Mille Miglia
Ferrari 250 GTO
by Luciano Vittori
On a deserted mountain pass, where the road winds like a ribbon around the rock, number 2 stands at rest: a Ferrari 250 GTO. Few cars carry the spirit of the great Italian road races so completely — fast, rare and untouchable.
- TechniqueHahnemühle · Dibond
- Size100 × 75 cm
- EditionEdition of 24
- Price€995
The holy grail of Maranello
The 250 GTO was built between 1962 and 1964, and only some thirty-six examples left the gates of Maranello. Beneath the hand-formed bonnet lay the celebrated three-litre Colombo V12, fed by six carburettors, with a howling note that remains to this day the sound of a classic Ferrari. The 'O' in the name stands for *Omologato* — homologated for the GT races, for which Ferrari had to build a minimum number of cars.
On the track the GTO was all but unbeatable. The model won the world championship for GT cars three years running and shone on circuits such as Le Mans, the Tourist Trophy and the Targa Florio — the last of the great Italian road races, in the tradition of the Mille Miglia, which had ended as a speed contest after 1957. The GTO thus embodied an era already beginning to fade: that of the racing car you drove to the circuit on Sunday and won with.
Today the 250 GTO is among the most expensive cars in the world; a handful of examples have changed hands for tens of millions. Luciano Vittori sets it not in a glass case but back on the mountain road it was born for. The fresco treatment lays the patina of centuries over the red lacquer — as though the fastest GT of its generation had always been part of the Tuscan stone.
