The twentysomething brunette in the teal-coloured tank top was not amused. “Like, are you for real?” Her mouth was agape, her eyebrows knitted in a frown. How odd. She was supposed to be smiling. She was supposed to be -- dare I say it? -- excited. After all, I had just propositioned her while standing next to my mint-condition 1998 Ferrari F1 355.

OK, the Ferrari wasn’t mine–just a loaner graciously provided by Leny’s Automega in Toronto. And I wasn’t really propositioning her; rather, I was reciting an endless litany of almost meaningless statistics pertaining to the F1 355 -- all in an ill-fated attempt to get her libido revving. Nevertheless, she was supposed to be smitten, not steaming. And while our conversation lasted all of 30 seconds, she wasn’t meant to storm off with her eyeballs soaring skyward, her head nodding back and forth, her index finger spinning imaginary circles next to her forehead. Alas, Operation: Babe Magnet was turning into Mission: Impossible.

My task at hand was to determine if a six-figure exoticar is indeed effective as a proverbial “babe magnet”. The unscientific test involved parking the pricey Ferrari–illegally, of course–on Yorkville Avenue, Toronto’s wannabe Rodeo Drive. I stood in front of the candy-apple red sports car and descended upon passing women, my personality an extension of the exoticar itself–meaning the entire conversation revolved around the Ferrari’s attributes. Granted, I’m no Brad Pitt. But in theory, with a Ferrari F1 355 by my side, I could have a face that resembles a baboon’s buttocks and still score.

But, rejection was the order of the day. Black, white and Asian women; tall and short women; skinny and plump women; attractive and not-so-attractive women; twentysomething and fiftysomething women–the exoticar proved about as magnetic as a lump of nickel. The only bra I got to touch on this day was the crimson vinyl one cradling the Ferrari’s snout.

I arrived in Yorkville accompanied by Maurice Catenacci, a sales representative with Leny’s Automega, just before 3 p.m. We parked the Ferrari outside the Bra Bar. Mr. Catenacci sat on a bench a few metres away while I struck a pose in front of the Ferrari, my opening line to any woman within earshot being, "Hey, that’s my car." On the rare occasion that a woman would actually stop to continue the conversation, I’d rattle off more automotive details.

But the test quickly resembled a Yoko Ono concert: It started off badly–and then proceeded to get horrid. In fact, the first 10 women I approached zipped right past me without so much as acknowledging my presence. I was beginning to feel like the Hollow Man with a case of laryngitis.

Still, I remained in the blazing 36 C sun, small rivers of hair gel trickling down my cheeks; beads of perspiration forming on my forehead. I was trying to look Saturday Night Fever cool; instead, I looked more like one of the Butabi brothers from A Night at the Roxbury.

After the tenth woman completely ignored my soft-spoken approach, I decided to become more aggressive by standing directly in the path of three twentysomething women who were window-shopping. “Hey, ladies. What you’re looking for is right over here,” I announced, pointing with both index fingers to the Ferrari.

They stopped, looked at each other and, in unison, broke into riotous laughter. Every time I uttered another Ferrari statistic, they would howl even louder as they resumed their journey down Yorkville Avenue.

Undaunted, my next target was a woman in a pink dress, perhaps in her late 40s.

“Hey, that’s my car,” I said, pointing to the Ferrari.

“That’s nice,” she responded, without breaking stride.

“It’s a Ferrari F1 355.”

“That’s nice.”

“It’s got 380 horses under the hood.”

“That’s nice,” she said, whizzing past me.

“It does zero to 60 in 4.6 seconds,” I yelled after her.

“That’s nice,” she said, no longer looking in my direction.

My next candidate: a woman clad in Elton John-like sunglasses, white go-go boots and a multicoloured dress, complete with a small pouch for her pet Chihuahua.

“Hey, that’s my car,” I said.

“I don’t understand,” she replied.

“It’s a Ferrari F1 355.”

“I don’t understand,” she repeated. “Are you selling it?”

“No!” I exclaimed. “This is a Ferrari F1 355. Zero to 60 in 4.6 seconds. Top speed: 187 miles an hour. Three-hundred grand, baby.”

“But where’s the charm?”

“Charm? This car oozes charm!”

“I’m more into vintage Jaguars.”

“This car would smoke a vintage Jaguar.”

Both the woman and the Chihuahua gave me a quizzical look. “I’ve got to go now,” she said, disappearing into a swimwear shop.

A stunning brunette was my next target.

“Hey, that’s my car,” I said,

“And?” she replied.

“It’s a 1998 Ferrari F1 355.”

“And?”

“It does zero to 60 in 4.6 seconds.”

“And?”

“Well … er, doesn’t it turn you on?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t it, you know, get you excited?”

“No.”

At this point, she hastened past me at a quickened pace. I looked over at Mr. Catenacci. His face was buried in his hands. I felt like such a loser.

But my confidence rebounded when I caught a glimpse of a familiar face heading my way. It was the woman in the pink dress, the one whose only two words to me 25 minutes earlier were, “That’s nice.”

“Hey, baby, I just knew you’d be back,” I said.

“I had to come back,” she said. “My car–the little, lowly Honda Civic–is parked right behind you.”

“Oh,” I responded. “But you know, I never got the chance to tell you that this Ferrari has a top speed of nearly 200 miles an hour. What do you think about that?”

“That’s nice.” In seconds, her Honda was a blip on the horizon.

By 5:30 p.m., Mr. Catenacci suggested we throw in the towel. We climbed into the Ferrari and headed back to Leny’s Automega. I felt drained and dejected.

“God, what was I–oh-for-85?” I lamented.

“Hey, forget it,” said Mr. Catenacci. “The women there [Yorkville] are crazy. If we had done this [test] on Yonge Street, they’d have been all over you, guaranteed.”

It would be nice to think he was right–that we simply chose the wrong fishing grounds as opposed to using the wrong bait. But I doubt it.

Merging on to the gridlocked Gardiner Expressway–where a Ferrari is about as useful as a Fiero–it occurred to me that perhaps there really is no such thing as a babe magnet. Maybe most women really don’t care about high-performance exoticars. Even so, all I could think about during the long ride back to the dealership was the ending to Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s most famous poem–albeit modified–regarding another spectacular flameout.

Oh! Somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere men are laughing and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Yorkville–the mighty Ferrari has struck out.