Author's Note: As Epinions has greatly expanded their database on classic and exotic cars, I can't resist the temptation to share my love for some of the great cars of the past. This is part of an occasional series of admittedly self-indulgent remembrances. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing about these legendary automobiles.

-BI


Like wine connoisseurs, Ferrari aficionados have favorite models that aren't well known by the greater public. While the magazines and casual exotic car fans search for superlatives to describe the new cars from Maranello, the faithful who gather at a Ferrari Club meet hardly raise an eyebrow at a 360 Modena Spyder. New cars from Ferrari are almost always greater than the last but it takes time to see how they rank among the legends.

Among the tifosi few cars rank higher than the 1966-68 275 GTB/4 Coupe and GTB/4 S Spyder. It is an ending no one could have predicted when the car was new. Of all the periods of high drama in Maranello, none topped the mid to late 1960's. It began when Ford nearly bought Ferrari in 1963. But the deal fell apart over control of the Ferrari racing team and Henry Ford II hired Carroll Shelby-an adversary of Ferrari from a decade earlier-to campaign Fords against Ferrari at Le Mans. Between 1964 and 1967 this became the greatest blood feud in the history of racing. After the deal broke Ford and Ferrari came to genuinely hate each other and the action on the track was only an extension of a battle between two titanic egos.

Ferrari also had his hands full with the tractor maker. Earlier in the decade, Ferruccio Lamborghini-owner of a tractor factory that bore his name-began to build his own cars, reportedly after being slighted by Ferrari when he came to complain about poor workmanship on his car. (Only Lamborghini's trip to call on Ferrari is unconfirmed. Poor quality and arrogance were well documented in Maranello.) By 1966 the automotive world was abuzz with rumors that the upstart was going to bring the revolutionary mid-engine design only a few years old in racing to the street. So was Ford through another rival, Alejandro DeTomaso-who had brought nemisis Maserati back from the dead. Finally, the relationship with the man who had done more than any other to bring Ferrari wealth to match his fame was strained again. Luigi Chinetti had known Ferrari since they were men in their early 20's, shortly after WWI. He had brought Ferrari's to America and just as Chinetti made them the choice for the jet set and Hollywood elite, Enzo Ferrari made it abundantly clear he cared about nothing but the racing teams. Production cars only paid the bills to support the race program.

The 275 series was born into this opera. Launched in 1964 as a successor to the incredibly successful 250 GT and GTO series of road and competition cars, the first generation of the new cars failed to live up to the standards set by their predecessors. The styling by Pininfarina was bulbous and as undistinctive by any standard. Compared to the 250 GT it looked like an obese woman squeezed into a designer dress. The competiton models continued to perform well in endurance racing, but the faster Prototype cars ended their days of challenging for overall victory. Where 33 GTO's were made for competition only 17 275 GTB/C's found buyers.

In 1966 the 275 was sent back to the drawing board. Pininfarina sharpened the design. To make a second sexist analogy, the car emerged looking like Sophia Loren after a few months in the gym: taunt, powerful but still feminine in its curves. The appearance of power was more than skin deep. The venerable Columbo V-12 now wore dual overhead camshafts and the row of six Weber carburetors-an option on the first 275-became standard equipment. Power jumped from 239 to 330. When 12 buyers lined up for GTB/C Series II cars and took them to first and second in class at Le Mans in 1966, it seemed Ferrari had finally found a sucessor to the 250 cars.

The 275 GTB/4 was a smash hit for the image of Ferrari. Yet it was outsold-or perhaps simply out produced-by the more pedestrian 330 series by nearly two-to-one. Luigi Chinetti begged Ferrari to do something. He had battled with Il Commedore over abysmal quality and hideous color choices on the cars being sent to him to sell. And now he asked Ferrari to make 25 Spyder models of the 275 GTB/4 to sell in America. Ferrari refused. There was already a convertible to sell, the competent but uninspiringly-styled 330 GTS, and Ferrari believed Chinetti should be able to sell whatever was sent to him.

But in one of only a few times in his life, Ferrari relented and a small run of 275 GTB/4 S Spyders were prepared. The changes from coupe to convertible were minimal-no extra bracing was made to the steel space frame and coachbuilder Scaglietti made some cars as convertibles from the start and cut away the roofs from coupes on others. For reasons unknown only ten of the planned 25 cars were built, all but one going to Chinetti in America, where its buyers nicknamed it the NART in honor of Chinetti's North American Racing Team.

As stunning as the GTB/4 looked in hardtop form, removing the roof lifted it into another dimension. It is everything you think of when you imagine a post-war sports car-sleek, powerful and blessed with exquisite proportion and detail. Lines flow cleanly from one into the other and most important, as they used to say, it looks like it's going a hundred miles an hour when it's standing still.

And the 275 was the rare exotic that drove as well as it looked. Blessed with a broad powerband, the four-cam engine generated a strong, broad range of torque. Unlike the later Daytona's which were too powerful for the suspension and tires of their day, the engine of the 275 GTB/4 was perfectly suited to the technology available in 1966, 67 and 68. Run up to 8,000 rpm the engine makes that singularly Ferrari noise of whirring valvetrain and an exhaust roar that sounds like ripping canvas. It is one of the most beautiful sounds all of autodom. More than thirty years after the last 275 GTB/4 was made it is still considered among the very best driving Ferrari's ever made.

Until Tom Selleck and Don Johnson brought Ferrari's to television in the early 1980's, the NART also had the greatest star power. The first NART appeared with Steve McQueen in the original version of The Thomas Crown Affair. McQueen bought the sixth car made and developed an almost religious fervor for it. Other well known NART owners include Noel Blanc-who took over after the death of his father as the voice of Bugs Bunny and the other Looney Tunes characters, and designer Ralph Lauren. (These are only the most recognizeable names. In my research I discovered that a dinner with past and current NART owners would be one of the more interesting ways to spend an evening. Something about this car attracts people who have more than money to bring to the table.)

Ferrari ended the production run of NART Spyders after ten cars. But the demand in the US market for them launched the career of Richard Straman. As a young engineer and coachbuilder, he was commissioned in the early 1970's to convert a GTB/4 coupe into a Spyder. The quality of his work was so exceptional that other Ferrari owners came forward and several more cars were completed. Over the last three decades Straman has made countless cars into ragtops. One of the most recent was a Ferrari 550 Maranello, a car with strong styling and heritage links to the GTB/4. It is as spectacular as you would imagine. But once again Ferrari seems unconvinced that there is a substantial market for a ragtop grand tourer. The more things change...

-Brian Igo

Pictures of NART Spyders are rare even on the web, but I found one at this URL: http://www.c-wizards.com/ferraris.html