For the Love of Cars!

From the minute I understood what a car was, I loved them. As a young child, if my mum couldn’t find me, I was in the car. At that age 4/5 I just liked hanging out in them. I remember a woman friend of my mums turned up in a red car that had head lights that popped up and down like they were blinking eyes and I knew one day I wanted a car just like that. I am tripping out a little because I haven’t thought about this memory until right now and my new Ferarri has this exact feature! 

I loved to sit on my mums’ lap and pretended to drive and by the time I was 12, I knew how to drive a manual car.  Mum always said if I was to get my license it had to be manual. Sometimes I would steal her keys to practice driving with the clutch up the driveway. Fast forward a few years later, I resorted to just fully stealing the car. 

I always had posters of cars on my wall in my bedroom. I remember a yellow Monaro that I was pretty obsessed with. I grew up in Victoria but you could get your license a year earlier in NSW, so I used my dad’s address and spent a couple of weeks up there just so I could get my license at 17. Sadly, I did lose the license for speeding on the drive back to Victoria.

My first car was pretty unimpressive but it was a car and I drove it to death. Then I moved overseas to model and driving just wasn’t necessary. For the past 10 years driving hasn’t made sense especially living in Manhattan. Since there is no need for a car in NYC, I am moving to California. I would prefer to sit in traffic in a car than to not have a car at all.  As soon as I could afford it, I put myself through the Mercedes AMG driving academy. To date, I have completed the basic, advanced and the PRO. I am psyched to say that I am just one course away from getting my race license!!! 

As I started my quest to move to California, before I even started looking at houses,  I started looking at cars. I figured if I found an awesome car then I’d find a house to go with it soon enough. I was having trouble committing to a “make” or finding the time to travel around to see the cars. The good ones are all over the country. If you want something that’s not too rusty, warmer climates are the places to gravitate to when on the search. It was all a dream at this point. I was trolling the internet constantly looking at cars and imagining what I could do with them but it wasn’t really feeling like something I was going to execute on anytime soon. 

Then I met JAMES. Within a couple of months of hanging out we’d naturally talked about cars a lot. (James @jamekirkham is a race car driver turned automotive media mogul who started @donutmedia and @raceservice).  We decided that a ‘91 348 Ferrari was going to be my car! We searched high and low and eventually found one in MIAMI. James flew there about a year ago today and test drove her, called me, and said “SHE IS THE ONE.” We shipped her back to Cali and she sat in a garage until about 2 months ago. Getting her registered hasn’t been easy as she’s old and has had some mods made to her.

We needed to strip back. We’ve had to do a fair bit just to get her road worthy. Then James decided SEMA is a great excuse to jam a million things to do in to a short amount of time. We went over and agreed on most of the details but he basically had Carte Blanche. I know he had a bunch of cool ideas, he’s also always dreamed of doing a car that I wasn’t going to stand in the way of.

We wanted it to be like an original Ferrari track car of it’s time, like the 348 challenge. I think there were only like 13 challenges made but you could add the bolt in roll cage and certain safety requirements like the harnesses and seats to a 348ts and then badge it as a challenge. We wanted to play around with a few details for fun, like the spoiler was a nod to nascar and it looks so dope. The Mercedes badge on the steering wheel is a nod to Mercedes-Benz as James and I are both ambassadors. Ultimately I wanted to make this car friendly for daily use. The KW suspension raises two inches at the touch of a button for steep driveways and the splitter at the front is a titanium plate (also used in nascar). It is virtually unbreakable-ish for when I don’t see a pothole or misread a speed bump. We’ll track her for fun, nothing serious.  

Then next car on my radar is a G550 or AMG G63. James also has the AMG GTR which is so fun! We will definitely take turns driving each other’s cars!