Thank Frankel it's Friday: Why I adore the Ferrari Dino

But it did, briefly, bring me to the brink of realising a dream, which sadly remains unfulfilled to this day. I got to within a few minutes of buying a Ferrari. It was a red Dino 246GT, apparently fully restored and bearing, if memory serves, a ‘FLY 246’ number plate. The owner wanted £19,500, which is about £50,000 in today’s money, or conservatively about one-sixth of what it would be worth today. There was nothing wrong with it, at least that I could detect, and I had the funds, so why didn’t I buy it? 

A call from my father, saying he knew he couldn’t stop me but would consider it a personal favour if I did not proceed. He was worried that it would cost me every penny I had – which it would – that I would not be able to afford to even to insure let alone run it – which I would not – but most of all he found the idea of his son, barely out of teens, swanning around London in a Ferrari faintly obscene.

Over 30 years later, I remain in two minds about this. As a parent of teenage children I can see his concerns exactly and am quietly relieved my offspring have neither the funds nor the inclination to attempt anything similar, but it is also true that not only would I have cherished that car, but that whatever it cost to run over the years would be as nothing compared to the money I’d have made on it. I would effectively have been paid quite handsomely to drive a Ferrari these last three decades.

But whatever the merits of the argument, my love of the Dino has endured and, indeed, been fostered by occasional exposure to various examples in the interim. The truth is that of all the road-going Ferraris that have ever been built, the only two I have enjoyed more were the F40 and LaFerrari. So I thought that as the Dino hits its half-century this year, I’d try to explain why.

I’ll not lie: the look was the original attraction. Pininfarina has designed many beautiful cars for Ferrari but the Dino is rare among all cars in not having a single angle from which it is less than utterly gorgeous. Small, pretty yet also purposeful, it is a landmark in road car design. But I also loved the racing connection, despite the original 206GT Dino being by far the slowest and least powerful pure street machine Ferrari ever made. Its engine, with its exaggerated oversquare dimensions, unorthodox 65deg vee angle and four overhead camshafts shows it’s a direct relative of the F2 racing engine on which Enzo’s beloved son was working with Vittorio Jano at the time of his tragically early death at the age of just 24 in 1956. Two years later a development of this engine would win Mike Hawthorn his World Championship. 

Mainly, however, it’s the way they drive. Everything about the interior, the dials, the switches, the exposed gear lever gate and ridiculous driving position simply reek of promise. Then you turn the key, pump the throttle and hear the V6 cough, catch and start to sing its rich, deep song. There are Ferrari V12 motors that don’t sound as good as this.

If ever a car was created to illustrate the fact that fast and fun are not the same thing, this is it. A modern Golf GTI would crucify it. But in the sound of that engine, as it soars towards its heady 7,800rpm red line, the feel of its steering, the action of its gearshift and composure of its all double wishbone suspension lies one of the most sublime driving experiences I have had in any car. And it was only a few months ago that I drove another mid-engined car – the new Alpine A110 – that possessed more benign on limit handling characteristics.

Slow though it is, the Dino is not just one of the greatest Ferraris of all time, but one of the greatest road cars. It’s the kind of car that when you felt the weight of the world on your shoulders, you could just go and drive, or simply sit in or even look at and feel the load lighten.

So I have never owned a Dino and expect now that I never will. But I hope still to find enough excuses to drive a few more before they cart me away. Put it this way, I would probably take my last lap in the F40 or LaFerrari, but were you to restrict me to the public road where such cars are unusable and offer me the keys not just to any road Ferrari but any road car, I’d probably take the Dino. As my final experience of what I love to do most, I can think of none better.