Ferrari Mailing List: Prova Stickers - we should all have one.

[Douglas Anderson (dnt]

PROVA stickers – picture this: 1968 Star Dust CanAm in Las Vegas, NV.

 

Green flag drops . . . 6 cars vie for the right hand turn one where maybe two can go thru unscathed.

 

3 others and Chris Amon go off the track into the infield dirt.  Chris’ slide valve throttles, fouled with dirt, stay wide open.  Amon shuts down and calls it a day. 

 

Ferrari Bubba and I are at the track with photog passes.  I go over to the Ferrari to examine the now filthy dirty 612 CanAm racer.  The PROVA sticker is hanging by a thread. 

 

So Italian . . . ‘heres’a PROVA license Guiseppi – go outta to da Autostrada and maka sure this piga doesn’t have a miss at 10,000 rpm in 5^th gear.”

 

Later, I visit the pits – half of Bruce McLaren’s front end is there.  I ask if I can have it.  Sure, get it outta here.  That sat above my desk in my tiny apt until the job moved me from Los Angeles to San Francisco. 

 

I gave it to a real Canadian car guy.  I figured the Queen like his money was like New Zealand’s.  I was wrong on the New Zealand end but Cliff loved that orange hunk of fabulous engineering.  Two layers of fiberglass separated by foam strips totaling no thicker than a credit card.  Cool.

 

Oh – one last thought – when we were at the factory in 1979 one of the cars that had come off the line (the factory closed down for the long August (?) holiday so while we were there – nothing was moving) was a brown boxer . . . with an oval red bumper (ah ah) sticker with “300” in white.  Wazzat I inquire.  That’s the max kpm this car is allowed to do on the Autostrada.  Fiats have 100.

 

Good idea.  BUT in todays world – you’d have to move to Wyoming to enjoy that.  Maybe some other palaces too.

 

Cheers

Doug