Veteran Ferrari on show
RACING DRIVER DROVE RARE MODEL AT HIGH SPEED FOR 1 500KM AT NIGHT
One of the most gorgeous cars ever built, the Ferrari 365 GTB/4 – also known as the Daytona – will be on show at this year’s Concours South Africa event, which takes place at Steyn City Parkland Residence from August 10 to 12.
This particular example belongs to Johannesburg Ferrari afficionado and racing driver Libero Pardini, whose Daytona is a 1970 model and one of six still believed to be in South Africa. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the model.
Between 1968, when the first Daytona was shown at the Paris Auto Salon, and 1973, when production ended, a total of 1 406 Daytonas were built. Of these, 1 284 were Berlinetta 365 GTB/4 (closed body) models, and 122 were convertibles (the 365 GTS/4 model, also known as Spyders). About 156 of them are believed to be right-hand-drive models, a few of which were sold here by South African Ferrari importers of that time, TAK Motors. It is believed that less than a dozen Daytonas were sold here in total.
The engine fitted to the 365 GTB/4 (and GTS/4) was a V12, following a design originally conceived by the famous Ferrari engineer, Gioacchino Colombo.
The four-camshaft engine displaces 365 cc per-cylinder (hence the car’s official name), and multiplying this capacity by the 12 cylinders, gives the Daytona’s cubic displacement of 4 390 cc. The engine produces 263 kW, running on six twin-choke down-draught Weber carburettors. The numeral 4 in the model name denotes that the engine is a four-cam design.
An unusual feature of the Daytona is that the five-speed gearbox is rear-mounted in an arrangement known as a transaxle. Power is fed via a torque tube from the engine to the rear-mounted gearbox, mounted in tandem with the differential.
The idea behind this was to give the car near 50-50 weight distribution, front to rear.
In the 1970s, the Ferrari Daytona was acknowledged to be the fastest car in the world, and was even listed in the Guinness Book of Records as such. It had an independently recorded top speed of 280 km/h and 0-100 km/h time of about 5.6 seconds, which is still not too shabby today.
Libero Pardini has owned a few Daytonas in his time. He bought his first in 1973 in the midst of the world’s biggest oil crisis.
“People told me I was crazy, they said I wouldn’t be able to drive the car then, as there were fears that the whole of the western world would have no oil or petrol. Everyone was selling their V8s and buying little Datsuns! I told them, well if that happens, I will be happy to park the Daytona and just look at it!”
The car Pardini bought was in Cape Town and driving it back to Johannesburg was an adventure in itself.
“Now, at that time, the national speed limit had been reduced drastically, to 80 km/h. And I’ve got 1 500 km to go. So I drove at 80 km/h for a while, then I sped up to 100, then 120, 140, 160, and soon I’m barrelling along at 200! I thought, hell, this thing goes!
“The next thing I realise, I’m about to run out of fuel, so I creep into the first small town I came to, just after dark. Another thing then, you couldn’t buy fuel after 6 pm in the evenings because the country was in crisis mode, and everyone had to preserve what fuel we had. So I went to the small town’s police station, explaining that I had just bought the car and didn’t realise how heavy it was on fuel.
“So the cop asked me in a rough accent: ‘What sort of car is it?’ So I told him it’s a Ferrari. He says: ‘You take me for a ride. I want to see how fast this car can go.’ I said jump in!”
Pardini duly took this policeman for a flat-out ride, then he was obliged to take another policeman for a ride, then another, and the upshot was he received a special permit allowing him to buy fuel over the weekend. And that was valid for any fuel station on the route back to Johannesburg!
“After that I was sitting at over 200 km/h the whole way, even 220 km/h. The thing is, no-one was driving at night then, there was no fuel and no traffic! So I had the road to myself. It was wonderful!”
Pardini is no stranger to high speed. He raced successfully in the 1960s, finishing second in the 1964 South African Saloon Car Championship driving a Valiant, and he once attempted the South African land speed record at Verneuk Pan in an imported Nascar-spec Dodge Polara.
Another great honour for Libero occurred when he was invited to Italy in 1997 to attend the international 50-year celebration of Ferrari.
He and his Daytona were flown to Italy, courtesy of Alitalia, and he and fellow South African Ferrari luminary Giorgio Cavalieri spent a glorious week amongst Ferrari owners from all over the world, at an event attended by the likes of Luca di Montezemolo and Michael Schumacher. – Citizen reporter
I took several policemen for a spin. They gave me a special permit to buy fuel.