Last weekend, fiend Reader Mr. Lion jogged my memory about a certain car that I’ve always loved simply because it is so beautiful. (Forget actually driving one: they cost well over a million dollars, if you could find someone willing to part with theirs. Good luck.)
Anyway, here it is, the Ferrari 250 California Spyder, from 1958.
Ferrari made several variations of the 250 over the years. One of my favorites is the rather more conservative GTL Lusso:
Then there’s the (much) racier GTO:
I could go on, but there’s only so much one can stand, really. Your favorite 250 models in Comments, if you like.
I got a ride in a 250 GTO once- way before Ferrari’s had become ultra collectable.
Not the sort of car one expects to pull over for a hitch-hiking kid.
I think the driver was even more surprised when I identified his car.
“not many people know what it is”.
The thing that struck me was how plain it was inside- bare aluminum for the most part, with two leather bucket seats. One step removed from a race car.
In the day, they were referred to as “A Testarossa with a rug and a roof”. And, they were all “race cars”.
I once got to lay my eyes on a genuine 250 GTO, in full race trim. It was being worked on in a garage up in the high country here in Colorado, 40+ years ago. It was gorgeous. Didn’t get to touch it, though.
I’m rather partial to redheads, and the 250 Testa Rossa in particular.
Saw my first 250 Lusso at Bridgehampton during the Can-Am race (the “sucker Chapparals were there)
It was bright yellow and stunningly beautiful. Photos do not come close to showing the beauty of that car.
If there isn’t a company out there making copies of these bodies and dropping a Mazda or Toyota engine, I should start one.
If you decide to make Dinos instead, I’ll buy one.
Kelmark made Dino kit cars back in the ’70s. Like so many such kit cars, it was originally designed to go on a VW Beetle floor pan, with a Beetle engine in the back. Kelmark wound up building a tubular chassis, though, which took a Chevy small block V8 engine amidship, mated to a reversed Corvair transaxle, so you could have a true mid engine car. And since it was originally designed to go on a Beetle chassis, you could put a Beetle body on it, with that V8 in the back seat, usually enclosed in a van “dog house” enclosure. Heckuva sleeper car. The Kelmark GTs are still out there for sale second hand.
A few companies tried such a thing back in the 80s– much like those turning Fieros into Testarossas. Care to guess how long it took Ferrari to sue them into dust?
That’s been tried, and stopped, by Ferrari as a theft of intellectual property.
The short wheelbase California, IMO, is the best 250 ever. Even more so than the GTO. Every proportion on it is just exquisite. Even the 250 Testa Rossa, which holds my gold medal for the best sounding car ever created by man, is no where near as pretty.
The Cali, like its namesake circa 1958, is just perfect. If I ever had the bucks for one, it’d be the only one in the world with over 100k miles on the clock. I’d drive that thing 30 yards to get the mail.
All beautiful but give me the GTO and an open road. I’ll bring her back after I’ve had my way.
Always preferred the lines of the SWB CA Spyder over the LWB, particularly with covered headlights.