The Dealer

NetGalley Review: 4 stars

Last updated on 08 Jun 2022

”“The Dealer: How One California Dealership Fueled The Rise of Ferrari’s Cars In America” is a slim and quick read written by Jim Ciardella to be published under the Prometheus imprint. I am most grateful to the publishers for providing me with an ARC for review. I found this book charming, taken on its own terms. The subject is a famously successful Ferrari franchise in the United States and its twenty year history of successful innovation. The narrative is anecdotal in nature, but the author achieves his purpose principally through his access to the colorful characters who populated this story. Everything from entrepreneurs and eccentric clients to Enzo Ferrari himself keep things moving along. I have a very personal reason for being drawn to this tale, and that is that my father was a successful car salesman for most of his life, and as a consequence of this I grew up around the colorful characters that populated many of the dealerships my father worked at. Nothing in this book surprised me, but much of it delighted me in that the tale (tragic in some ways) is told with humor, compassion and an understanding that most people are not immersed in the inner workings of automobile dealerships as they existed pre-Covid. Nonetheless, the author is skilled at drawing his tale out without submersing us in unintelligible economic or mechanical details. This is a story of wheelers and dealers at a boom time in the history of the internal combustion engine. Many of us lived this on the periphery as we grew up and became fascinated with cars. This book is a sort of loving homage to them.“–William Harris, consumer reviewer

Jim Ciardella is a storyteller, Ferrari enthusiast, and native Californian. At one point, Ciardella met Brian Burnett, owner of Ferrari of Los Gatos, who over the years told him numerous stories about Ferrari of Los Gatos and finished each tale with: “And someone ought to write a book about it.” One night, after many stories and Brian’s predictable conclusion, Ciardella told him, “I’ll do it. I’ll write the book.” Ciardella still lives in Northern California near his two daughters and four grandchildren.

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