Yesterday was the big day so during lunch I picked up the 400 from the storage and parked it in the street. Not much later a few kids popped up on their bikes and noticed my car and I heard them
saying, what the fuck, that’s a Ferrari parked there. I could witness that from my top room where I was working with the window open. The car was very well inspected by the youngsters. One of them remarked very quickly it was an automatic. Just for the records I made this photo of the situation:
It’s not often I have the 400 parked at home in the street. I do recall this instance as well whereby some youngster spotted the car in the middle of the night, read this blog:
Ferrari 400: Saturday 19th October 2013 - Auto Moto Italia Rosmalen
In any case, when arriving later that afternoon at the graduate the first thing we did was making this retrospective comparison photo. Thought that was nice, they compiled this photo:
As a side note, I have done this school gala driving once before, see this blog:
https://erwin400.blogspot.com/2015/05/ferrari-400-school-gala-steenwijk.html
So I knew what to expect. Unfortunately this day things worked out differently. Initially a small tour through the city was planned by the school but due to bad weather forecast this was cancelled earlier in the afternoon. As a result everyone ended up at a large public parking place nearby school but since so many cars showed up at once the roads and crossings were jammed and it all became a bit chaotic. I was lucky to be early and managed to get on the parking place line up queue. Exactly when we left home it started raining with lightning and thunder. But it was not as bad as forecasted.I think our location was just on the outer parts of the stormy weather. At least no hail or very heavy rain.
It lasted only about 30 min or so. Still I ended up running idle for about 1 hour on the parking place before we ended up on the red carpet. But before that the car stalled and did not had much power anymore to start up. Initially I was thinking it could be some kind of vapor lock since I was not driving for at least 45 min or so. And I was lucky to bring my starter booster with me. Once hooked up the car slowly started up again. Phew! Afterwards I realized the battery had become weak as I was standing still so long on the parking place with the heater blowers on to demystify the windscreens. Whilst the engine was running, but not driving, the battery charging must have been minimal if at all. So I guess
it was drained up quite a bit. On my return home it was fully charged again when properly driven. I turned it off and on and it started up with a strong whizz, it ran instantly.
In any case both the graduate and their parents were very happy with the 400 showing up. So hereby another small photo compilation they made
And the gifts afterwards, a nice bottle of Italian Vino Bianco and a specific local sheep stone :-)
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