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You
hear it just before you see it: the wail of an eager V12 overdubbed by
the zizz of cam gears and transmission echoes through the Swiss valley
before the Daytona surges into view. At this distance the 365GTB/4 is
needle-nosed, the wheels set back along the hunched, squat profile that
is reminiscent of Bonneville speedsters. The whole scene is redolent of
the salt flats as the sound eerily washes at you across the flatlands.
As the legend draws closer there’s an aggressiveness to its stance,
a taut leanness: to paraphrase an observation that somebody recently made
of Johnny Depp: ‘Don’t mess with me unless you want to have
sex with me.’
Closer still, we’re looking at a big car: right up close, as it draws
to a halt, a solid hunk of energy wrapped so deftly by Scaglietti out
of Pininfarina, you marvel at how small it pretends to be. Yet, with those
hooded headlamps, eyes averted to the ground, it maintains the malevolent,
brooding air of a tarantula poised, deciding whether it’s going to
strike. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, here is a beast of contradictions,
the mighty Daytona.
Around 1400 of these big bruisers, the 275GTB’s replacements, were
made. Most are left-hand drive, as befits their country of origin. A high
proportion found their way to America, but there are more than a handful
hiding in Switzerland, like this one. Through the ’70s and ’80s,
they were ranked at the top of every schoolboy’s wish list - my 1970
Observer’s Book of Automobiles still falls open at the Daytona page.
It wasn’t just the vital statistics - four-cam V12, 4390cc, 352bhp
- the figure that caught the eye was the top end: 280kph. No idle boast
by the factory - while owners trying to max their Countachs would have
been sorely disappointed, independent road testers all posted between
279 and 281kph, this consistency guaranteed by massive torque, slippery
aerodynamics, and the fact that Ferrari engines then were practically
run in on the bench. Only American versions, strangled by compromised
exhausts, were slightly slower.
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| Everything's
big. Large Momo wheel, saucer-sized Veglia Borletti main dials
with ski-jump profile hammock seats. |
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Lift the long
bonnet, to get to the point of the Daytona, and its cab-rearward hunch is
grossly exaggerated: this car is all nose, or, alternatively, all engine.
The 365cc per cylinder V12 hides its battery of twin-choke Weber-40DCNs
under a large pressed-steel pancake air filter - but its inner wings are
low-cut enough to reveal the twin-camshaft heads for all to see, and, traditionally,
the twin oil filters are offered up at the front of the banks. The engine
is set well back - the rear carbs are virtually under the windscreen - because
there’s no transmission to accommodate: that’s in the rear, in
unit with the diff, to provide near-perfect weight distribution.
The biggest contradiction to its intimidating looks is that the Daytona
is a pussycat to drive. Everything’s big: a large Momo wheel in front
of deeply hooded, saucer-sized Veglia Borletti main dials, saxophone-style
keys for heater controls, ski-jump profile hammock seats, lofty gear lever
and tall, 39.7kph per 1000rpm top gear. Test the controls and everything’s
weighty, for sure, in keeping with the rest of the car. But twist the key
and you’re relieved to find that this is a car almost completely devoid
of temperament. It doesn’t suffer terribly from heat-sink hot starting
problems, as do so many supercar V12s, and you can operate it much as any
other motor. After a brief churn, more akin to a motor launch or aircraft
than anything as mundane as an electric motor revolving a resting otto engine,
it springs into life, licking up the rev range with undisguised eagerness
belying the weight of the reciprocating parts, at the merest tickle on the
gas. It is astounding how a motor this big can be made to behave like one
that’s small and revvy. It always sounds nervous, eager, about to break
into a full-tilt pass up its rev range as soon as you so much as kiss the
throttle - which is exactly what happens. Oil pressure, in the dry-sumped
system, settles just under 5 bar, 75psi.
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| Six
Webers, four cams, 353bhp. |
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There’s
a little movement at the steering wheel rim at rest - this is a recirculating
ball system, with a massive old-style column leading straight to the box
bolted next to the left-hand top wishbone - but that completely disappears
on the move, replaced by a very mechanical feeling, slightly rattly arrangement,
but one where you always know your palms are directly connected to the road.
It’s low geared, though, and the lock’s poor: three-point turns
to change direction become five-pointers, at which juncture you realise
that it’s heavier than you thought. In mini-roundabouts, you quickly
discover that it needs more arm-twirling than anticipated. Yet, compared
with a heavyweight supercar of similar vintage - its nearest conceptual
and spiritual competitor is an Aston Martin V8 - it is a model of lightweight
economy. If this is the only price of avoiding feel-robbing power steering,
then it’s a bargain.
The clutch isn’t uncomfortably heavy, but to snick the gearlever fully
back into its first gear slot in the open dog-leg gate sometimes takes a
couple of goes. If trying second first doesn’t work, it’s best
to declutch in neutral before trying again. That is the only difficult part
of the gearchange. The clutch mechanism is so benign, and possessed of so
much feel, that you have the control to practically stall the motor down
to individual firing pulses and still get it away. The motor is astounding
- fierce, unfettered, unrestricted, it yields a mighty shove that roars
from tickover all the way to 7700rpm - relentless urge, with no dents or
holes in the powerband. To do this today would take enormous amounts of
black box trickery: Ferrari did it then with four cams, 24 valves and 12
chokes. And, quoting directly from Road & Track’s 1970 road test
of a Daytona, against ‘emission controls’, it is proudly stated
‘none’.
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| 'Our'
one-owner Ferrari has done 70,000 kilometers. |
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All the gears
are sticky until the gearbox is warm and, when up to operational temperature,
the synchro is weakest on second so you sometimes have to help it with a
little double declutching: but there’s none of the avoiding the number
two slot for the first 16km that’s the rule with most other Ferraris.
Be positive but kind with the long lever and soon you’re slapping around
the open gate with a satisfying, but clichéd, snick snack. This directness
comes as a surprise only later, when you remember that the ’box is
not directly at the bottom of the lever, but divorced from it, following
behind on four feet of linkage. That consistency is afforded by rigidly
linking the transaxle and engine by a torque tube, and both Chevrolet and
Mazda were to adopt this system, in modified form, tying the gearboxes and
final drives together in their fourth-generation Corvette and MX-5 respectively.
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| Cam-drive
plan is basically a single-cam layout, but the chain turns idler
wheels and driving gears. Note cam adjusting holes |
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But this time
the steering has eradicated itself of play, the chassis has settled into
a rhythm, underscored by a thrubbing, drubbing from the rear end as the
whole transmission winds itself up, an effect that’s not dissimilar
to the Datsun 240Z. Nothing else you will normally encounter, outside a
supercar test day, can stay with it if you exploit all of that good-natured
performance - but it also despatches wide, smooth Swiss sweepers while you
barely notice. Hustle it along - and it’s always a willing cohort in
this sort of behaviour - look down at the dials and it’ll be travelling
a lot faster than you had imagined, yet it still shrugs off curves with
disdain. The original fitment 215/70 XWX Michelins were gumball rubber in
1969, but today they look tall and old-fashioned.
At least the Daytona doesn’t suffer from that bugbear of the modern
supercar - too much grip - and so, pushing harder, it will squirm gently
underneath you. Ultimately, they say, with extra speed and bottle, the Daytona’s
tail will ease out and, although you’d have to be on the ball to catch
it, will come back quite benignly. Even a little time spent at the wheel
of one makes that entirely believable. But, on public roads with the owner’s
man sitting next to you, you just don’t. The brakes - massive ventilated
discs on each corner - simply slow the wheels, hard and fast.
Stability on the anchors is very impressive, helped no doubt by the car’s
weight, and there’s little perception of nose-dive; the lower front
wishbones are pinned directly to the oval main chassis tubes, angled slightly
downwards to the front - as was fashionable at the time - to reduce dive
under weight transfer. Further stability is conferred by the 2.5 degree
negative camber on the rear wheels, which is enough to be noticeable from
outside the car.
Paul Frère, driving probably only the sixth customer 365GTB/4 on
Italy’s best driver’s roads, the classic and testing Futa and
Raticosa passes in 1969, could not fault the handling, although he found
the main limitation was the rather slow steering: ‘On its big, fat
Michelin radials, supertyres which at the period had no equivalent (the
proof being that, at the time, Ferrari ran his Formula 1 cars on Firestones,
but his road cars on Michelins), the big Ferrari could really be flung around
the corners, quite irrespective of the state of the road surface and with
a beautiful ‘one-piece’ feel.
‘Its agility belied its weight. . . I found the ride surprisingly good
for a car of this type, with a lot of travel to deal with bumps and dips
without bottoming, but the raised rear lip of the bonnet, concealing the
windscreen wipers when parked, proved to be a nuisance, severely reducing
the visibility over the large bonnet, especially to the right.’
Even Frère could barely bring himself to criticise the great Daytona.
For a car that could both eat up the miles faster than its successor, the
rear mid-engined Berlinetta Boxer, yet remain easier to live with, somehow
that reverence was quite right.
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February 2002
