The Dino 246 and 308 GT4 Were Not "Less-Than" Ferraris — Revelations with Jason Cammisa Ep. 31

popular lore has it that Enzo Ferrari considered anything less than a 12 cylinder automobile to be not worthy of the Ferrari badge so popular lore deduce that Enzo must have somehow been forced into making a six-cylinder and then eight cylinder car neither of which were good enough for him to put his own name on it so instead he made up some less than name for his less than cars popular lore couldn't possibly be more wrong [Music] Enzo Ferrari's father was named Alfredo after the fettuccine Enzo's older brother was also named Alfredo after his father obviously and when Enzo was just 18 years old he watched both of those Alfredo's die from the flu so many years later when Enzo had his first child he named him alfredo obviously in celebration of his departed father and brother and then he watched that little Alfredo alfredino wither and die horrifically from muscular dystrophy when he was just 24 years old popular lore neatened have interviewed Enzo Ferrari to understand that there is no higher human form of flattery than naming something after someone you love or loved and lost calling these cars Dina wasn't an insult it was an honor and all it takes is spending a couple minutes with these cars instead of popular lore to figure out why they were worthy of the name Dina like [Applause] [Music] Revelations is brought to you by Hagerty Drivers Club which includes roadside assistance a fabulous magazine and discounts on your favorite car stuff there's a link up there click on it thank you for watching and now back to my regularly scheduled nonsense so much has been written about Enzo Ferrari but one thing remains remarkably consistent he was a prickly old son of a and I think you can understand why something else that stays incredibly consistent is that Enzo didn't care about street cars at all he was in it for the racing and in the late 1950s Ferrari was racing using a V6 engine that they called the dino named of course after Fred Flintstone's adorable little doggosaurus Dino wasn't just the sickly son of the boss after studying mechanical engineering he worked at Ferrari and was particularly interested in engine design it was Dino who pushed the company to build that V6 for racing though sadly he never got to hear the engine run but less than a year after his death the dino V6 wasn't just running it was racing and it later powered Ferrari's first ever mid-engine race car it was still racing almost a decade later when a sanctioning body rule change hit for continued participation in Formula 2 Ferrari had to build 500 road-going versions of that Racing Engine within 12 months 500 doesn't sound like that much but for decades Ferrari sales volumes looked far more like Bugattis than today's Ferrari building and selling 500 additional cars would almost double the company's annual sales that presented a serious problem because it meant Ferrari couldn't go racing as it turns out Fiat was looking at working together with Ferrari to produce a new engine for its Flagship Ferrari's pedigree would help Fiat Fiat and Ferrari working together would help Italy and slapping a bunch of Dino v6s in a road-going high volume Fiat would allow Ferrari to build them in sufficient numbers to keep racing in Formula 2. it was win-win win all those extra engines would go into the Fiat Dino Coupe and spider and later into the launch estrados but those are stories for another episode meanwhile there was something else going on in Italy it was called mid-engine madness which is why the kids working at Lamborghini were in such a rush to design the world's first mid-engine road-going Supercar another patient struck by the bug was Sergio pin and Farina who was also pushing Ferrari to make a mid-engine car for the road and in Farina don't forget had been responsible for the design of just about every Ferrari and to help persuade IL commandatory mounted the dino V6 right in the middle of a shoulder with styling cues taken straight from Ferrari's mid-engine race cars the dino Berlinetta Speciale was a non-running showpiece but was received with enough excitement that Enzo approved continued work on it and a year later at the 1966 Toronado show pin and Farina presented its nearly production-ready design it made a star but Enzo had a problem with it the engine was mounted longitudinally and that was never going to work for two reasons first of all that magnificent new mura had its V12 mounted transversely and Enzo Ferrari was not about to let ferruccio Lamborghini win the sideways engine game even though history would show that that was the wrong game to play secondly Enzo felt that his entry-level sports car should have a lot more cargo space and mounting the engine transversely would fix that and boy did it work hit it of course that change meant an all-new transmission design and it's the craziest thing this side of Olive Garden pouring cream all over noodles and calling it fettuccine alfredo hello Alfredo is made with butter no cream that's sacrilege anyway the engine's power comes out of the crankshaft like this through the clutch and then drops down using a series of three Spur Gears to the input shaft into the transmission which is located parallel to and underneath the engine untraditional but it worked great just like Olive Garden's food though afterwards Enzo asked for separate lids for the trunk and engine lest he be forced to see his son's signature every time he opened the trunk for the record the dino script was alfredino's own signature the transverse engine production car made its debut a year later and was called the dino 206 GT 2-0 for the engine size 2.0 liters and six for its cylinder count its construction was simple it used a tube frame to which aluminum body panels were riveted in addition to being Ferrari's first mid-engine road car and its first road going V6 this was the first Ferrari to use rack and pinion steering its suspension was double wishbones at all four corners and it had four wheel disc brakes meaning this was race car stuff for the road and it was an immediate phenomenon foreign rarely can a car Born In the Heat of competition have been so successfully adapted to Road use seven car magazine the 206 Dino stands out as one of the most advanced Grand Touring cars of our time [Music] Paul freyr the Formula One driver and very talented journalist called the 206 a revelation and since this show is called Revelations plural here's another one Paul freyr is the guy who popularized the quote from Enzo about a Ferrari needing to have 12 cylinders and anything less than 12 being less than a Ferrari there's a big problem with that quote though because by then Ferrari had already made four cylinders straight sixes v6s of 60 65 and 120 degrees straight eights and V8s in addition to the v12s and flat 12s Enzo Ferrari didn't seem to give a flaming piston skirt what the engine layout was so long as he was winning there's your revelation and by the way the little mid-engine Ferrari was definitely winning it wasn't just fast and perfectly balanced in handling it was also a different kind of Ferrari one that was attractive to young people the star of that show well it was the V6 the 2-liter made 180 horsepower and revved to an astronomical 8 000 RPM its cylinder Banks were splayed out at 65 degrees versus the more conventional 60 just to make more room for a straight intake tract despite the enormous width of those twin cam heads the crank pins were offset accordingly to give a perfectly even firing order and the exhaust were completely equal in length difficult to do when one bank is further forward than the other and the result of all of that was some of the most incredible music to ever come from any engine of any configuration the dino was quick too but there was a beetle shaped problem in its top spec trim the pesky Porsche 911s was even quicker so after building just 150 or so Dino's Ferrari hit the 206 with the displacement stick not to be confused with a delicious Olive Garden breadstick the show is not sponsored in any way by Olive Garden that we know of the motor was punched out to 2.4 liters giving us the 246 GT a little wheelbase stretch gave us some more stability and since the Formula 2 homologation requirements had been satisfied Ferrari could save some money by casting the engine block out of iron instead of aluminum and also welding steel body panels to the frame instead of those early riveted aluminum pieces the 2-4 was torque here and the extra weight didn't slow the dino down it could still hit 60 miles an hour in under 7 seconds and cruise at a buck 45. those were serious numbers in the day they're not quite World Records those were busy being broken by the Lamborghini Miura which was vastly more powerful and a lot more expensive the dino needed to rely on its handling to set records and that's what it did it recorded the highest skid pad grip that Motor Trend Magazine had ever seen and even though the Dino's Dino V6 was a racing unit the dino itself didn't actually race all that often except for one a white one that flat out won the 1975 Cannonball Baker C to shining sea Memorial trophy Dash known to you and me as The Cannonball Run owner and racer Jack May and his buddy Rick Klein competed the 2951 mile run in 35 hours and 53 minutes averaging 83 miles an hour and beating the previous record set by Dan Gurney in a Ferrari Daytona by one minute this despite getting arrested in Ohio filling a spark plug trying not to speed with cops on their asses for an hour in Kansas hitting three jackrabbits at 140 miles an hour in Arizona punching through a sandstorm and then getting lost in L.A God Bless America America as it turns out was a huge market for the dino it was a success everywhere but a particular sensation in the U.S especially in Target topped GTS form so when it came time to replace the 246 Common Sense would have dictated that Ferrari would have focused on the U.S market and perhaps made another beautiful little two-seater with a convertible from the get-go Well turns out common sense is just as accurate as popular lore because instead Ferrari did the opposite foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] GT4 nearly incited riots for 1975 it was the only Ferrari sold in America and not only did it not have a single Ferrari badge on its exterior it was um ugly their words not mine to say the automotive world was stunned would be an understatement because they were stunned three times first by how the 308 looked if the old Dino had been a curvaceous Sumptuous 1960s Beauty allowed to age gracefully into the 1970s well then this was an angular severe 1970s look at a 1980s wedge it also looked uncomfortably like a two-year-old Lamborghini and specifically the Lamborghini huraco which is because both cars were designed by Marcelo gandini at bertona the world was stunned a second time by the 308's packaging in a body just two inches longer than the 246s gandini had managed to stuff in a 90 degree V8 where a 65 degree V6 had barely fit still had room left over for a back seat but the third shock was the biggest shock of them all and that was at the 308 was just as good to drive as the original Dino first and foremost the praise came from the engine by Ferrari's naming strategy 308 meant a 3.0 liter V8 and this one wasn't but it was a 2.9 liter and it hauled absolute ass four of them in fact each one with a seat belt there were a few comments in the Press about how it didn't sound like a V8 and instead sounded like a Lotus four-cylinder this is hilarious this is the first modern flat plane crankshaft V8 the engine that we associate most with Ferrari today but back then they didn't know what to make of all that strange noise what does it mean well it means revs revs and more revs this thing pulled to 7 700 RPM and it made more than just weird noises it made Power 255 horsepowers which is the Italian measurement for horsepower that largely has nothing to do with actual horsepower that Firepower in a body that weighed only 250 pounds more than the 246s meant even more speed at a time in the emissions choked mid-1970s when everything else was getting slower by the second 0-60 in six and a half seconds mid-14s through the quarter and everyone seemed to agree that it felt even faster because the V8 had insane Torque from idle to redline unlike the Cami V6 with which it shared nothing I am so sick of reading incorrect drivel on the internet look the 65 degree Dino V6 was its own thing this V8 was a development of the four cam highest output version of the Columbo V12 from the Daytona down to its identical bore and stroke except this made even more power per cylinder everything other than the engine though was similar to the smaller Dino same wacky Boomerang transmission design similar frame and construction identical brakes steering and suspension just with an 8 inch wheelbase stretch that gave the car its other defining characteristics a ride so smooth it could shame a Rolls-Royce engineer out of the gate the praise was off the charts and over time it got better and better as people got used to this new shape and stopped thinking of this as Gen 2 of Dino 246 the 308 sold really well but one problem remained the only Ferrari ever designed by Bertone just didn't look like a Ferrari that particular issue was solved a few years later when the gt4's engine and mechanical bits found their way back into a pin entering a design body the droppingly gorgeous 308 GTB which was the first in the line of mid-engine flat plane crank V8 powered two-seat sports cars that have defined Ferrari since so if you define a Ferrari by its engine as Enzo would have the first chapter of the Ferrari Road car was the V12 and the second chapter was unquestionably that of the flat plane crank V8 that chapter began here if instead you see Ferrari as defined by its cars shapes as many customers do its first chapter was the front engine GT its second chapter was unquestionably the mid-engine sports car and that started here which means that no matter how you look at Ferrari it's second generation of road cars was spurred on by and then named after Enzo's own second generation when Enzo Ferrari found out he was gonna have a baby he quit his racing career forever this to help ensure that his son wouldn't grow up with a dead father instead Enzo had to grow old with a dead son he never stopped mourning Dino he wore a black necktie dark sunglasses and visited his son's gravesite every day I never thought a son could leave his father a legacy but my son did your popular lore told you these cars were named because they were less than when instead they were a legacy be careful what you learn on the internet aren't you on the internet oh and while we're on that subject Alfredo Ferrari was absolutely not named after fettuccine alfredo he was named after fettuccine alfredino the smaller lunch size portion see what I mean [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Hagerty

Views: 564,209

Keywords: camisa, camissa, enzo ferrari, Paul frere, 308 Dino, 206 Dino, 308 GTB, 308 GTS, Ferrari 348, Flat plane crank, fpc, gated manual, dogleg, pov, sound, noise, engine, engine layout, transmission, history, backstory, documentary, muscular dystrophy, Enzo's son, FIGLIO, 365 GTC/4, Ferrari Daytona, Pininfarina, Lamborghini Miura, Muira, Miura, Lamborghini, mid engine, MR, v8, v6, 65 degree, crankshaft, bertone, marcello gandini, gandini, Uracco, top gear, gordon murray, cammissa

Id: Fx8u7uqNmhE

Length: 20min 18sec (1218 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 06 2023