Ferrari’s NART Spyder and the man who challenged Enzo | Thank Frankel it’s Friday

But I want to talk about another Ferrari, of which there was just one on show, though all by itself representing fully ten per cent of its production run. This was the 275 GTS/4, better known by its nickname, the 'NART Spyder'. Although few indeed know its story, it is to me (and by a distance) the greatest looking convertible street Ferrari of them all.

The car owes its existence not so much to Enzo Ferrari but his US importer Luigi Chinetti, founder of the North American Racing Team, the most successful of all the Ferrari privateer teams. This was a man as strong in character as Ferrari and one of vanishingly few who’d take no nonsense from the Old Man. When at Le Mans in 1965, an emissary from Ferrari told Chinetti to make his drivers gift a certain win to an identical 250LM in second place because that car wore Dunlop tyres with whom Ferrari had a contract, while Chinetti’s was on Goodyears. Chinetti send a message back telling Ferrari precisely what he could do with his idea. Which is why theirs was a friendship unlike any other in Enzo’s life.

To the extent that, when Chinetti suggested to Enzo that his Stateside customers would quite like a convertible version of the legendary 275GTB/4 Berlinetta, instead of telling Chinetti to get back in his box, Ferrari simply agreed. The original plan was for 25 cars but for reasons some say being their phenomenal cost and others that they were so late they fell afoul of US emissions legislation, only nine cars ever found their way over there, with the tenth and final car being kept in Europe.  Which is where, a while back, I got to drive it.

It is said that you should never meet your heroes but by and large – though not exclusively – on those occasions when I did, I have usually ended up being happy to have done so. But I was worried about the NART Spyder, worried that the beauty of its looks could never be matched by the quality of the driving experience, that little engineering expertise would have been lavished upon the car’s design and that the drive would end up compromised as a result.

But actually? It was even better than I could have imagined. The car I drove was no show queen, but regularly used and came with instructions only that I should enjoy myself in it. Despite knowing that one had sold at auction as long ago as 2013 for $27.5 million, I was to put my foot down and keep it there.

Not often, but just sometimes in this job you really do wonder if you’re dreaming. And howling around a private test track in a NART Spyder of incalculable value was one of those times. Mechanically it’s pure 275 GTB/4, so comprising the ultimate development of the V12 engine designed by Gioacchino Colombo to go in the very first Ferraris. With its capacity now more than doubled from 1.5-litres to 3.3-litres and with four overhead camshafts helping tickle up to 304PS (224kW), it had all the power and made all the symphonic sounds you might hope such a car to possess.

Better, I have always considered the 275 GTB to be the first modern Ferrari, boasting as it did not just a four-cam engine, but a five-speed gearbox mounted in a transaxle location between the rear wheels with fully independent suspension at all four corners, meaning the Spyder could be relied upon to be as capable and rewarding in the corners as it was along the straights. To be in a car that stunning, that went that well and handled beautifully, and which came with that pedigree – to be driving it hard, within the realm of street machinery it just doesn’t get any better than that.

It's a pity more weren’t made, that it never became a mainstream model but Ferrari already had the 330 GTS on sale – less exciting both to look at and drive though it was – and was already working on its successor, the 365 GTS. Coming right at the end of the 275’s life and seemingly struggling the sell, the NART Spyder was never destined to last for long. That it exists at all is testament to the vision and tenacity of the one man who had the measure of Enzo Ferrari.

But really, the Spyder was just a footnote in the story of the extraordinary life of Luigi Chinetti, which also includes three wins at Le Mans, then last of which achieved almost single-handed, 17 years after the first. He deserves a column like this all to himself and, in due course, I will write one.