How Ferrari's Classiche department keeps the fire of Maranello burning

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Ferrari is Coca-Cola if Coca-Cola cost as much per millitre as Dom Pérignon. It is simply the most recognizable automotive brand in the world, the number one if-I-win-the-lottery choice, the “more than you can afford, pal” poster child. Even Lamborghini can’t really compete: for a biopic of Ferrari’s founder, Hollywood got Adam Driver; for the biopic on Lamborghini, Ferruccio was played by one of the side-character mobsters off of Tulsa King.

It’s a reputation steeped in history and, unfortunately, baptized in the blood of far too many fallen racing drivers. Keeping it alive requires more effort than merely adding a nod to vintage styling when designing a new model; old Ferraris must be immortalized, and at the same time they can’t be museum pieces. Which brings us to the baking heat of an Italian summer, and the ghost of Il Commentadore staring down from his farmhouse window as a parade of vintage Ferraris laps the company’s historic test track.

This is Corso Pilota, a program run by Ferrari’s Classiche wing, which aims to provide a dollop of company history from behind the wheel. All the cars are manual-transmission, covering five decades of performance, and the chance to lap the Fiorano Circuit, where every Ferrari since 1972 has been tested, including the Formula One cars, is a bucket-list item for any fan of the brand.

String-backed driving gloves might be a bit of an affectation for swanning around town in a Fiat 500, but at forty degrees Centigrade on the tarmac and hotter in the cockpit of a late 1960s Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona, there’s quite a lot of sweating going on, and the wood-rimmed steering wheel is slippery as an eel. In 1971, Dan Gurney and Brock Yates used a slightly newer one of these to run cross-country from New York to Los Angeles in just under thirty-six hours. “At no time did we exceed 175 mph,” quipped Gurney, which is the kind of quote you’d expect from the F1 champion who invented spraying champagne everywhere when you win.

Ferrari’s crest is, of course, a prancing stallion, the Cavallino Rampante that originated as the personal symbol of First World War Italian fighter ace Francesco Baracca. If you’ve ever ridden a horse, you already know that there are dozy old nags suitable for children’s summer camps; fleet of foot thoroughbreds; and, in ancient times, big, nasty war-beasts bred to literally bite the enemy’s face off. The Daytona is the latter.

But holy spicy meatballs is it fun. You wrestle it through a corner, hooking a thumb over a metal spoke for leverage as sweat-slick palms fail to gain purchase, then unleash that 4.4L Colombo V12 to a glorious roar. The exposed-gate shifter offers not the cliche of bolt-action-rifle precision, but the feel of clonking a railway switch into position. Whoops, we just solved the trolley problem by sending the tram rolling towards a bunch of McLaren F1 fans tied to the tracks. Mi scusa.

You get more peak power out of a BMW 340i these days, but there’s a ferocious theatre here, an orchestra pit full of twelve-cylinder combustion. They ran this thing for 24 hours at Le Mans, and it somehow won its class three times. Those dudes must have had forearms to make Popeye look like Mackenzie Crook.

A convertible Daytona (not a real one) appeared early on in Miami Vice, but the Ferrari most folks would be familiar with involves a moustache-waggling P.I. and a red targa-topped two-seater tearing up the tropical grass before making a surprisingly tidy transition to tarmac. Well driven, Tom Selleck—that’s harder than it looks.

Ferrari had a couple of Magnum, P.I.-spec 308s available here, both fuel-injected (GTS) and carbureted (GTBi), and the real shock was how sweetly delicate they were. Well, after the Daytona, getting punched by Jack Reacher probably would have felt delicate. The 308’s steering rack is 1980s slow, the ergonomics famously wonky, and the 2.9L V8 is only making between roughly 215 and 255 hp depending on application—the fuel-injected model has better throttle response, but less peak power.

Both are also a bit roly-poly compared to the way modern active suspensions iron out the ride, and there’s the sense that even an older, base-engined Porsche Boxster would slurp them down for lunch in terms of lap times. But, again, a classic Ferrari is about the theatre, and both 308s deliver. Snapping off a heel-toe downshift for the hairpin, then snicking up through the gears on a sweeping left-hander, is enough to have you mentally shopping for Hawaiian shirts and alarmingly short shorts.

Finally, a drive of a 550 Maranello, the last front-engined V12 Ferrari to be offered exclusively with a manual transmission. It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up. As the spiritual descendant of the Daytona, the Maranello brings modern amenities like power steering (with a very quick, dartily responsive rack), ABS, a variable traction control system, and air conditioning that actually works.

And, at the same time, all of the theatre of its barrel-chested ancestors. Here, a 5.5L V12 produces just under 480 hp, which is a large number that still doesn’t really explain the complete driving experience. The Maranello is a grand tourer, and it’s comfortable enough for that job, but the quick steering and the V12’s power delivery demand respect, while the metal gated six-speed manual turns every shift into an event. It’s fast and dinosaur-loud and terrific fun.

The instructor riding shotgun claims that the later 575M – an evolution of the 550, available with both manual and single-clutch automated manual gearboxes – is even better, but Ferrari built fewer than 250 of those with the stick-shift, as compares to more than 3,000 550s. The 550 is not what you’d call an accessibly-priced machine, but it’s well worth the price of admission.

Besides Fiorano, Ferrari runs several Corso Pilota events through the year, including at St. Moritz, where the cars run on snow. “That one,” my instructor deadpans, “I would work for free.” It’s hard to imagine the owner of a vintage 308 GTB hammering down the Don Valley Parkway in February, but the experience of sliding that Daytona around a snow course looks utterly wonderful.

The Corsa instructional cars are an extension of Ferrari’s larger Classiche program, which extends to full restorations for extremely special machines, as well as the ability to certify a car by going through the company’s archives. Before lapping at Fiorano, we were brought through those famous Ferrari front gates, and given a glimpse of the preservation efforts.

There were several eye-wateringly rare cars on-site, including a former 512 BB racing car that was being carefully reworked mechanically while preserving its track-earned patina. A technician fired up a 250 roadster, a multiple-time entrant in events like the Mille Miglia, in prepping it for the next event. There was so much irreplaceable sheet-metal on display, I found one GTO lined up with the rest, then another tucked away in a far corner like an afterthought. Ferrari only built 272 of those cars—making it five times rarer than an F40.

The archives are like something out of the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, red-backed binder after binder of basically everything the company has built. Laid out with white gloves by the archivists were examples of these records, dating back decades. Says here that a 365/4 Daytona was ordered by none other than F1 champion Niki Lauda, and he sprung for the optional air-conditioning. I can see why.

Also in the archives were the specifications for another Daytona, one currently being restored in the Classiche facility. It is as rare as they get, an alloy-bodied 365/4 road car that was found in a barn in Japan, where it had been sitting for decades. For years, this car had been whispered about among collectors, but its existence was not public knowledge. Ferrari’s records, its Vatican archive of relics, held the secrets of this one-of-one machine, chassis 12653, only emerging after the car was found.

The unnamed owner of this car – who paid just shy of US$3 million for it at auction, making it perhaps the most valuable Daytona ever – was thus able to authenticate the car to its original specification. The technicians, the art historians of Classiche, will bring it back to its former glory.

And should that owner not have come to grips with a Daytona before, the Corsa Pilota team will demonstrate how best to do so. Mastery of the double-clutched shift. The importance of proper driving gloves. A need to stay hydrated. Full throttle along the straight, past the house where Enzo once looked down, unsmiling but pleased, as the legacy of his name grew to its present immortality.