Fiat Dino Coupe
£49,990
Would a rose still smell as sweet by any other name? This glamorous beauty may have the badge of a humble Fiat but it has the heart and soul of a proper Ferrari.
You see, when the Bertone-designed Fiat Dino was launched in 1967, it had, underneath its elegant bonnet, a Ferrari engine, a wonderful all-alloy, quad-cam 2.0-litre 65deg V6, good for 158bhp and 8000rpm and fed by triple Webers. Vittorio Jano had designed it initially for racing but, when later the company wanted to use it in Formula 2, it had to overcome homologation regulations that required at least 500 production units. Ferrari hooked up with Fiat and the engines ended up – suitably modified for production by the peerless Aurelio Lampredi – in this Dino, before going on to appear a year later in Ferrari’s own 206/246 Dinos and, eventually, in upgraded form, in the Lancia Stratos.
The engine may be a sonorous pleasure, and the steering and handling a delicate delight, but the Dino was ahead of its time in many other areas too. It had a fivespeed gearbox, for one, and it had disc brakes all round. Above all, it had brio, and although there was a Pininfarina-designed two-seat Spider version, launched a few months before the coupé, most acknowledged this four-seater as the better-handling and more solid car.
This example, plucked from the Pistonheads classifieds, is up for a smidgeon under £50,000 and has dropped in price since February when we featured it on this pages. A few years ago, you could have had it for a lot less, but prices have been climbing steadily for years, as word has spread how sweet they are.