Exotic Car Marketplace

On Ferrari Friday’s, William Ross from the Exotic Car Marketplace will be discussing all things Ferrari and interviewing people that live and breath the Ferrari brand. Topics range from road cars to racing; drivers to owners, as well as auctions, private sales and trends in the collector market.

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Episode 15

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Ferrari Marketplace.

As you can see, I’m trying to get a little more regular about this and schedule Tuesdays for, uh, drop the new, uh, episodes here. So, I’m getting a little more diligent about things. I know I kept saying that in the past, but hey, you know what? Try and get what I ain’t done, get done, right? You know, so lots of things going on.

So, but, trying to get a little more structured here and everything like that so I can get some more of these things out. And, uh, kind of get some more stories out there, some more histories, some more backgrounds, some more of my [00:01:00] opinions. Hey. And if you guys ever want to shoot some of yours out there, just let me know.

You know how to get ahold of me, William at the FerrariMarketplace. com. So today’s episode, what we’re going to talk about is probably the sexiest car ever made. In my opinion. It’s up there in the top five, at least if it’s not one or two. And it’s definitely probably the sexiest Ferrari ever built. In my opinion, I could be wrong.

Other people have that. You know, hey, it’s everyone’s own choice. But in my mind, I think it is. And as you can tell from the title, we are talking about the Ferrari 330 P3, that sexy, beautiful car from back in the late 60s, uh, mid late 60s that, uh, they built up to start tackling to go against the GT 40s, uh, that were coming and started wanting to dominate.

So yeah, Lamar. So [00:02:00] As everyone knows the story of Ford versus Ferrari, everything like that, you know, um, you know, Ford, you know, old, uh, the deuce wanted to buy Ferrari because Ferrari was up for sale, he was in money troubles and have, you know, he was trying to, you know, sort himself out, but, you know, and so what he, he really didn’t care about the road car division, obviously, as everyone knows, he was more, hey, about his racing car.

That’s what his love and his passion was. He built road cars just to fund his racing. But anyways, guys. So after that deal collapsed ever so historically and very, very well known now and how everything went down it, I’m sure there are tidbits of that story that we will never know because everyone involved had or deceased.

So, but I mean, talk about wanting to be a fly on the wall in those meetings and everything that went on, you know, that would have been just unbelievable to know the actual true story of how things really kind of went down in the offices or discussions and what have you. You know, it’s all coming from third, fourth, fifth priority, what have you.[00:03:00]

So, and it’s, I’m sure it’s got diluted and watered down and you know, the old telephone storyline thing is by the time it gets to everyone, it’s been, you know, got 10 different versions of the story, but anyways, as we know, you know, Ford brought, started bringing, you know, the GT forties and, uh, to start racing in the FIA world championship, sports car championship.

And, you know, they weren’t doing too hot right after getting that big problems, everything like that. And as everyone knows, cause Ford, you know, tried to do it and that’s when they turned everything over to Carroll. So, but, so anyways, in 1966 is when some real big changes happened in the World Sports Car Championship.

Now, since 1962, it’s been pretty much decided by production of Brace Grand Touring Cars, i. e. like the 250 GTO and what not. So, but, they also, starting in 1966, is they actually implemented You know, that they can’t, you know, purpose built machinery could contest a limited number of the world championship events.

Uh, and those points [00:04:00] would go toward a separate championship for the prototype machinery. Now, that all changed in 66 though, when the FIA new appendix J regulations were ushered in. Now, the main event for everything and the manufacturer championship decided by group 6 prototypes split into over and under 2 liter classes.

Group 6 had no minimum production requirements and the championship would be contested over 7 races, 8 in the case of the under 2 liter cars. Now running simultaneously at most events and with some stand alone events for the smaller engine cars was the International Sports Car Championship for Group 4 cars.

Now to qualify for Group 4 a manufacturer had to build 50 examples of the vehicle. We wanted a race. The 3 Group 4 classes were for under 1300cc machinery. Those with engines between 1301 and 2000 and then those who’s placing over 2000, 2000 cc’s, right? Now, the Group 3 Grand Touring cars were still permitted to [00:05:00] run at most events, but were no longer eligible for the championship points significantly.

Minimum production requirement had been hiked from 100 to 500 vehicles. Now, the premier over 2 liter class of the 1966 Manufacture Championship for the Group 6 prototypes, here, comprises of these races. 24 Hours of Daytona, the Sebring 12 Hours, The Monza 1, 000 kilometers, the Targa Florio, Austin Race, the Spa 1, 000 kilometers, the Nurburgring 1, 000 kilometers, and the Le Mans 24 hours.

However, only the best four results would actually count towards their final points tally. Which is pretty good, I mean, so you can knock out, you know, a couple of your worst events. Which could come in handy, except if, you know, you were doing good in all of them. So, but that, that’s kind of an interesting approach to it.

And, you know, just, hey, out of your, out of those, it was just your best four points that actually went towards the championship. Now, to tackle this growing, uh, threat from Ford in their GT40s, you know, obviously they were [00:06:00] tweaking, refining those cars. Ferrari created the new 330 P3. That gorgeous car, a piece of machinery.

Now, The three, the P three was reserved strictly for use by the works teams while Ferrari satellite squads, you know, probably by their distributorships, I, you know, like n and stuff like that, they would be supplied with p twos that been, had brought up, been brought up to a P two slash three specification, which ran less complex single overhead cam shaft engines.

So just a little simpler motors in the cars. And you know, they, they did all right, but hey, you know, hey Ferrari’s, the work squads didn’t wanna have, you know, something going against them. So anyways, so they also came out with a, uh, uh, an under two, uh, under two liter coup four challenge for 1966 the Dino 206 S which had very similar look and feel to it as the 330 P3s but you know obviously smaller [00:07:00] engines, what have you, a bit smaller size.

Now both the P3 and the Dino’s were unveiled at the press, at the Marinello’s press conference in 19, February 1966. Now, unfortunately those labor strikes were paralyzed either at the time, which led to Friar to attend. The first five races of 66 was just a a single P three entry while the ambitious 50 car ho allegation target for the Dino 2 0 6 never came close to being achieved because of all the labor strike and everything in Italy as people, you know, you’re a history person, B, whatever, and that wasn’t just the car industry, but just labor in general.

You know, they were paid absolutely crap. They were probably working 12, 14 hour days, six. Possibly seven days a week. I mean, they just took advantage of these people beyond belief and these people needed to, you know, Hey, they got to pay their bills, keep a roof over their head, feed their families and everything like that.

So now the new P3 was based around a new, uh, T boat 603 tubular steel space frame [00:08:00] chassis, you know, it’s reinforced with aluminum monocoque effect. Now it had about a 2400mm wheelbase that was carried over from the P2. You know, the engine and the gearbox were now, you know, integral part of the structure.

Stressed member of the structure. Now along with the bonded fiberglass underside that extended into the rocker panels, as a consequence of all this, the torsional rigidity was much improved. So, you had a much, much better handling car. Much stronger, more rigid, as everyone knows. The more stiffer the car is, the better you can make that thing go.

So the suspension was pretty similar to the P two. You know, unequal leak, uh, equal length, wishbone coil springs, touchable stocks, anti-roll bars, you know, the standard stuff, you know, and they had vented disc brakes that were spied by Gurley, uh, mounted inboard of the rear differential at the rear. So, you know, kind of standard stuff going.

They had the 15 inch interlock, uh, wheels. And then you run on, uh, Firestones though instead of the dunlops, which was kind of an interesting switch. [00:09:00] And they had a 57 liter fuel tank. It was housed in each sill that so. Two gas tanks, capacity, almost basically around 114 liters. That’s how that math works.

So the engine, let’s get to that. Now the engine, the heart of this beast. You know, it’s a dry sump, 4 liter, direct overhead camshaft, 63 V12. You know, Colombo design and lineage. Now unlike the P2, Which had used both 3. 3 and 3 point, uh, 275 and, uh, 330 engines. The P3 only ever ran with a 4 liter power unit.

Now the P3’s, uh, motor was the first engine from Miller Ellis to feature, uh, feature Lucas fuel injection. As opposed to the Webber’s that they had been using in the past. So that kind of was a big jump, I guess you’d say, technology going from, you know, fuel injection from carburetors. So it also came with twin spark ignition.

You know, some lightweight cylinder heads and higher compression ratio. Not a lot, but a little bit. You know, displacement was all the way up to 3, 967 cc’s thanks to an unchanged [00:10:00] bore and stroke was basically the same as 77 by 71. Now peak output put this baby at 420 horsepower. Now imagine that, that car was light.

You know, there wasn’t much there. So, 420 horsepower, I mean it doesn’t sound like a lot, but remember you had a car that weighed probably under 2, 000 pounds easily. Um, you know, there wasn’t much there. So it’s just a 5 speed tranny, you know, uh, bore quarter. Uh, I’m sorry, not a BorgWarner. My bad. Uh, but just a standard 5 speed, uh, Tipo 593 gearbox.

I don’t know why I said BorgWarner. I don’t mean as soon as I immediately see a trans, talk about transmissions, that means you’ve jumped to a BorgWarner from back in the day. So, that’s just me. My apologies. Hey, what can you do? Now the bodywork was actually an evolution from the P, uh, the P2 from 65. You know, they had, uh, you know, the front car has a nice wide, wide oval intake.

They’re here, you know, uh, housed. Some brake ducts, you know, to keep those brakes nice and cool and, you know, stacked headlights under some [00:11:00] plexiglass covers, you know, dome windscreen, you know, gave a great view out the front. You could, you know, have great vision, what’s going on around you, especially in front of you.

And, there was also a roofless Spyder variant, um, that was created, uh, for that also. So, they had a couple different versions. You had the hard, you know, Spyder, Berlinetta, everything. So, anyways. You got some cooling slots, everything cut in, you know, um, by the sills from the doors behind the rear wheels where, you know, the tail was, you know, not anything crazy, you know, back then they really weren’t getting in all those wings and all that kind of stuff, so, but, all these, uh, body panels were fabricated from some real thin gauge aluminum, you know, obviously to keep that lightweight down and if you ever had to show or something, don’t ever even like put your hand on it because they’ll just basically, it’ll dent those cars.

So, you know, And per regulations, you had to have the two seats, so you had two tiny seats stuck in there. Um, so to keep everyone in, [00:12:00] and I don’t know, I mean obviously you can go for a ride in the passenger seat, but obviously it wasn’t meant to have someone in there while they were racing. And every P3, which is interesting, was all built in right hand drive with a right hand gear change.

So, they had it on the right hand drive, but, which I always thought was interesting, because you know, you see these cars that, you know, England, everywhere they got, you know, a right hand drive car. You know, your gear selector is always in the center, but if you look at all those cars back in the day that were right hand drive, you look at the Porsches, you know, they were the same weight, 917 and all that stuff.

They had the gear selectors on the right, so the gear was going down the sill, so it was kind of interesting. You know, and weight, 850 kilograms. So, do your adjusted math, yeah, it’s under 2, 000 pounds. I think my math is correct on that. Again, if I’m wrong, I apologize. Metric system and kilograms and all that stuff.

You know, I’m American, what do I know? So doing those things over like that. So the beautiful thing that had the top speed, not quite 200 [00:13:00] miles an hour, they could probably top out about 1 92 to 1 93 depending on, you know, that day temperature and what have you. And you know, obviously again, you know by the day, but you could still get under, you know, in under four seconds, up to 60 miles an hour.

So production on these Ferra one built three examples of the P 3 4 66. So we had Chassis 0844 that was a Berlinetta that contested at Monza, Spa, and Le Mans. You had Chassis 0846 that was a Spyder that contested four races. That was Sebring, the Targa Florio, the Neuberger Ring, and Le Mans. And another Berlinetta of 0848 was another, but it only contested at Le Mans.

So for 66, they had a great set of, you know, employed some awesome drivers. Everyone’s going to know these names in 66. You know, Mike Parks, John Surtees. Ludovico Scarfiati, Nino Vaccarella, Lorenzo Bandini, Jean Guillet, Pedro Rodriguez, Bob [00:14:00] Bondurant, Mario Cassoni, you know, and they would, uh, go out there and challenge the Ford and Chaparral’s team and take it to them.

Now Ford only announced in 1966 the championship in their MK2 GT40, and those were just the 24 hours of Daytona, the 12 hour of Sebring, 24 hours of Le Mans. Now, by contrast, Ferrari was going to attend every race by the season over Daytona. Just because I, I, there was something there, but now I don’t think the car is ready to get it over there so they didn’t bother.

But that was that infamous one where, you know, Ford took 3, uh, and 5th. Uh, but the best place Ferrari would have been Nart’s 365 P2, which took 4th in the hands of, uh, Rodriguez and Andretti. Now, P3 made its competitive debut at the Sebring at 12 hours on the 23rd of March. Parks and Bondurant started from 2nd on chassis 0846.

Behind the, uh, Works Ferrar, uh, Ford GT40s of Gurney and Grant. So, there’s five other ones in [00:15:00] there. And a couple other, uh, Chaparral’s that were in that top ten or that qualifying that race that year. Now having, having led for much of the first hour, uh, the P3 was subsequently occupied,

uh, the second and third position turning on stops for fuel and driver change. It was line second when Bond Rock came stranded out on circuit to seize Gearsbox at about three quarters of the distance. Again. Ford’s finished first, second, and third. So, Faulty Gearbox took him out. Now, Ferrari chose not to attend the Le Mans test in April for that year.

They were just happy to conduct their testing at Monza for the 1, 000 kilometers. But, um, more likely that was kind of dictated by the labor disputes that were still going on. So, John Surtees returned to the team back at, uh, for the next Monza race. Now it was his first race back since his near fatal accident, the Canadian GP uh, Canam race that previous September.

Now, in the [00:16:00] absence of any worked forward the Chaparral CES and parts to commanding wind in Italy and driving a P three Berlinetta chassis oh 8 4 4. Imagine that in Italy within, in that car, I think the crowd must have been going nuts. Now, the team entered their, uh, the, the P three spider chassis oh 8 4 6 for the target floor that was held on May 8th.

Now Baccarella and Bandini were supported by, you know, a bunch of Dinos. Now Ford and Chaparral were, you know, again absent, which the biggest threat to Ferrari came from the five car Porsche Works team with their, uh, team of the Group 6 906s. Now the event saw the P3 battle out with the experimental eight cylinder 906 of Gunther and Gunther Klass, Colin Davis.

You know, until Bandini hit a curve about two thirds of the distance and crashed the P3 while in second position. Unfortunately, you know, the more fancy pair of the Porsche also fell to the wayside after making contact with one another, which resulted in a victory. 906 of Willem Maurice and Herbert Mueller, [00:17:00] Medino of Guggenheim Baguetti finished second and won in its class.

Now, hey, if I’m hacking up these names, I apologize. I’m not Italian. I am not. Now, at Spa, they went on to do a basically a flag to flag victory with the chassis 0844. And two weeks later,

I’m sorry, I got that messed up. I’m reading my notes. My bad. So

getting on this, so we’re kind of jumping ahead and a few more things. Now we’re gonna get, you know, kind of more into talking about

now they, I, okay, let me, I’ll get to the point. He said at the spa out the kilometers, they went, you know, flag to flag and, and took it to ’em. So they, that was [00:18:00] outstanding. Now going into. Second place were Parks and Surtees in 0846. Now that was the final race. The final race prior to the Le Mans was the Nürburgring 1000 kilometers.

So now I started on pole ahead of the Chaparral of Bonner and Phil Hill, which they were making their European debut. Well, however, while Surtees pulled clear of Bonner during the first hour, P3 came in soon after for an unscheduled check. And had to get a shock absorber. So, you know, obviously dropping down the order.

Parks had to actually move the car back into 8th before the rear suspension just collapsed. Just after searches had taken the wheel for a second stint. So then a clutch failure at 3 quarters distance put the 0846 chassis out for good. And the chaperone went on to win, but they were chased home by a bunch of works Dino.

So they still were represented pretty well, but the P3 didn’t have much luck in [00:19:00] there. So with two wins apiece for Ford and Ferrari for the 66 championship, the race we decided to result in 24 Hours of Le Mans, which took place, obviously, the weekend of June 18th and 19th. Now for this event, Ferrari had a trio of P3s in attendance for Parks and Surtees in 08 48, Gushet and Bandini in 08 44, Rodriguez and Ginter in 08 46.

Now, unfortunately, I disagree between Sertiz and team manager, Eugenio Dragone saw the Englishman walk out. He was placed by reserve driver Ludovico Scarfiotti. I think everyone might know that story. Um, cause, you know, obviously Dragone had some favoritism going on. And Sertiz was not pleased about what was going on in the team orders that Dragone was putting together.

So, he just said, screw this. He got in his car. Um, I can’t remember when it was, um, it was a Ferrari and he got in it and drove to the factory in Maranello to confront Enzo [00:20:00] face to face about it because he was just not happy. So now getting back to the race, you know, despite the presence of four P2s and threes from Ferrari’s satellite teams, the race was a disaster for Ferrari.

Scarfiatti wrecked 048 when he smashed into a near stationary Matra soon after midnight. Rodriguez and Ginter went out shortly before mid distance with a gearbox failure while And the much delayed Bandini guichet machine blew a head gas at 30. 70, having limped around with an overheating engine for quite some time.

Now, as we know what happened with that one, because thanks to their Ford’s famous 1 2 3 finish, Le Mans, Ford won the championship by 38 points to Ferrari’s 36. So, that’s kind of a brief thing. I might have hacked that up a bit, and I apologize. So, that’s my bad. I was trying to read my notes. My handwriting is absolutely horrendous.

But as People know looking at these P3s, you know, they’re [00:21:00] absolutely stunning cars, you know, trying to find one come up for sale now is probably, you know, you’re not going to see any of those going to change. They’re going to change hands privately. Those are gonna be done off market and those are gonna be sold for several, several millions of dollars.

But, you know, hopefully, you know, owners that get those cars and the, um, utilize them, take them out, take them to Goodwood, take them to the events, take them to Pebble Beach to stretch your legs, get them, you know, Those cars are made to be driven. All cars are made to be driven. You know, being stashed in place is unfortunate.

You know, God bless these museums and stuff. But, you know, you really need to get out there and let those cars stretch their legs a bit. So, anyways, that’s kind of what I wanted to chit chat about today. And kind of go over that. So, if anybody’s got any questions or any corrections, which there probably are, in this, please email me.

William at the FerrariMarketplace. com Let me know. I want to get a little more interactive with you guys. You know, we’re [00:22:00] not, don’t have hundreds of thousands of people listening, but we do have a nice little select few so far, it looks like. So, Hey, reach out, let me know. Hey, suggest a topic. Let me know. I got research notes on tons and tons of stuff.

Like I said, so we’re going to kind of get this going on a weekly thing and drop new ones every Tuesday. So again, Hey, I appreciate you guys listening. Uh, and Hey, share it around, spread it around and get other people listening. And like I said, I’m gonna try and get some guests on and see what I can do.

And of course, I’m gonna have to figure out how to do that with someone that’s not in the same. Places me. So again, I’m not the most tech savvy. So again, guys, Hey, I really appreciate you guys listening and take care and we will be back next week. Thanks guys. Appreciate it.

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Copyright William Ross, Exotic Car Marketplace a division of Sixty5 Motorsports. This episode is part of Gran Touring Motorsports, Motoring Podcast Network and has been republished with permission.