We're pleased to bring you a report from this year's Ride in a Ferrari event, straight from the organiser, Roy Twycross. Once again, the event was well organised and well attended by the public and by members of the JTSMA and raised a fantastic £3000. Well done Roy and all your helpers! Over to Roy...
This year's Ride In A Ferrari and Help Fight Spinal Muscular Atrophy event held on Saturday 4th June at the Wyevale Garden Centres branch near Dorchester in Dorset raised a staggering £3,000 for the Jennifer Trust for Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Just over £2,000 of that was taken on the day with generous donations total £900 making the final figure of £3,000.
14 cars attended this year with examples of Ferrari's ranging from the 308 GTB and GTS models through Mondial Cabriolet's (well done Tim and Mick for taking out so many), 328 GTS and a 348 GTB. Special arrivals this year were the four-anniversary top-of-the-range Ferrari's: the 288 GTO, F40, F50 and Enzo. The Enzo and F40 ran in the morning with the 288 GTO and F50 completing the day driven by their owners Gordon and Nigel. The F40 and 288 GTO had been trailered down to the event with the F50 and Enzo arriving in a crescendo of noise before 10am. All rides for these cars were compiled onto four waiting lists and they were sold out by 10:30am!
We were once again given the area of Wyevale Garden Centres car park to run the rides out onto the A352 from, Guest cars this year included the same Porsche 911GT3S brought along by a local businessman from near Dorchester who also brought a friend driving the first 550 Maranello we've ever seen at Ride In A Ferrari. I was lucky enough to get a passenger-seat ride with Andrew the owner in the second half of the day. A complete surprise to me and to many taking part was the arrival of two Dodge Vipers. These 8.0 litre V10 leviathans of pure Detroit muscle provided a welcome boost to numbers, although we had the same number of cars overall as last year, we had many more punters wishing to ride and the queue never seemed to shorten!
We were honoured to have Dorset's newly-appointed Chief Constable, Mr Martin Baker, who took up his position at the beginning of the year, visit us with his wife and daughter. I introduced Mr Baker to members of the charity staff who were attending and who included Allison Pratt (Fundraising Assistant) and Heather Brown, attending once again with her family. Mr Baker was also interested to meet owners of the Ferrari's attending and enquired as to the fuel tank capacity of the F50 owned by Gordon McCulloch and commenting that he didn't think it would do much to the gallon!
Mr Baker contributed £20 for his ride I organised for him in Steve Crumpler's 348GTB. Steve takes the honour of being "first man in" again this year, albeit with his wife Julie doing the driving when they arrived.
My favourite model Ferrari, the 456GT that we were expecting didn't materialise. Other owners had telephoned me to say they couldn't come due to various mechanical maladies or other commitments at the last minute. Apologies were received from amongst others Chris Joyice in Surrey and John Gray in Somerset.
A donation was passed on to me from Club Member Graham Piper who couldn't attend and I spoke to him on the telephone the day after the event to explain how we got on. One major further donation was a "whip-round" organised by Gordon McCulloch with his work colleagues and which produced over £900!
We decided due to the demand for rides during the day to cut the route over which the rides were given. We had been advised by Dorset Police to alter the route initially to lengthen it but found that this obviously meant we couldn't give as many rides. The compromise was reached by just giving half the length of ride to the Warmwell Cross roundabout and back which meant passengers could still get an idea of the performance of the cars on the dual carriageway and say they'd ridden in cars as exotic as the Enzo. We did have a visit from one of Mr Baker's very able Constable's who expressed concern that they had had complaints (a first for the event it must be said at Wyevale!) from local residents at Owermoigne. I think what they had heard was the noise from various cars including one of the Dodge Viper's £4,000-worth of exhaust, and the F50's sports exhaust and they had presumed our drivers were breaking the speed limit. The drivers took his advice in good faith and no more concerns were raised.
My father commented that he had been out on the dual carriageway filming for the event and he had been wearing a high-visibility jacket. He noted how the noses of many cars, not just the Ferrari's, dipped when the driver's spotted him with camera in hand! Anyone who had the video's of last year's event and who would like this year's footage added to it can send the tapes back to me for recording.
All in all, this year has proved very successful financially for the Jennifer Trust charity if on occasion a little haphazard with organisation. There were times when the marshal's asked the desk to stop selling tickets so they could clear the queue of people waiting and it has been suggested that we might have already outgrown our current venue. Discussion will ensue as to where Ride In A Ferrari goes if anywhere from here. The provisional date for next year's event which will see half of the profit from the day go to Ridgeway orthopaedic Ward at Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester, is Saturday 3rd June 2006.
Thanks to the event's supporters who helped with the printing and promotion of the event:
