Ferrari 250 GTOs were designed and built as racing cars, they have neither a speedo or an odometer. They should be raced, using them to potter along the A34 would be missing the point somewhat.


Assuming that the information and picture in the linked article are correct, then it's not the original bodywork (the later revised shape shown wasn't available in 1963). But then that's what happens with racing cars, they are crashed, rebuilt, developed - the value these the cars have comes from their competitive history.


Rather happily, this generally not true of the people who own 250 GTOs - there are many examples that are still properly raced in major historic events. Hopefully Chris Evans will do the right thing and this car will regularly be seen in the hands of top historic racers such as Peter Hardman or Martin Stretton at events like the Silverstone Classic and the Goodwood revival. A 250 GTO going through Woodcote in a four wheel drift beats a 250 GTO in a climate controlled room looking shiny hands down.

Amen.

I've had a bit of a look around and the car just bought by Chris Evans is this one. Which is a 1963 car that was rebodied as a 1964 (probably as a result of a crash in the Tour de France).

To emphasise what I was saying about these cars being driven properly, this GTO, also a 63 car rebodied as a 64 - but if anything more valuable due to it's more successful history, competed in the 2009 TT celebration at the Goodwood revival. It was clocked at 149mph through the Lavant straight speed trap and recorded a best lap of 1:26.092. That's quite a lot faster than any of the "massively better performance wise" modern cars listed here managed to achieve around the same circuit.

I went to a track day at Goodwood, it was surprising how slow most of the modern "sports" cars are.

We had posers in modern sports hatches and Porsche, Corvettes, Ferraris etc.

The two fastest cars on the day were a 1974 Vauxhall Firenza HF and a Ford Sierra 4x4 Tickford Turbo.