Page 4

So using the money from the sale of the Spitfire I set about rebuilding not only my garage (I had all my workshops tools stolen some time ago), and doing the major service on the GT4.

Over the years I have got quite friendly with a local garage in Datchet called Lucas. Steve who is the owner is more than happy to share his extensive knowledge on servicing theses cars, and he filled me with confidence before I started.

I think my poor car has been somewhat neglected over the years, (I believe it was used on a race track near Oxford for sometime), so although having a considerable amount of money spent on it, there was no time spent on the finer details, like cleaning debris and oil off engine, or in anyway attempting to get the car to concours condition. For me doing this on a tight budget is also going to be tough.

The car came with a pretty full service history, tonnes of receipts and loads of MOT certificates. Best of all though it came with a genuine Ferrari workshop manual.One of the documents is very interesting as it is from HR Owen and details all the services the car had from new until march 1981. After that there many invoices to work out where the car was, and what was done... even with a push the mileage per year.

By this assumption the last major service was in January 2001 in Market Square garage in Oxford. the last major work done to the car was when it was resprayed from metallic blue to Rosso red. This was done in April 2004 by Body Works in Oxford at a cost of �3577. For more information of the respray including photos click the blue Ferrari picture to the right.As you will see the quality of the respray is really poor, especially around the sun roof where the paint is already bubbling. Having said that I would not have bought it in that colour.