Ferrari Daytona

Unveiled at the Paris motor show, the car formally designated 365 GTB/4 became universally known as the Daytona, a nickname widely traced to Ferrari's dominant finish at that year's American endurance classic. Pininfarina's Leonardo Fioravanti gave it a taut, wedge-influenced body that broke sharply from the rounded berlinettas that came before, its headlamps first hidden behind a full-width plexiglass strip and later mounted as pop-up units. It was, in silhouette and intent, a deliberate statement that Ferrari's road cars had entered a harder-edged decade.

Beneath the long bonnet sat a 4.4-litre Colombo V12 fed by six twin-choke Weber carburettors and topped by four camshafts, an arrangement that produced 352 horsepower and gave the Daytona a quoted top speed of 174 mph. Drive ran to a rear-mounted transaxle, a layout chosen to balance the front-engined chassis. At a time when rivals were shifting their engines amidships, Ferrari's commitment to a front V12 made the Daytona both a technical outlier and among the fastest production cars a private owner could buy.

Production of the coupe ran from 1968 to 1973 and totalled 1284 cars, joined late in the run by an open-topped GTS/4 spider built in far smaller numbers. The Daytona closed the line of front-engined twelve-cylinder Ferrari flagships; the mid-engined Berlinetta Boxer that succeeded it moved the marque's fastest road car to a rear-mounted flat-twelve. It is now widely regarded as one of the defining grand tourers of its generation, prized as much for its place in Ferrari's history as for its pace.