1964 Ferrari Lusso

By Miguel Caparros

I look at the Pininfarina designed Ferrari Lusso 250 GT as not only the most beautiful Ferrari but the end of an era, the last great race cars that could be driven to the race and then home.  Available as a GT/L, sold as a road-going car and directly benefited from the successful line of Ferrari 250 GTs. It was developed from the dual-purpose 250 GT Short Wheel Base (SWB) which was delivered as both as a full-on competition or a steel-bodied grand touring car. When the SWB's time was up, its road-going version was replaced in 1962 with the smoother more shapely 250 GT Lusso.

Introduced at the Paris Salon in October of 1962 and created a stir of interest with its flowing proportions. Think of how other cars of 1962 looked, the Lusso became instantly recognizable. Slim, almost dainty roof pillars, a cropped tail and the unique three piece integrated bumper that foretold of things to come.

If you are a fan of the 250 GTO the Lusso shared many chassis and mechanics. By moving the engine forward they provided for a comfortable cabin with out compromise to the dynamics of the handling. When the GTO was no longer available many racers did like the owner of the car in this video, bought a Lusso and went racing.

Ferrari has always offered customers personalized building services of their production car and with the Lusso some  350 cars were built with the same steel body designed by Pininfarina and made by Scaglietti with aluminum doors, trunk and hoods. A few cars received custom rear end ratios, 5-speed gearboxes and competition spec carburetion and many more were modified after delivery. Custom body and interior alterations were available by Pininfarina, including faired-in headlights, extra vents and air conditioning, these factory modifications were rare.

We were fortunate enough to have both a 250 GTO and a Lusso at our store at the same time. For me two related cars could not have been more different. The GTO a retired race car that hat been slightly civilized for street duty where the Lusso had been outfitted with equipment for club racing.

The 250 GTO is a racing legend and it was built to race, Driving it on the street you are constantly reminded of that fact. The engine was finely tuned to give maximum performance and was not happy at much below 3500 rpm. But once on the cam and heading towards 7000 rpm everything starts to work as it was meant to.
The Lusso on the other hand, even in race prepared tune never lost its primary purpose, to transport two in relative comfort very quickly.

Driving Bill Harrah's Personal Ferrari Powered Grand Wagoneer

Intro and Photos by Steve Natale Story by Miguel Caparros.

While visiting the National Automobile Museum (Harrah Collection) recently, I saw many amazing historic and classic cars on display, but could not help with being infatuated with Bill Harrah’s personal “driver”. A 1977 Jeep Wagoneer, fitted with a 12 cylinder Ferrari engine. The “Jerrari” reflects the personality and creativity of the man who owned it, Bill Harrah. I mentioned the car to Miguel Caparros, and he shared his personal experience of driving this very special car years ago…….

The first time I read about the Jerrari was in Road & Track's Ron Wakefield's article August of 1971 issue.   I just had gotten back home to Plymouth New Hampshire from an all expences paid vacation by my former employer, the US Army. I had a lot of reading to catch up on so I startred with the latest issue of Road & Track Magzine. I saw something that seemed so wrong. There was a photo of this Jeep Wagoneer with a Ferrariesque nose and grill. Now at the time I thought what a waste of a perfectly good Ferrari in retrospect,  If I had Bill Harrah's finnacial depth I would have created outrageous stuff too. When we moved to California I had a list of things to do #3 was the Harrah collection in Sparks Nevada. In 1983 my friend Bill Duryea and I drove up to Reno from San Francisco,  I wanted to see the collection before it was broken up.  After Bill Harrah's death there was wrangling about the collection going on with the Holiday Inn who bought the Harrah hotels and the car collection. It was just business, They saw the sale of the collection as a way to recuperate money. 

I seem to have a talent for worming my way into places and meet the people that actually get things done. On this day I ran into one of Mr Harrha's son who was working on something of his own. I started to talk about the Jerrari, referring to the original 1968 Jeep Wagoneer with the Ferrari nose grafted on to the front that I had read about in 1971. He told me that car was gone and Mr Harrah had the work shop crew built another with a 1977 Grand Wagoneer. Bill and I were led over to where this very normal looking Wagoneer stood.

 At that point we were picked up by one of the shop mechanics and Mr Harah's son left us in some very capeable hands, as this was one of the original fabricators for Bill Harrah. He went into detail as to the problems and fabrication that had to be done to attach the Ferrari engine to the Jeep 4 wheel drive, and the unconventional dual radiators needed as the engine was much longer that the AMC V8 that was originally fitted. After chatting for a while I just had to ask, “Can we go for a ride?” The answer was sure "if you drive and buy lunch". Done! We headed out of the shop and besides the usual Ferrari noises from the engine compartment and a dash full of Stewart Warner gauges, it just felt like any other Jeep. We caught I 80 east bound towards Fernly, ant it climbed up the like no jeep I ever drove. I was able to hold 90 during the climb with out effort. We passed Fernly in no time and were now in the Plateu that leads to Bonniville, No speed limit from here, foot to the floor and I let the Jerrari strech its legs. At 140 you can cover ground like a private plane, Elko was cumming up fast. My new  found friend knew of a restaurant in Elko he wanted to eat at. The food and the altitude were taking a toll on my clarity so Bill drove back to Fernly foot plastered to the floor and hitting 150 on some down hill streches. We did go by a Nevada Trooper that turned on his lights and just as quickly turned them off, he either knew who's Jeep this was or figured by the time he got the cruiser up to speed he would never be able to catch the Wagoneer that had set off his radar at 150 +.

Follow this link to see the original Road & Track Photos and write up. 

Go to The National Auto Museum in Reno Nevada.

Steve Natale's Blog

Ferrari 365 GTB (Daytona)

Story, Video, and Photos By Miguel Caparros

One of the true automotive icons. The Daytona enjoyed a long tun being in production from 1968 to 1976. A true Super Car, even by today's standards, the 365 GTB/4 is a car that can be driven comfortably. The car designation from Ferrari was the 365 GTB/4 or GTS/4. The Daytona name apparently was atthached by the press in celebration of Ferrari's 1,2,3 victory at the 24 hrs of Daytona in 1966. A total of 1,284 of this incredible car were produced, Of that number only 122 GTS (Spider) were produced, the first 25 actually started life as Spiders, the rest of the were converted from coupes.

The US cars were slightly de-tuned with lower compression and a more restricted and quieter exhaust. That did not slow the cars much as they still were able to do 0-60 in around 5 seconds and hit a top speed of 170 mph. I can tell you from experience that very few of the U.S. cars stayed in the de-tuned state for long. The Ferrari 4.4 liter (268 CID) V12 was delivered with 347 HP. The Lampardi designed engine was nearing the end of its life, but it had been in production so long and powered so many race winning cars that tuning to 400 HP was easy, all it took was money. For those that wanted the ultimate rush, 450 horsepower was available. If of you thought breaking 200 MPH in a production 1960's car was unlikely, the slippery shape and a 450 hp Daytona could do it with ease.

There is no question that the 365 GTB/4 and GTS/4 are already in the extremely rare and a pricey category. Prices on these cars are in the clouds and have been so for a long time. A GTS/4 we owned in the late 70's sold in the late 80's at auction for 6 million, yes it was one of the 25. Unlike the similar Maserati Ghibli that is still affordable the Daytona sets the standard as the most Collectible car of the 70'S.

DeTomaso Mangusta

by Miguel Caparros

The Classics DeTomaso Mangusta 1967-1971 See the Video

The DeTomaso Mangusta was the predecessor to the now very famous Pantera of 1971. Although the cars are very similar, the Mangusta and the Pantera shared very few parts. DeTomaso had figured out early on that there was no way his small company could tool up to build exclusive engines and transmissions for his car lines. He instead decided to explore the limits of design and engineering that were to bold for Ferrari and Maserati who were the established exotic car manufacturers and at this point conservative in design and innovation. Innovation can sometimes lead to great success or to disaster, DeTomaso was chastised for the handling of his cars as was Lamborghini's first mid engine car the Miura. A few exotic tuners and I were able to tame the snap over steer problems with slight geometry changes to the suspension and by increasing the the rear tire foot print of these cars.

DeTomaso had decided to get a major automotive manufacturer to supply him with a light weight v8 to take his creations out of the realm of the limited production Four cylinder cars he had been building to becoming a manufacturer of thousands of high performance cars instead of hundreds.

The Shelby connection. In 1964/65 Shelby was looking for a replacement for his mid engine sports racing car, the King Cobra. Perhaps a relationship forged during their professional racing days from when both DeTomaso and Shelby were racing drivers led Shelby to consider using a version of the backbone chassis of DeTomaso's light weight Vallenlunga sports car. The relationship led to Shelby supplying DeTomaso with his high performance version 289 cid engine from Ford. The Shelby version of the 289 as used in the Cobras put out a very strong 306 horsepower. With additional Shelby modifications the 289 could put out as much as 400 hp.This power plant made the Mangusta a very serious performance car. The US version came with the 225 hp engine, and I am certain that the these engines were either modified or replaced with the more powerful versions by their owners. I can not find any facts as to how many cars were delivered with the 289 or the 302 cid engine. Just over 400 Mangusta's were produced and it is said that fewer than 200 survive today 

Check out additional related links for this story.

The Mangusta body was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro while he worked for Ghia.

Shelby's focus was drawn away from DeTomaso when Ford asked Shelby to take over the Ford GT 40 development.

Argentine born Alejandro DeTomaso Founder of DeTomasa Automobili SpA Modena Italy. Designer and manufacturer of sports and luxury cars from 1959 to present. 

See The Video