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 £3,550 for the Jennifer Trust for Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Just over £2,000 of that was taken on the day with other generous donations totalling over £1500 - for an event which only cost £75 to set up.

Fourteen cars attended this year, with examples of Ferraris ranging from the 308 GTB and GTS models through 328 GTS and a 348 GTB. Special arrivals this year were the four "Super Ferraris": 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 but the F50 and Enzo arrived in a crescendo of noise before 10am. All rides for these cars were sold out by 10:30am! However the real stars of the show, in terms of revenue-generating capacity, were the two Mondial cabriolets, the four-seaters proving incredibly popular with parents taking their children for a ride
We were once again given the area of Wyevale Garden Centre's car park to run the rides out onto the A352 from, with only minor interruptions from their other customers who were of a mind to park in our area. One lady had to be discouraged from abandoning her Nissan Micra very close to one of our contributing owners’ cars. 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.

A complete surprise to me and to many taking part was the arrival of two Dodge Vipers. These 8.0Litre 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 wishing to ride and the queue never seemed to shorten!

We were honoured to have Dorset’s newly-appointed Chief Constable, Mr Martin Baker, 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 contributed £20 for his ride 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.

Another donation was also 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. Gordon McCulloch presented Allison Pratt with another donation organised amongst his work colleagues with the words “We had a “whip-round - here's £910"!

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.

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.

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 marshals 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. Some customers had travelled from as far afield as Lancashire and explained " “We have nothing like this where we live"

Finally, I'd like to thank everyone who made the event possible, especially those who provided the rides, those buying them or making a donation, also Dorset Police, event supporters Leeline Bodyworks, and of course, Wyevale Garden Centre.

The provisional date for next year’s event is Saturday 3rd June 2006. Half of the profit from the day will go go Ridgeway Orthopaedic Ward at Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester.

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