Ferrari Dino Baby Talk

Short Description
Thirty years ago, John Simister was tempted to blow his student grant on a half-share in a Ferrari Dino. He didn’t, of course, but will a decent drive in a fine example convince him that he should have done?

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Content
I nearly bought a Dino once. Half a Dino, anyway. You could buy a sad one for laughably little in the post-energy crisis mid-1970s, and a friend and I worked out that if we didn’t eat or drink all term we could buy a Dino with our student grants. Fortunately sense prevailed, so I stuck with my souped-up Imp and he with his BSA C15. Next time I looked, Dinos were out of Exchange & Mart and reaching stratospheric heights in classic car emporia. And with that realisation vanished any hope of ownership. Stratospheric – yes, the Lancia Stratos had a Dino engine too. Years later, in 2001, I drove a lovely metallic blue example belonging to Maranello Concessionaires before its collection got sold. What a delight it was, fluid and sonorous and groundhuggingly low, but frankly not as quick as I expected, despite the promise of a 2.4-litre, 195bhp, Lampredi-designed V6 in a not very big car. Box ticked, memory filed away. Maybe the Dino 246GT would have been faster had it been red. You know how cars can feel livelier, smoother, better on some days than on others, even though nothing has changed? The only variable in this is the human and his/her mood at the time. Given the importance of perception, then, it’s entirely natural that a red Dino should be faster. One way to find out: drive one.
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