The fact that its first owner was Steve M. and there’s
an empty track to play with is just the icing on the cake for James E., as he
gets to grips with the 275GTB/4 on home turf
As the late-autumn sun dips over Maranello, the glints of
color on the shapely curves of this car are more than a little distracting. But
you don’t have time to be so thoroughly intoxicated by those mesmerizing sweeps
that you can allow your total concentration to falter for even a second.
Because Fiorano is a tight, tricky track that, given the space constraints, has
been built and extended through expedience: dipping and weaving, crossing
itself via a narrow bridge and presenting hairpins and loops for which your
options are to be fully tail-out, at a snail’s pace, or, if you have neither
the bravado for the former nor the fear for the latter, under steering. A lot.
Built in 1972 in
Enzo’s back garden, this is 1.86 miles of test circuit that, putting aside the
romance, looks like the random pattern of a discarded shoelace from the air
Built in 1972 in Enzo’s back garden, this is 1.86 miles of
test circuit that, putting aside the romance, looks like the random pattern of
a discarded shoelace from the air. Yet every enthusiast dreams of driving it.
Add to the equation a dream car to do it in, one of which
fewer than 300 examples were built, and things just get a little overwhelming.
For me, the 275GTB/4 has always been a contender for
best-looking and all-round finest Ferrari road car of them all, perhaps rivaled
only by its 250GT SWB predecessor. Yet, while the more animalistic 250 V12 from
the earlier car was housetrained into a smoother, more user-friendly unit –
especially in four-cam form – the looks went the other way. The more discreet
one-piece late-’50s swimsuit of the Short Wheelbase, which still left a little
something to the imagination, gave quarter to the 275’s more overt and
sexualized bikini-clad charms.
For me, the
275GTB/4 has always been a contender for best-looking and all-round finest
Ferrari road car of them all, perhaps rivaled only by its 250GT SWB predecessor
And the fact that this particular four-cam has trundled
barely a handful of post-restoration miles from the Maranello factory to the
track means that this is to be as authentic an experience as it would be
possible to recreate.
Of course, there are two schools of thought about ‘breaking
in’ freshly restored cars, and luckily for us the owner of this one believes
that a ‘new’ car should be driven like a new car. Rather than wrapping it in
cotton wool, he sees this as absolutely the optimum opportunity to test it to
the limit. Goody.
The owner. It won’t take you long to work it out with a bit
of digging, but for the purposes of this story he would prefer to shun the
spotlight because he thinks the focus should be on the car... and its first
owner, Steve McQueen.
Ah, McQueen. Naturally, with the growth of the world’s
fixation with the Hollywood icon in recent years, a backlash has swelled up in
equal and opposite measure, but even if you do believe that the legend is now
rather greater than the man ever was, an ineffable mystique lingers around
everything connected to him.
While the more
animalistic 250 V12 from the earlier car was housetrained into a smoother, more
user-friendly unit – especially in four-cam form – the looks went the other way
That connection is enhanced by this 275 wearing its McQueen
1968 California plate of WCT 710, so much so that, with it at rest in the
unassuming Fiorano holding area, you could imagine the ‘King of Cool’ standing
beside it as in the archive shots (left).
Presumably, he was just admiring its beauty because,
considering that there isn’t a straight line on this car, there is an amazing
symmetry to it, from its huge haunches to its prominent proboscis. There are
endless intricate details: the reversing light tucked under the bumper, the
protruding rear lights above the quad pipes...
