I was still having speech therapy when I was 8.

Not because I couldn’t speak or understand words/language. But simply because I was too lazy to pronounce certain words properly. That’s right. I couldn’t be arsed.

As I progressed through my formative years I couldn’t really be arsed doing lots of stuff which bored me. Tying my laces, attending school, making friends. That sort of thing.

I also had a very low patience/tolerance threshold. And a bullshit radar which serves me well to this very day.

So put all this together and my peers mispronouncing words (or at least to my ears) was pretty commonplace and little cause for concern/interest.

Until/unless the subject matter became of interest and/or relevance to me.

Which it did in the 1980’s.

The Lesser-Known Bobaro Freestyler

The 80’s saw the advent of the BMX here in my native UK. And there was a kid at school who was forever frothing at the mouth over what he repeatedly pronounced, the Bobaro Freestyler.

Little did I realise that his teeth were a bit dodgy and his lip more plump than Jamie Oliver’s before his elocution lessons, and he was actually excitedly referring to the Bob Haro Freestyler. To separate words. Christian name and surname. Instantly made sense when I eventually worked it out.

The Bob Haro Freestyler was something of an iconic machine from back in the day, I’ll give him that. Clearly with a soft ‘H’ I’d neglected to aurally observe previously.

Skip a handful of years until I was regularly summering at my northern nan’s, when the curse of my inability to listen properly struck again. Coupled with the orator’s lacklustre vocal delivery and considered enunciation.

In fact, it was more a case of Cockney Stephen’s articulation of a number of vowels and consonants which were more at fault in my defence.

The Smugness of Southerner Stephen

Stephen was your typical schoolboy braggard.

Whatever my dad had, his dad obviously had a larger, faster, newer, cooler, more expensive example of. Starting with the circumference of both father and son’s craniums. Matched only by their collective egos.

Alas, my northern nan made me play with Stephen during my fortnight’s stay at hers for the sole reason he was routinely found at the bottom of her garden during the same holiday periods. Residing with his grandparents.

He wasn’t a leprechaun.

But their bungalow was situated directly at the end of my northern nan’s back garden. Albeit separated by a fence, gateway and path between the two encampments. If only Stephen’s grandparents hadn’t bred.

Stephen’s Action Man collection was grudgingly impressive. If you liked pube-haired figures with moveable limbs who projected a disturbing penchant for war games. When all you wanted to do was create elaborate wooden ramps for ‘getting air’ on your Raleigh Chrome Burner.

Stephen also enjoyed reminding me that his father was ‘a big deal in the city’.

Naturally I assumed ‘big’ was interchangeable with a similar word which was doing the playground rounds at the time; ‘prick’. I doubt I was wrong.

Truth be told, I knew I wasn’t, as I had the great displeasure of meeting Stephen’s dad once. Although the anticipation was palpable, given how his son had described the car he was set to turn up in at the end of his (mercifully) short stay with his equally northern nan that particular year.

Which takes us back to mispronunciation.

Misterpronunciation

“My dad drives a Mia Ferrari”, exclaimed Stephen. As my own father dropped me off in his malcontent Datsun Bluebird estate.

“Wow”, I retorted, with the level of disdain normally reserved for when my northern nan told me she’d booked me on a week’s course of botanical studies under the tutelage of one David Bellamy.

Brief back story: Said celebrated botanist was doing a summer residency at the nearby Bowes Museum, the sprawling grounds of which my northern nan’s bungalow backed onto. And which provided lots of decent BMX’ing terrain. As well as countless places to bury Stephen’s Action Men in shallow graves.

Incidentally, Bellamy had also collaborated on something way more interesting than nature and environmental shizz around the same era. Notably the ‘I-Spy with David Bellamy’ book series. Published in the 80’s, the series included one of my absolute favourite repeat reads of the decade. The 1983-released pocket book entitled, ‘I-Spy Car Numbers’; which focused on spotting various vehicle registration plates created to keep children amused on long car journeys with their parents.

And it was fucking biblical.

Apologies anyway; I digress.

Where Was I?……

So, yes..Mia Ferrari.

Now, as an adult, Mia Ferrari admittedly sounds like the name of a 70’s porn star. But then that would be doing a horrendous and frankly unforgivable disservice to one of my childhood’s greatest ever actresses (and christian name namesake); Mia Sara.

Who, if you don’t recall, starred opposite Matthew Broderick in the seminal teen flick of the eighties, ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’. And was VERY pleasing on my then teenage eyes.

But no.

The Mia Ferrari in question was a car of Italian pedigree. It was also finished in red, according to an exasperated Stephen as I failed to respond to his latest boast in the way he was expecting.

I was always a Porsche guy, you see. Or Maserati. Both of which Stephen would struggle pronouncing on the evidence I had before me.

Having said that, if/when his father rocked up in one of Maranello’s finest models I’d never heard of, then I would at least have to feign some level of mock excitement.

Every day throughout that brief (yet never-ending) holiday with my northern nan, Stephen reminded me that his dad drove a Mia Ferrari. And that he was going to be picked up in it and that I’d be jealous as it would look shit hot next to my dad’s erstwhile Japanese load-carrier.

And every day I succeeded in burying another one of his seemingly infinite collection of Action Men in the grounds of the Bowes Museum. Typically beneath bushes that I knew local canines would relieve themselves over.

Such was our enduring friendship/summer holiday bond.

Mythical Mia Ferrari

When the day arrived I woke up early. Not out of fevered anticipation, more because I’d had a bad dream and wet my bed.

Ah, halcyon days….

After breakfast of at least three Kellogg’s selection boxes I sat there imagining just what this Mia Ferrari might look like. It was a chapter in history long before the dawn of the internet, so obviously I couldn’t google it.

Like you probably did a few paragraphs earlier.

Turns out they’re either a London-based singer/songwriter or an Argentinian film-maker if you’re reading this in 2026.

Indeed, who knew.

Back in the mid-80’s Mia Ferrari was a rocking horse excrement-rare Fezza. Or so I was led to believe.

Also I didn’t have any of my automotive books with me on holiday, to frantically thumb through the pages of, to try and find illustrative evidence of said mysterious Italian supercar.

Therefore I just had to wait. And watch. And mentally conjure.

For ‘mysterious’ it might be more prudent to read ‘mythical’ sometime soon. And by mythical, I don’t mean unicorn. As in an extremely rare, one-of-one type make and model whereby it would be physically impossible to ‘find another’.

Tragically, what materialised was not so much ‘little known’ supercar, as opposed to ‘common-or-garden Fiat saloon’.

Yup, as some of my more linguistically-savvy readers might have rumbled by now goes something along the lines of the following. Stephen had literally mispronounced the name of the car in question.

In the event – and I know this because I witnessed it with my own eyes when his dad drove into the road at the wheel of it – the car WAS of Italian descent. And finished in red metallic. But that’s precisely when and where ANY similarities with a fabled (and as yet unspecified) Maranello-built supercar begins and ends.

Ferrari Rocher

For it wasn’t a Mia Ferrari of what Stephen spoke. But rather a Fiat 131 Mirafiori.

That’s ‘Miafiori’ just to clarify.

The name derived from the production facility in Turin where the Fiat was constructed. Otherwise described as a boxy, rear-wheel-driven family saloon that was as far removed from a Ferrari 308 GTB Quattrovalvole as a bird table.

Which was absolutely fine by me as it meant I didn’t have to suffer Stephen’s misplaced smugness any longer. Not when it transpired that his dad owned/drove a run-of-the-mill four-door Fiat which was about as rare or sought after as a savoury melted cheese sauce served over thick toasted bread and grilled until bubbling.

I won’t lie.

There’s a part of me that still, to this day, wanted the car to be a seldom-seen or heard Ferrari. Just so I could return home after my holidays in the happy company of my northern nan and tell everyone at school the next term that my best mate Stephen’s cool dad drove this amazing Ferrari that even Don Johnson didn’t know existed.

Oh. And that his Action Man collection was beyond belief.

But it simply wasn’t to be.

Stephen had spoken in a way which had thrown me. It might have been subtle dialect nuances. Or as suspected, it might have been because he was a bit of a twat.

The moral of this story being; if in doubt, get someone to write it down. Providing that someone isn’t your GP. Because the writing won’t be legible.

The end.