WEST GREENWICH Pietro Petrarca was 15 when he started restoring old cars with his father.

That was 29 years ago, and he has worked on some 15 project cars over the years, restoring and selling them before moving on to a new one.

“I’ve always had a car in the garage,” he said in a recent interview. “I take my time with them, get a car that needs a lot of work, enjoy it for a few years and then sell it to take on another project.”

But now, he said, he has a keeper, a 1983 Ferrari 308 GTSi.

“I want to keep this one,” he said.

Three years ago, Petrarca traded a yellow 1975 Chevy Corvette convertible that he had fully restored for the Ferrari, which ran but needed some serious cosmetic work.

He said he was looking to sell the Corvette and had no ideas about what to buy next. He found a buyer in New Jersey through cars.com and took the car down on a flatbed. He said the collector had more than a dozen Corvettes in a warehouse, in addition to other cars including the Ferrari.

“The Corvette was in showroom condition, the Ferrari needed work,” he said. In the end, he negotiated an even swap for the Ferrari.

The car did not need much work mechanically, and he said the engine has only been serviced rather than restored. But the body needed extensive work with dents and cracked paint. While body work is his specialty, he said he took it to his friend Tony Maglioli at Euro Auto Body in West Warwick, who has “made it like it was new.”

“It’s close to the original condition as possible,” he said, noting that even the stickers under the hood are original.

Originally black, but now a lustrous Ferrari Red thanks to Maglioli, the Pininfarina-style supercar was the type made famous, along with actor Tom Selleck, in the 1980s television series Magnum, P.I. Indeed, the 308 GTB and GTS Ferraris are considered standouts, with Sports Car International in 2004 naming the model one of the top five sports cars of the 1970s. About 12,000 were produced between 1975 and 1983.

Petrarca’s fuel-injected, 3-liter V8 308 GTSi Quattrovalvole (4-valve per cylinder) pushes 240 horses and has a top speed of about 160 mph. However, Petrarca is an officer with the West Greenwich police force, and thus pushing the car on the public highways is not on his agenda.

“I love the handling,” he said. “I don’t like going fast.”

He said the car has 73,000 miles on the clock, adding that he drives it only 1,000 miles a year at most, taking it to shows and out on Sunday drives.

Petrarca said he wanted a sports car since the age of 15, and his association with the Maglioli family goes back to the first car he restored, a 1970 Chevrolet Camaro, which he described as “a rust bucket.”

He worked on it and said Tony Maglioli’s father, Enrico, used to advise him whenever he ran into problems.

“I’d ride my bike over to see him, it was about half a mile [from my house],” he said, adding, “The first one I did came out terrible,” although it “looked good.”

Over the years, he worked mostly on American cars — Camaros, Mustangs, Corvettes.

“It’s my hobby. I always had American sports cars, muscle cars,” he said. “To be honest, how could I afford a car like this? The only way was to buy something and work it up, 29 years of stepping up.”

He said he wants another project car to work on with his son, noting he has fond memories of working in the garage with his father, who died in 1991.

Indeed, the Ferrari may have been a good deal, but it got him into serious trouble with his son, Nicholas, who is now 8 years old. He said the Corvette has taken a year to restore and he had promised it to his son.

“This will be your car,” he told him and when he traded it for the Ferrari, “[Nicholas] was mad at me.”

He said when he told Nicholas that the car was Italian, Nicholas replied: “I don’t want to be Italian anymore. I can’t believe my father sold my Corvette.”

But Nicholas’ Italian heritage is only a generation away. Petrarca was born in Fornelli, a hilltop village north of Naples and west of Rome, and came to the United States with his family when he was 12 years old.

“My half-sister still lives in my parents’ old house,” he said, adding that he frequently goes back to visit family. Petrarca’s father had two daughters by his first wife, who died.

His father remarried, had four children — Petrarca has two brothers and a sister — and moved the family to the United States, initially settling with relatives in Coventry. Petrarca said it was hard assimilating into a different culture, especially at school.

But his parents emphasized the importance of education, and Petrarca, who serves as a school resource officer for the Exeter-West Greenwich Regional School District, has an undergraduate degree in management from Bryant University and an MBA from Providence College.

“My parents instilled in all us kids the importance of education,” he said.

He previously taught and worked in student housing at Johnson & Wales University — where his wife, Karen, works as an academic adviser — and as a portfolio manager at Fleet Bank. He is enrolled as a Ph.D. student in law enforcement management in the University of California at Santa Ana’s Distance Program.

“It’s completely, totally online,” he said.

He said he is in the final stages of his dissertation and hopes — “I cannot wait” — to be finished in December.

Petrarca said he always had an interest in law enforcement and enjoys his work as a police officer with the school district. He described it as “proactive rather than reactive” in terms of keeping tabs on kids who might be having problems and getting into trouble.

“I try to prevent issues before they become issues,” he said.

As for the future, Petrarca said he would see how his career in law enforcement progresses. He said he would rather retire with a partial pension and do something else than wait it out for a full pension if he felt his career opportunities were limited.

“My father was right,” he said. “Education does give you options.”

Auto Biography tells an interesting story about a car and its driver. If you think you have a newsworthy story to tell about your car, write to Auto Biography, Features Department, The Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St. Providence RI 02902 or e-mail projocars@projo.com. Be sure to put “Auto Biography” in the subject field.

The car doesn’t have to be a classic or expensive, but it should be somehow unique. The driver must be willing to be interviewed by a reporter about what makes this car special and to be photographed with the car.

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