The Daytona has an unexpected outing on a dry November day.

Perhaps a little unexpectedly, the weather - and more importantly the lack of salt on the roads - allowed another late-season drive in the Daytona today.

Since my last report the worn ignition block which was causing the engine to intermittently start to turn over on position 2 has been replaced, but other than that there's nothing else to report on the mechanical side. Tthe Daytona has run pretty much without fault all year, and today was no exception, with the V12 particularly enjoying the cooler, denser autumn air being sucked into the six Weber Carbs.

The purpose of the trip was a lunch with the Surrey section of the Ferrari Owners Club at the Mulberry in Chiddingfold, a very good gastro-pub owned by Radio 2 DJ Chris Evans. As you may be aware, Evans is a massive petrolhead and owns a collection of Ferraris including a recently acquired 250GTO 64, although neither he nor any of his cars were present today.

Nevertheless, there was still an impressive collection of Ferraris present, including an ultra-rare 500 Superfast, one of only thirty six made and only nine right-hand drive models. This particular example had just completed a three-year restoration and looked immaculate. 

The other headline car was rather more familiar to me, being Dad’s old 250SWB s/n 3605, looking stunning as always.  The new owner had recently had the interior re-trimmed and the rear suspension adjusted to make the back of the car sit slightly lower. Dad himself had his 365GTC/4 out, completing a quartet of classic Ferraris.

There were some interesting modern Ferraris too, including an unusually-coloured Bianco Fuji 430, plus a 430 Spider and a 360 Challenge Stradale.

The was one other car (not a Ferrari) which caught my eye, but I will save that for a Spotted in the Wild feature in the next few days.

After a very nice lunch - pan- fried scallops followed by loin of pork, since you asked - heading home posed a small problem. Being the middle of November, it gets dark fairly early in the South of England, especially on what was a rather dull day today. This meant I needed to use the headlights, which, when compared with modern xenon units, are... how shall I put this...rubbish. My modern Alfa provides more light with just the sidelights than the Daytona can manage on dip. I’m told the earlier plexiglass Daytonas are even worse, if that's even possible. It means that the the car is not really usable at night, and so today's return trip was via a more direct route home than I would have liked. I don’t use the car very often after dark but fitting some more powerful bulbs or some similar tweak may not go amiss. It was still a very enjoyable drive, though.

Will I use the Daytona again this year? Well, as I said at the beginning of the piece, this is largely down to the weather, but here’s hoping the salt stays off the road for a few more weeks. 

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