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The Ferrari Dino, their first midengined car, wasn’t allowed to carry the prancing horse, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a classic.
Nuovo Classico
When it first debuted back in 1967, the Ferrari Dino was such an outlier among Ferrari cars that it didn’t even carry the prancing horse on its hood. The Dino, with its mid-ship V6, was officially relegated to sub-brand status. Yet today, the Dino is fast becoming one of the hottest buys among classic Ferraris, rightly appreciated for its forerunning engineering, timeless body lines, and its rev-happy V6 ensconced right behind the driver’s ears. Below, we look back at one of the most innovative and under-appreciated Ferraris of all time, the Ferrari Dino.
The Dino’s V6
The story of the Dino beings ten years prior to its eventual debut. Ferrari had always intended their road cars as a means to an end, and that end being racing. For decades, Ferrari’s road car business had existed almost entirely to subsidize Scuderia Ferrari. In the case of the Dino, the racing side of Ferrari got to pay back their road car division.
Back in the late 1950s, Ferrari needed a V6 engine for F2 homologation. At the time, the V12 was Ferrari’s domain. Enzo Ferrari’s son Alfredo “Dino,” a budding engineer at the company, worked developing and refining the new V6 racing engine. The engine was posthumously dubbed the “Dino” following Alfredo Ferrari’s early passing from muscular dystrophy in 1956. The engine would not only be widely used in Formula One, Formula Two, and Grand Prix racing, but would lend both its power and name to a new midengined Ferrari, the Dino.
“Almost a Ferrari”
The idea behind the Dino was this. Enzo Ferrari’s emphasis on racing had long put a strain on company finances and, in the mid-1960s, Ferrari the company was looking for a way to better compete with rivals like Lamborghini and Porsche. Enzo was lukewarm on the idea of a midengined road car (he feared the average untrained driver couldn’t handle the tricky dynamics), but the successes of the Miura and 911 had shown the design was popular with buyers. Enzo relented with the caveat that the new car would be a sub-brand. Though it wouldn’t carry the prancing horse or Ferrari name, it would carry that of his son Alfredo and the V6 he’d helped design.
The Dino debuted in 1967 for the ’68 model year with a 2.0L version of the V6 transversely mounted just ahead of the rear axle. The V6 made 178 horsepower and 138 lb-ft of torque and came paired with a five-speed manual transmission which sent power to the rear wheels. Not only was the Dino the first midengined road car from Ferrari, it was also the first to feature rack and pinion steering.
The Dino was also a beautiful car. The design, by Leonardo Fioravanti of Pininfarina, holds up as few designs from the 1960s can. The Dino, even without a V12, was an impressive GT car. With light and responsive steering, an energetic V6, and mid-engine balance, the Dino put a new and unique spin on the Ferrari driving experience. The brochure for the car described the Dino as, “tiny, brilliant, safe … almost a Ferrari.”
Minor Evolutions and Details
The Dino 206, with a 2.0L V6, was produced for just the initial 1968 model year. In the following year of 1969, the Dino 246 GT arrived with a larger 2.4L V6, now making 192 horsepower and 166 lb-ft of torque. A Targa topped version, the Dino 246 GTS, was available from 1972 through 1974. In all, 3,569 Ferrari Dinos were built.
In addition to the mid-engine design, the Dino carried a few other unique features. For instance, the door pull is not the plastic door packet on the inside of the door that many mistake it for. Instead, designers included a small finger pull for closing the door. Since space was a premium in the interior design, rather than having full-fledged sun visors, the Dino has roll-out shades that suction cup to the windscreen. Among the many cool bits of aesthetics, the Dino’s rear window has a reverse warp, providing a good amount of rear visibility. The “flairs and chairs” option on the Dino provided factory enlarged wheel arch flairs (to accommodate wider tires) and special Daytona style multi-color seats.
A Classic Ferrari, Even Without the Badge
The Ferrari Dino might not have been a Ferrari on paper, but its soul is pure Maranello. The elegant yet muscular design would prove one of Ferrari’s most strikingly beautiful. The mid-ship engine position would pre-sage a significant evolution in Ferrari design that gave us legends like the 308, the F40, and even the new Ferrari 296 GTB.
