There's just something about a Ferrari, and I can't quite put my finger on it.

Several are on display at this weekend's Central California Auto Show at the Fresno Convention Center, thanks to Fresno businessman Marvin Rose. Rose, an insurance agent who also sells exotic sports cars via the Internet, is providing a cadre of his inventory for car show visitors to drool over in Valdez Hall.

Even though they're outnumbered by a range of hybrids and other fuel-sipping vehicles from the more mainstream manufacturers, Rose's exotics -- a seven-car lineup easily worth over $1 million -- are likely to be the stars of the show, especially given the absence of futuristic concept vehicles at this year's event.

These are, after all, cars you don't generally see tooling around every day on Fresno streets. The three Ferraris -- a black Scuderia Spider (above), a maroon 559 GTB and a bright-red California Spider -- are joined by a pair of Ford GTs, a Dodge Viper Shelby (left) and a Lotus Exige.

Rose not only buys and sells these high-end exotics, he's also a collector. They're a far cry from his first car, a 1952 Studebaker, but he got hooked on performance cars when he bought a 1987 Ferrari Testarossa.

But his enthusiasm peaks when he talks about the Dodge Viper, which he said represented a resurgence of the American muscle car when it debuted in 1992.

"I've owned a couple of Ferraris and Porsches," he said today as he moved his cars into place in Valdez Hall. "But what turned me from them was the Viper [because] for 20 years we really didn't have any high-performance cars made in America."

Automakers sapped much of the power from muscle-car nameplates after the fuel crisis of the early 1970s. After a brief resurgence from such American cars as the Viper and Chevrolet's Corvette in the last few years, Rose predicts the same thing will happen again in the coming year or two. "And I don't ever see it coming back in America," he said.

He's not sure what will happen to his beloved Viper, now that Chrysler has been taken over by Italian automaker Fiat -- which also owns Ferrari. If the American performance car falls by the wayside of history, Rose said he expects the niche to be filled by European makes like Ferrari, Lambourghini, Maserati and Mercedes Benz.

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There's one European import that Ford hopes will become a hit on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. It's the Ford Fiesta, a "new" subcompact that sits at the far end of the affordability spectrum from Rose's Ferraris.

Ford won't formally reintroduce the Fiesta to the American market until a major Los Angeles auto show in December, and it won't be available in U.S. showrooms until next summer. But the automaker has trucked several of the European models to Fresno for this weekend's car show to whet people's appetites with test drives.

Angela Arrington (right), a college student from Fresno, was one of several dozen "Fiesta agents" nationwide chosen to receive a Fiesta for the Fiesta Movement, a six-month guerrila-marketing campaign conducted via social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

"I love it. I don't want to give it back," Arrington said today at the show's Fiesta Ride-and-Drive station. She'll have to return the car in December.

The Fiesta was originally marketed in the U.S. between 1978 and 1980. It was an unimpressive little car, small and boxy, and it was eventually replaced by the Ford Escort. But the Fiesta remained popular in Britain, evolving through several increasingly stylish generations.

Arrington said her father continued to follow the Fiesta in its European years, prompting her to apply to be a "Fiesta agent" for the American relaunch. She said she ordered her Fiesta -- nicknamed "Chick Pea" for its bright green color -- with pink flower decals in an unsuccessful effort to dissuade her father from wanting to drive it.

"He drives it anyway," she said. "He says, 'It takes a real man to drive a car with flowers on it.' "