If you've ever wondered what it would be like to date, marry or even have just a friendship with a celebrity, own an old sports car. The amount of attention celebrities and flashy cars get is absurd. And after five years of ownership of a 1977 Chevrolet Corvette I can tell you that owning one in the long haul is not all it's cracked up to be. What people don't see is the relentless heart ache that that they can foster not to mention being scary expensive to maintain and repair. One more thing, you have to completely comfortable with being the center of attention. It's that way with our Corvette and I can only imagine that our experience is taken to an extreme when you own a 1973 Ferrari 246 GTS.
People go "ga-ga" over the appearance of cars like this without so much as a thought to how well or not it performs. Much like the way they lose the marbles over seeing a celebrity regardless of whether said celebrity is famous for anything really tangible or not. Now, with regards to this Ferrari, you can't blame people for going nuts. I mean, look at this thing. It makes our Corvette look like a shrinking wall flower. In my opinion it doesn't get much better than this. Again, I make the comparison between our Corvette and this Ferrari because if we get an inordinate amount of attention whenever we take our car out for a spin I can only imagine what driving this would be like.
Then again this car should garner that much more attention than we get in our car given that this car is on the market for nearly $400,000. We paid roughly 2% of that, maybe, for our Corvette five years ago. I bet we drive our Corvette a whole lot more than the owner of this car would too; understandable given that a kicked up rock nicking the hood will drive resale value down tens of thousands.
So, what is a Ferrari 246 GTS anyway? Well, to make a long story short, they were the first "mid-engined" Ferrari's. "Mid engine" meaning their engines were placed literally in the middle of the car. Having the engine in the middle of the car is said to be the best way to distribute weight evenly; that bodes well for performance. What's more, they were the first Ferrari's to be powered by something other than a V-12 engine. In the case of our 246 here that's a 195 horsepower 2.4 liter double over head cam V-6 behind the passenger seat. The legendary founder of Ferrari, Enzo Ferrari, incidentally, was not a fan.
He was so much not the fan at first that he wouldn't allow them to be called "Ferrari's". He relegated them them to the discount rack and ordered them festooned with just engine nomenclature and the name "Dino". Dino was the nickname for his son Alfredo who was a lead engineer on these cars and who also pioneered it's V-6 engine.
After the Dino's most successful launch in 1967, when they were updated with a larger engine for 1969, the elder Ferrari allowed them to be called "Ferrari's". Grazie, Papa.
Only about 3,500 of these cars were produced between 1969 and 1973 and that, combined with their fantastic good looks and the fact it's a Ferrari, drives their meteoric asking prices. The best part is that these cars are actually terrific drivers and are said to be the best over all performing Ferrari's of all time.
High praise considering the near perfection of the driving experience of modern Ferrari's. Even if 195 horsepower propelling just 3225 pounds puts this car in line with the power to weight ratio of our Corvette. Sacrilege. Indeed.
In a world where people can be "Insta-Famous" and social media stars with having done little to be so, an automobile like the Ferrari 246 GTS can get very similar amounts of attention. The difference is, of course, this Ferarri deserves the attention it gets because not only is it stupefyingly gorgeous from every angle, it's, again, a magnificent performance car. By contrast, our Corvette, like social media stars, is nothing but famous. Trust me on that one.
Maintaining a Ferrari, just like a Corvette to a great degree, is not for the faint of heart. You can't just take one of these to Midas for an oil change and a brake job. Much like you really can't take your celebrity spouse or friend to a McDonald's for dinner. As far as getting attention goes, well, given that most people have no idea what this car is, my wife and I will stick with our Corvette. It doesn't perform nearly as well but if it gets the same amount of "oh wow's" from people, not that we bought it for that, we'll stick with it and save hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Ciao bella.
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