: The blue seat covers will have to go when I buy it. That said, she
: has a beautiful body and what could be more appealing that the
: sight of those 6 two barrel Webers. The thought of the roar as
: they drink in enough air to fire those 12 cylinders through the
: shift points is enough to make even the most reasonable and
: rational person dream.

John,

I am sure you will be familiar with writing of the late, much missed, Henry N. Manney III, who used a 250GTO as his only transport around Europe when Grand Prix Editor of Road & Track magazine. One story of his that has permanently stuck in my memory is his tale of leaving Italy via one of the tunnels into Switzerland. The border guards on the Italian side were young conscripts and had never seen anything like it in their lives. "Che bella macchina!" they said and HM invited them to sit in it. Then after he had been waved through he left them with the sound of that V12 running to 7,000 through the gears echoing down the tunnel.

At the Swiss end of the tunnel the border guard said "Papers!"

I had this story in my mind going into Hungary more than 25 years ago in my Lotus Excel. The only significant difference is that I was released into a line of crawling vehicles and managed no more than 900rpm. And the request for "Ihre Papiere bitte" was in a small town in Austria on the way home.