Classic Ferrari Car Models

Although Ferrari sports racers were usually given more comfortable Pinin Farina touring bodywork, they still had a sufficiently strong performance to acquit themselves well in competition. But there were products from rival manufacturers which could outrun the Type 342, so Ferrari responded with the far more powerful 375 in 1954,and this was subsequently developed into the Type 410 with a 4.9-litre version of Lampredi's original Grand prix engine. Before long, this very expensive model had acquired the name Superamerica because of its popularity with wealthy American customers.

These cars were produced only in very small quantities, but there were still fabulously wealthy people who wanted something even more exclusive, so Pinin Farina (which became Pininfarina in 1957) produced the occasional one-off model with the massive Lampredi engine installed in the smaller and lighter 250 chassis, and clothed in the most exotic coachwork. This was the Superfast,so called because it was capable, in theory, of 168 mph (270 km/h), although, in reality, the lightweight chassis and transmission were incapable of handling the full power. But who cared? The Superfast was purely for show.

The original 250 series, based on the 166, 195 and 212, was a far more serious venture than the Superfast and led to the establishment of the 250GT line using a 3-litre version of the lighter and more compact Colombo engine, and a more advanced coil-spring front suspension than the old-fashioned leaf spring used before. These were, in effect, the first Ferraris to be produced in series to a standard specification. In most cases, they were fitted with bodywork by Pininfarina or Scaglietti, open versions being called Californias after their chief market. It was during this time that races for production cars, rather than sports cars built purely for racing, became very popular, with the Ferrari 250GTas the most competitive car available. Other marques were catching up fast, and by 1959Ferrari needed a lighter car, so an alternative' short-wheelbase version was produced, clad in flimsy ultralightweight bodywork by Scaglietti. These models typically adopted the name berlinetta (berlina being a saloon, and berlinetta a small saloon). Meanwhile, Ferrari continued to dominate sports car racing with a series of models called Testa Rossa ('red head') after the colour of the cylinder heads in their Colombo engines. (Red traditionally denotes the most powerful product of an engine maker.) At this point, the 250GTs were fitted with slightly detuned versions of these all-out racing engines.

During the heyday of the 250GT, sportscar racing was becoming so fast that the machinery could frequently outperform Grand Prix cars. Consequently, the regulations were revised from 1962 to make the world championship a competition for grand touring cars rather than pure racers like the Testa Rossa. Ferrari rose to the challenge by developing the short-wheelbase lightweight berlinetta form of the 250GT into the ultimate variant of this line, the 250GTO (the '0' standing for omologato, Italian for homologated, which meant that the car qualified for the new races). This machine, the fastest and most spectacular 250GT of all, was fitted with an uprated mechanical specification which included a Testa Rossa engine, and it also had a more aerodynamic nose. This revised frontend profile put performance before practicality and increased its top speed at the expense of cooling when it was standing still, but then nobody was seriously expected to go touring in the high-performance 250GTO, despite the rather misleading 'GT' part of its designation.

It was in 1967 that the first roadgoing Ferrari Dino appeared (earlier V6- cylinder racing cars having borne that name in memory of Enzo Ferrari's son Dino, who died in 1957 as the engine design was completed). The intention with this exceptionally pretty little midengined car was to compete in the lucrative 2-litre market established by Porsche. But it meant producing a car in much larger quantities than had previously been the case with Ferrari, so the aluminium body panels of the early Dinos - called 206GTs - were changed to the more economical steel in 1969, and the engine capacity was increased to 2.4 litres (as the 246GT) to cope with the resultant extra weight and to challenge the rapidly increasing performance of the Porsche 911S. A spyder version with a removable roof panel was then produced from 1971 onwards to compete with Porsche's 911 Targa.

At the other end of the range to the 246GT, great excitement was created by the introduction in 1969 of the 365GTB, a short-wheelbase 4.4-litre car with a top speed of 174 mph (280 km/h) that was to make it for years the fastest road car in the world. Everybody except Enzo Ferrari called it the Daytona after a great American race victory by his P4 prototypes; Ferrari proclaimed that it could not be called a Daytona because it did not fulfill all the criteria for a racing car. Enzo Ferrari continued, however, to produce seemingly endless variations on his touring cars, including the 365GTC/4, which was made between 1971 and 1973, before being replaced by the 365GT/4 two-plus-two. This car then gave way in 1976 to the ultimate four-seater, the 400GT, with a 4.8-litre Lampredi-designed engine, and the option of the first automatic gearbox for a Ferrari.

A 3-litre V8 version of the Daytona's engine was developed for a new Dino, the 308GT/4 two-plus-two, in 1973 with somewhat unpopular styling by Bertone. Solving this styling problem, in 1975 Pininfarina designed what was to be a classic adaptation of the original 246GT shape - the 308GTB twoseater - which was followed by an open-topped GTSversion in 1977. These were all mid-engined cars, of course, as all Ferrari's racing cars had been since 1965, like Lamborghini's Miura and Countach production cars (see pages 97 and 100). In 1984, true to its racing tradition, Ferrari built a limited-production competition version of the 308 called the GTO.

The Daytona became the last of the great front-engined Ferrari GT cars when it was replaced in 1974 by the Berlinetta Boxer (so called because its 4.4-litre, Colombo-based engine had been flattened to save space, with the result that the pistons moved backwards and forwards towards each other like a pair of boxers' fists). Later, in 1976, the engine capacity was increased to 5 litres by lengthening the stroke and increasing the bore. This extra power made the 512BB, as the new car was called, smoother and easier to drive. In recent years these engines have been uprated to fuel-injected quattrovalvole (four-valve-per-cylinder) form, with the two-plus-two bodystyle reappearing as the Mondial in 1981, and the 308 developing into the 328, while the 512BBi ('i' for injection) was replaced in 1984 by a restyled and more refined version, for which the name Testa Rossa was revived.