DEFEND YOUR RIDE: KNX's Dick Helton In West Hollywood

Q: How did you decide that you wanted a Ferrari?

A: I've always wanted a Ferrari. I have a long history of owning sports cars, and the dealer I bought it from as a matter of fact, I bought my first sports car from, which was a Jaguar XKE. He was selling Jags at the time. This was a long time ago. I bought several Jags from him and a variety of other sort of exotic sports cars. But I always told him that if I were ever in a position where I can a buy a Ferrari, I'll buy it from you. And so that's what I did.

Q: So he's your go-to guy?

A: This is it. This is a guy who lives in Hinsdale, Illinois. I've known him for 35 years. He's a super guy who's a real enthusiast of Ferraris, Maseratis, and all kinds of really good cars. And he sells them. He's a licensed dealer. I called him up several years ago when this car was available. I was looking on his website as a matter of fact. I said, I think I'm ready to do something. We kind of haggled over about three or four months and finally came up with the car.

Q: You have such few miles on your car. What's its main use?

A: For fun. Occasionally, I drive it back and forth to and from work. Obviously, it's an exotic, so you don't take it out every day. You're always concerned about other drivers getting distracted by looking at the car and crashing into you. I take a lot of care of it.

Q: Do you find that drivers give you more consideration because you're driving such a nice vehicle?

A: Sometimes yes, but most times no. They're too interested in looking at the car, and so they crowd you. Now it's not such a big problem here in Los Angeles because there are more exotic cars here. But if you're not in a place where they see them often--and even here to some extent--people just want to look at the car. This particular car is sort of striking because of its color. It's not a color that you normally see with a Ferrari, which is usually yellow, or red, or black. This car sort of stands out, so people will pay attention to it.

Q: Where's the farthest you've ever driven?

A: Las Vegas, which is a great place to have the car. That's a great trip. Just take the 15 and take off. In Vegas, because you have a lot of tourists, when you're driving down the Strip, people will look at the car. Again, it's the kind of place where if you've traveled the Strip, you know how much traffic there is on it at any particular time. I'm constantly aware of where everybody is relative to me. You get very protective of the car. It gets a lot of looks. A few months ago, we were driving in Beverly Hills on Rodeo, and I was stopped at a stoplight. A guy actually walked out into traffic--he was an Italian, and he and his family were here as tourists--and in broken English he said to me, "It's the most beautiful car I've ever seen!" He's taking pictures and all that kind of stuff. Made me feel pretty good.

Q: So you're pretty open to people taking photos?

A: I am. I mean, come on, if it were me and I saw that car, because I'm a car enthusiast, I would absolutely do the same thing. And it makes me feel good. I don't look at the car as something that says, "Oh, look at me." For me, it's equivalent to a piece of art. I just enjoy the fact that I have the car. It's something both Carol [my wife] and I are very protective of, and it would be equally at home if it were sitting in my living room as a piece of fine art. That's how I view it.

Q: What sort of rules do you have in the car?

A: No smoking. No drinking. Nobody drives it but me.

Q: That's pretty clear cut. What do you listen to in the car?

A: You know, it's a Ferrari. A radio is pointless. If I do have it on, obviously I listen to KNX. I also have a CD player in it. Actually I burned a CD of some of my more favorite Italian opera, which kind of goes with the car. But more often than not, I listen to that when I'm working on the car—when I'm working on the seats, polishing up the leather, or things like that. It's ambient music. The whole point of the Ferrari is it sounds so good, and it is frankly fairly loud, so a radio really becomes meaningless in the car.

Q: If your car had a human emotion, what would it be?

A: I think it would be a feeling of pride in itself—proud of its heritage and also of being something that's a little bit different. In a town where there are so many people trying to be just like everybody else, I think that it's a car that has its own character and its own personality.

Q: What's your general philosophy about driving in L.A.?

A: Oh, don't get me started. Coming from the Midwest, where you drive in rain, and snow, and every possible kind of weather condition--and you learn how to drive in those kinds of conditions--I continue to be amazed by the inability sometimes of people who have grown up in California to confront the elements and to know how to drive in the elements. The car does not go out in the rain simply because you don't want somebody coming up behind you, jumping on the brakes, and rear-ending you.

Q: What do you think your next car for your collection would be?

A: That's an interesting question, and to be honest with you, I don't know what that would be. When it comes to a sedan or just a regular car that's actually got a trunk, I like Maseratis. I also enjoy BMWs. My son has a 335i, which he really likes and which I like to drive sometimes. It's a hard call because there are so many cars available today that you see one one day and say, "That's the car I want," but then the next day, there's something else. So I get very ambivalent about that.

Q: Are they even more affordable now with the global economy the way it is?

A: Well, yes. The price of particularly exotics has come down because the economy has really narrowed up the market. Now people who have money to buy a brand new $250,000, $300,000, $400,000 car off the floor are always going to have that money, and they will do that. It's for the rest of us who want to get into the market of having something that's a little bit different than everybody else, some of the prices have come down. If you look at the auctions like Barrett-Jackson, for example, you will see some pretty good bargains out there these days on really nice cars that probably would have sold for 20 or 30 percent more just five years ago.

Q: I hear that you have a racing shoe collection?

A: I do. I have several racing shoes. I started buying Ferrari racing shoes some time ago after I got this particular car. Puma has been making them over a period of time, and so I have several that I have purchased when I see them. I also have the ones I'm wearing, which are Nomex racing shoes by Simpson that I tend to wear a lot because they're comfortable. These are absolutely flameproof. Drivers wear these. These are pretty interesting shoes.

Q: What makes a racing shoe a good racing shoe?

A: I think fit, tightness, the ability to use your feet, particularly if you do racing. I actually learned how to race several years ago. I did some Formula Three racing a long time ago. I took a course to actually learn how to do it. A good racing shoe is something that actually makes the pedals of the car almost feel as though you were touching them with your bare feet. There's a tactile sense that you can feel.

Q: Is there anything else we should know about your car?

A: This Ferrari is the first road car to use paddles behind the steering wheel to shift gears. In this particular car, for me as a Ferrari owner, I think it represents sort of the final, really classic look of Ferraris that sort of follows the heritage of Ferraris through the years. I think once they went to the 360 and later models, which sort of fit this niche of the market, they sort of moved away from what I feel is a traditional Ferrari. That's one of the reasons why I like mine, and I think it's one of the reasons why a lot of people do like this car. Jeremy Clarkson, who is the host of the British TV show "Top Gear," once described driving this car--the Ferrari 355 as I own--as, let's see if I get this right, he said, "It's like dipping a quail egg into Julia Roberts's navel." He said that's the experience. I certainly can't come up with anything better.

Photos and interview by Michael Shen, blogger of lacantdrive.com

View previous Defend Your Ride features as well as other great stories for people who love cars at CBSLA.com/Autos.