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Meccano F12 tdf £29.99 | argos.co.uk The constituent nuts and bolts and strips and plates are just like those that we remember so fondly from childhood, but Meccano models never looked this good in the old days. The whizzy new ‘FLEXTech’ bodywork panels make all the difference; this 9.5in-long model is as much fun to look at as it is to build. Ferrari T350 headphones by Logic3 $399 | ferrari-by-logic3.com Part of Logic3’s ‘Cavallino Collection’, these leather-trimmed, noise-cancelling headphones will revolutionise your experience of public transport, delivering sweet music while keeping the din made by your fellow passengers at bay. 312 T print by Simon Owen From £35 | historiccarart.net The work of the late Simon Owen celebrates iconic racing car liveries of decades past, and we can only assume…

The most important thing you can do to ensure the longevity of your Dino V6 engine is not just to carry out regular oil changes, to use it regularly and enthusiastically and to avoid frequent starts and stops when it’s cold. The most important thing is to make sure the antifreeze is up to strength and doing its job – specifically the job of preventing corrosion. I’m at Bell Classics, standing under a very smart Dino 246 GT with a particularly clean engine. That’s because it has just been rebuilt, following an unfortunate ingestion of coolant and bits of corroded heat exchanger by the lubrication system. This heat exchanger is an oil cooler that dissipates the oil’s heat into the water coolant, and thence ultimately to the water radiator. It’s…

 The recent California was particularly good at attracting new customers to the Ferrari brand. So said Enrico Galliera, head of sales and marketing, at the reveal of its replacement, the Portofino. Of course, the four-seat Portofino will continue to do this, but its introduction means that the first rung on the Ferrari new-car ladder is set at £160k and comes with a 592bhp kick. Heady stuff. Meanwhile, the mid-engined V8 line that began with the 308 GTB – successor to the Dino, of course – has evolved from its entry-level sports car role and is now ensconced in the junior supercar sector with cars like the McLaren 720S and Lamborghini Huracán. Entry to this particular club is a power output well north of 600bhp and a price tag of around…

The ferry was booked, tent packed, sleeping bags stowed and maps got into order. John and Lynn Reaks were ready for a two-week motorcycle tour in the South of France. Then, just three weeks before they were due to leave, there was a change of plan. Their business was doing well and John, on a whim, decided to buy himself a Ferrari. ‘I’ve never been a dreamer, at least where cars are concerned,’ he says. ‘If a car was out of my financial reach, I didn’t fantasise about owning it.’ But when it became possible to buy something exciting, he just thought: ‘Why not?’ Which is how they came to acquire a 328 GTS. The registration number and vehicle type was changed on the ferry booking and a bike turned…

‘I doubt you’ll find a specialist with greater depth of knowledge, experience and passion’ There are Ferrari specialists with more impressive premises, some with more impressive stock lists, and some linked to arguably more impressive clients, but I doubt you’ll find one that’s home to a greater depth of knowledge, experience and passion than Bob Houghton Limited. Tucked away on a deceptively large plot in the heart of the Cotswold town of Northleach, this is a family-owned and run business that, thanks to its eponymous owner, has a longer history of working with the marque than any other specialist. It also has a reputation for doing excellent work at a reasonable rate and for solving problems that have defeated others, all of which helps explain why it has an enviable…

THERE’S NEVER ENOUGH TIME. If it was just a case of driving a new car on a launch, it would be fine. But magazines and websites generally demand photographic and cinematic evidence of what you’ve been up to, and this almost always requires more than the allotted few hours available. As a result, people push the timetables on car launches, finding ways to expand and contract time that even Einstein would have thought impressive. And the journalist’s list of excuses for handing a car back late is almost as long and convolutedly creative as the schoolchild’s for a homework noshow. I’ve yet to hear anyone actually claim that they’re late because a dog started gnawing on a rear wishbone, but that’s not to say that such a claim has never…

IN 2014, AT THE YAS MARINA track in Abu Dhabi, ex-Ferrari F1 test driver and Le Mans winner Marc Gené spoke about the FXX K, the third car in the exclusive Ferrari XX Programme. He was amazed by the LaFerrari-based, 1036bhp track car. ‘I couldn’t believe that something so powerful was so driveable,’ he said. ‘I’ve only experienced that in F1 and LMP1; the FXX K is on that level, honestly.’ And he added: ‘For this reason, it would be very difficult to develop an FXX K Evo.’ Well, three years on, Ferrari has developed an Evo (Evoluzione) version of the track-only FXX K, and in January it showed it outside of Italy for the first time at the Autosport International show at the NEC, Birmingham. The Evo’s mechanical specification…

THANKS TO OUR long lead-times, these words come to you from early January, just a few days after the excesses of Christmas and a few days before the start of another annual festival of conspicuous consumption: the Scottsdale auctions. Ordinarily at this point in the year, Scottsdale would have the undivided attention of the Ferrari community – and with good reason. Between the events held by Barrett-Jackson, RM Sotheby’s, Gooding & Co, Russo & Steele, Worldwide Auctioneers and Bonhams, no fewer than 112 Ferraris will be offered this time around. These are good cars, too: we’re especially keen on RM’s Ghia-bodied 212 Inter Coupé, shown by Ferrari at the 1952 Paris Salon and first owned by Juan Perón, the former president of Argentina – and better known, thanks to Andrew…

 There are treasures in here, and not merely an array of Ferraris confirming the artistry of this marque in mouthwatering style. This is an exhibition that reveals the seeds of the company’s birth, its deep engineering roots, the vital early personal relationships forged by Enzo Ferrari and, most interestingly, the methods by which Ferraris were and are designed. That there’s major emphasis on this last element should be no surprise given that this exhibition is being staged by the Design Museum, and it’s also why this confection of cars, artefacts, design and engineering models, drawings, photographs and objêts makes for such a compelling visit. And as you might expect of a much-admired museum of design, the exhibits are beautifully – sometimes even dramatically – presented. It starts with the yellow,…

‘Two cars that couldn’t be more different from each other in personality and function…’  Two cars from the same country, built by companies with the same owner and within a few years of each other, and sharing versions of the same engine. Two cars that couldn’t be more different from each other in personality and function. But then, what car can compare with a Lancia Stratos? None that I have ever driven. The Stratos still looks every bit as outrageous as it did when it was launched as a prototype at the 1971 Turin motor show. If it were about to make its debut in 2018, it would be no less breathtaking. Or futuristic. The Stratos is also a car with a reputation for tricky handling but one that, in…

‘It will be on winter tyres…’ And with those six words from the man at Ferrari UK, an adventure was set in motion, one that would take us much further than we anticipated but reward with epic scenery and some unforgettable experiences. But first, the backstory. I’ve been a fan of winter tyres for years, diligently fitting them to my own car in late October, changing back in late March. It has been hard to keep the faith here in the English Midlands, though, the last three winters having yielded only one slushy afternoon. I’ve tested winter tyres professionally and know they work better than summers in cold conditions, so they are worth having. But I also know that they are sensational in snow – which means it really hurts…

Ferrari really needed the F355. Cast your mind back to the mid-1990s and it was hardly a golden age for the marque. The F40 had finished production. The best car in the range was probably the 456 GT, but that was very much a gran turismo. The rest of the line-up comprised the frumpy Mondial, the charismatic but ageing 512 TR and the 348. Ah, the 348. In truth it was never as bad as bar-room experts (or their online equivalents) would have you believe. It actually sold well and it improved as it evolved. But early cars could be a real handful at the limit; it was nowhere near as pretty as the 328 that it replaced, and, perhaps most damningly, it felt truculent and old-fashioned compared with Honda’s…

THE FERRARI OWNERS’ CLUB of Great Britain is incredibly active, but many of the events that it puts on each year are accessible only to its members. However, there are a couple of particularly big ones that are open to all: the Classic Motor Show at the NEC in November and the Ferrari race weekend held at Silverstone. The latter usually takes place in September and is called Ferrari Racing Days, but for 2018 the action has been brought forward to April, with a revised format and a new name: Passione Ferrari. Both weekends are important to the club as they provide an opportunity to meet prospective new members, who in turn can see for themselves the wealth of cars within the club. At the recent NEC show, alongside the…

‘Of course the Dino was a Ferrari, as much as any other and, what’s more, better than almost all of them’  Fifty years! Can it really be half a century? Looking at these Dinos, it seems almost impossible. In my highly partial view, Ferrari has made more beautiful cars than any other manufacturer, certainly of those that exist today; but even Maranello – or, more usually, Pininfarina – was rarely perfect. A 365GTC/4 is close, closer than the Daytona for sure, an early Boxer closer still, but, at least to me, the Dino is the only strictly street Ferrari not to be saddled with a single imperfect angle. Let’s not dwell too much on whether the Dino is actually a Ferrari or not. At the time it was expedient for…

It was a story I’d long wanted to tell. To explore the life of Dino Ferrari by visiting some of the key places in his life and meeting some of the people who actually knew him. And to drive the streets of Modena and Maranello – and the old Ferrari test routes that Dino himself once drove – in one of the cars that bore his name. For me, that meant a 246 GT – a machine that in my own younger days embodied the beauty and romance of exotic sports cars like few others. So a plan was made, though it would take months of liaising with Ferrari to make it happen. Finally, in the Spring of 2007, all the pieces were in place. We were on. I expected…

Welcome to the Champagne region of France. We’re about five miles west of the city of Reims and about to witness one of the greatest sporting spectacles in the entire history of motor racing. All the elements are in place: drivers old and new, intense rivalries, massive speeds – and no shortage of the sporting behaviour and chivalry that will later desert the sport but which, in this era, are what keep the drivers alive. Most of all, there is a battle to be fought, one that will make this day go down in motor racing history. It is July 5, 1953. The cast is full of the usual characters, some with barely walk-on roles, others with entertaining cameos to perform. But we’re going to focus on the two leads…