This 1972 Ferrari 246 GTS Dino sold for $153,720 at the Bonhams Sports, Competition, and Collectors’ Motor Cars Auction at the Goodwood Revival on September 19, 2008.
Make a list of the 20 best looking sports cars of the last 50 years and it’s a fair bet that a Ferrari 246 Dino will be on your list. Undoubtedly one of the sexiest automobile designs of all time, the Dino has aged extraordinary well, with the model still looking like it could have been introduced yesterday. Pininfarina’s exceptional design has to be the main support for the Dino’s popularity, but the beauty is more than skin deep.
“A Ferrari is a 12-cylinder car”
Enzo Ferrari’s son Dino wrote an engineering school thesis on V6 engine design. The paper was the inspiration for a line of V6 engines that powered a series of Ferrari’s race cars. While the cars were built by Ferrari, they were badged as Dinos. The use of the Dino name on these cars is often attributed to a statement Enzo Ferrari allegedly made: “A Ferrari is a 12-cylinder car.”
The reasoning followed that because these cars had 6-cylinder engines, they couldn’t be called Ferraris. While 12-cylinder cars were the company’s specialty, 4-, 6-, and 8-cylinder engines of many configurations had previously powered Ferrari-badged cars, so the reasoning is not totally credible. Dino tragically died of illness as a young man, and it’s most likely that Enzo badged the V6 cars Dinos to honor his son and the engine he inspired.
The 246 Dinos came close to never being built. In the mid 1960s, the Formula 2 sanctioning body decided that F2 race cars should be powered by small-displacement, production-based engines, specifically, a manufacturer had to produce at least 500 examples of the engine. The Dino V6 engine was perfect for the formula, so Ferrari decided to go Formula 2 racing. It is logical to speculate that the production Dino was built to homologate the engine, but that’s not exactly right. Ferrari had contracted Fiat to build the Dino engines to Ferrari’s specification. In return, Fiat was going to use the engine in a special series of cars. This Fiat series would easily sell 500 units, so the homologation problem was probably covered without Ferrari building the first street Dino.
Sergio Pininfarina tells an interesting story that may be closer to the truth. By 1967 DeTomaso, ATS, Lamborghini, and Lotus all had mid-engined models. Pininfarina and some of Ferrari’s dealers felt that mid-engine sports cars were the future and pressured Enzo to build one. Mr. Ferrari was sensitive about putting high performance cars in the hands of low-performance drivers and felt mid-engine cars were not safe.
As a compromise, Ferrari agreed to build a mid-engine car, “not with a Ferrari, but with a Dino,” meaning not with a Ferrari 12-cylinder engine but with a Dino V6. This lowered performance to a level he felt was safe, giving Pininfarina the green light to start a project that would evolve into the 246-series Dinos. Little did they know this decision would fundamentally alter the future of Ferrari, as it later moved decisively into the world of mid-engined cars.
Everything you’d want out of a sports car
In a word, a 246 Dino is fun. It is light, agile, quick, responsive, and everything you would want out of a sports car of its era. Outside, the car is exciting without being intimidating. Inside, the interior is Spartan by today’s standards but with an artistic simplicity that complements the exterior. Turn the key one click and the electric pump primes the carbs, stab the gas twice, slowly push the accelerator down half way as you turn the key, and silence is replaced with a wonderful low-pitched growl that is distinctive to a Dino.
On the road, the 6-cylinder Dino engine is slower to respond to throttle input than the big 12s, and the best response is found above 4,000 rpm. Fortunately there’s plenty of torque at low speeds, so you don’t need higher revs for good performance. The noise level is high, but the sounds are so intoxicating, you would not want them silenced.
Great gearshifts and mid-engines do not go together, but the Dino’s linkage feels solid and precise. The second gear synchronizer is weak on many Ferraris, and the Dino is no exception. There are a few tricks that extend synchro life, and following them will make a big difference. Most important is to avoid second gear when the transaxle is cold. Another is to match revs when down-shifting, and double-clutching is always a good way to extend the life of the gearbox. The Dino is truly a driver’s car, and it is unfortunate that most future owners will put few miles on their purchases.
This Bonhams car sounds like a very nice but not top example. In May 2003, I wrote that $86,000 was “all the money” for a roughly equivalent car; boy, was I wrong. For this example, $153,000 is good money but not over the top. The best 246 GTS can pull over $200,000, and it is not unthinkable that in five years this one will hit that mark. Traditionally, when the stock market’s shaky, the market for collectibles is good. If anybody has any money left after this shakeout, you can expect more interest in collector cars. Dinos are as blue chip as collector cars get, so it’s my bet there’s upside on this buy.
