This past week an email came through my box that I just had to share. After showing a few fellow car friends, I quickly realized I had stumbled upon a piece of writing that was likely to hit home with every car enthusiast. Whether male of female, if you cherish a vehicle in your collection you can probably relate. The personal, and open nature of the email is what sets it apart from so many. Not only can we relate, but truthfully we can all learn from this too.

The discussion originally started on another event’s email list. One of the members posted to say his Ferrari would be participating for the last time, and he was likely to sell it. A brief discussion on the Ferrari ensued, and then the real truth behind it’s ‘retirement’ came out. The Italian machine was heading to storage, as his wife wasn’t too pleased about the latest purchase…another Ferrari. It was then that Scott Fisher joined the conversation. Whether your garage hosts a collection of Ferrari’s, or simply dreams of a $500 project, you will probably relate to his words. Hopefully, we all learn from them too.

…So a whole slew of years ago, I rode along with a buddy looking at a car he wanted to buy.  His girlfriend was riding along with us, I was in the back seat and we were talking about the car all the way to the seller’s house; she was silent — not exactly an icy silence, at least not until viewed in retrospect.

Well, it was a smoking deal — won’t go into the details (and of course, names changed to protect the guilty and all that) — and he bought it.

And I was then forced to witness the most humiliating chewing-of-a-new-orifice that I had EVER, and have ever SINCE, beheld a woman giving to the man she was supposedly in love with.  It was embarrassing, not only because of the specific and minuscule nature of the demands she made (“and would it KILL you if ONCE in a while you wore a shirt with BUTTONS?”), but because it was being performed in front of a third party.

We rode back to their place, I got in my MGB and headed back home.  On the way I stopped at the local Safeway and picked up a bottle of chilled champagne, my wife’s favorite beverage.  I walked in; she was sitting at the table doing some art or craft, and smiled at me as I approached her.  When I held out the champagne, she beamed.

“For me?” she asked.  “What’s the occasion?”

“Because you’re not Sue,” I said (not her actual name).  I explained the evening, and she just shook her head sadly.

Kim (my wife’s actual name) got many a bottle of champagne over the next 20 years.  Whenever a guy said he couldn’t buy a car because his wife would kill him, I’d be there.  Whenever a woman handed a guy a list of things to do before he could leave the house, I’d be there.  Whenever I’d read a Craigslist ad where a guy was selling his Jensen-Healey to buy a Honda Odyssey because they were expecting their first child, I’d be there.  I’d be all around them in the dark.

Kim passed away suddenly last June, a few days before our 31st anniversary.  Our own daughter even gave me grief for the car I purchased as Kim’s memorial — not coincidentally, a Ferrari, which is what prompted this outpouring.

So goodbye, Kim. I miss you like meat misses salt, and I owe you a posthumous bottle of champagne because our daughter isn’t YOU.

And neither is anyone else.

But it leaves me in a position that is enviable in at least one way.  I’ve faced the worst thing in my life and survived.  So If I ever lapse into a relationship with a woman again, and she gives me the least bit of grief for ANYTHING car related, I’ll have the strength to quietly start putting her shoes in a bag and never speak to her again.

Because if what my friends have had to endure is any indication, there appears to be a never-ending parade of controlling, joy-killing women in the world, but there’s only a finite number of Ferraris.

I’m just saying.

–Scott Fisher

Scott's 1966 Ferrari 330 GT 2+2