Finally cracking the Ferrari Daytona | Thank Frankel it’s Friday

If you are of a certain age, you’d have grown up with the Daytona being ‘the one’. Even if, like me, you’re a child of the ‘70s, the Daytona was still that car because the Boxer was usually eclipsed by the Lamborghini Countach in magazine tests so could hardly be held up as the greatest supercar of them all. It was a problem from which the Daytona did not suffer because, beautiful though the Miura was, it was much less gorgeous to drive.

I knew a few people who had them at the time: a family friend who called his ‘big D’ who promised to take me out in it but never did. My father, who owned a Plexiglas car which he drove once before selling, and the co-founder of Car Magazine, Ian Fraser, owned one which I think may still be in his family.

But I never got within a sniff of one, so grew up reading about them instead. Incidentally, the best drive story involving one was written by my friend, Mel Nichols, who borrowed Nick Mason’s car and put his thoughts down on paper in Car. If ever you wanted proof that all you really need for a good story is a fine car on a great road driven by an outstanding writer, that is said story.

This means that all the Daytonas (Daytonae?) I’ve driven have been in a professional capacity. The first was years ago, when Inchcape still owned the company that imported Ferraris into the UK. It had a few old cars, including a Daytona which I drove and simply couldn’t understand what all the fuss had been about.

It felt slow, wooden in its steering, truck-like in its responses and, while it did do that famous Daytona thing of getting better the faster you go, it was still a sizeable disappointment. With the only possible exception of the Countach, I thought it the most over-rated car I’d driven.

The second came much more recently. 2018 in fact, when I compared a Daytona to a 365 GTC/4 in an epic day’s drive across Snowdonia in a customer’s car and suddenly I saw its point. Sort of. If you wrung the last breath of performance out it – and you need somewhere like Snowdonia to do it – it showed a Daytona could be a wonderful device. But in the test I wrote I still gave my verdict to the softer, less powerful, two plus two GTC/4.

Finally, as recently as this May I wrote on this very site that it was: “Not a bad car by any stretch, just not quite as good as its reputation would suggest.”

Then, a few weeks back I drove Max Girardo’s. And oh my goodness. It was an early Plexiglas car which might explain a little of it, the fact it is left-hand drive possibly a bit more, but really I think it was because, while fastidiously maintained, it was the fact that it had never been properly restored that made the real difference.

Now, and at last, I understand what those who wrote about these cars when new over half a century ago were talking about. Even in 2024, this Daytona is thrilling to drive. It feels substantially faster than my memory suggests it should be, but far more importantly it felt lithe, supple, planted, accurate and the most outrageous fun.

Howling along rural roads with the V12 doing its thing, using the traction and balance afforded by the transaxle layout, gear lever snapping and scraping its way around that fabled open gate… Well, that’s what driving a Daytona should be all about.

But clearly it too rarely was. Still, it was good to discover that the car I idolised most as a very young kid really was as good as it was cracked up to be. Problem is, I almost don’t want to drive another now, because I don’t want to be reminded of how bad they can be, too.