Who can honestly say that he is a car nut and not love Ferraris?

Definitely not me. I spent a good part of this weekend clearing out my stuff and I stumbled upon a few books that I had not seen in years - these were about the famous Italian carmaker and the gorgeous cars that had come out from its factories and garages.

Finding them again was like discovering oil right in my garden. To me anyway. And as I flipped through the pages, I was reminded of a list of favourite Pracing Horses that I had compiled in 1990 and you know what? If I were to compile a new list today, all of them will be included (together with the F50, 456 and F430 Scuderia). 

I love the Dino and Enzo loved his son so much that he named Ferrari's smallest car after him. My favourite Dino is the 246 GT and it had a 2.4-litre engine that eventually found its way into another iconic Italian sports car - the Lancia Stratos

The gorgeous 288 GTO was built to compete in FIA Group B race series against Porsche's 959 (as the 961) but the series was soon abandoned, and all GTOs remained as road cars. Its engine is a twin-turbocharged 2,855cc V8 lump that was good for 400bhp. Its engine was built to this specification as the FIA required that the capacity of all turbocharged engines must be multiplied by 1.4 - this equals to 3,997cc for the 288 GTP which meant that it met the 4-litre limit for Group B cars.

Then came the 288 GTO's successor - the F40. It too had twin-turbos and a V8 engine (which was an enlarged version of the GTO's unit) but it had an output of 478bhp. And with a weight of just 1,100kg, it had a blinding top speed of 324km/h (201mph), which made it the world's fastest production car from 1987 to 1989.

That leaves me with my fav Ferrari of all time and it is not a road-going Ferrari but a racing car - the 312T. The T in the name does not stand for "turbocharged" but for "transverse" - the way the gearbox was positioned. It is not the most stylish Ferrari racecar nor is it the fastest. But it holds a special place in my heart because of the men that drove it - Niki Lauda (winner of the 1975 & 1977 F1 drivers' title), Jody Scheckter (winner of the 1979 F1 drivers' title) and the late Gilles Villeneuve - arguably the most gifted driver ever to race a Pracing Horse (sorry Schumacher fans). It also won a total of 27 races and four constructors' titles, making it one of the most successful Ferrari F1 chassis designs ever.

FORZA FERRARI!

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