Ultimately, that’s another reason why the 512S/512M is one of the most disappointing Ferrari race cars of all time.īack in the September 1991 issue of C/D, the great Patrick Bedard compared the Ferrari 348ts to a pickup truck. Penske’s 512 would have a star-crossed season during 1971 and never win. Wounded, the Penske car was barely able to finish third. But near midnight, Donohue slowed to avoid hitting Vic Elford’s spinning 917, and a much slower Porsche 911 ran into the back of the Penske car. Donohue put the car, now known as a 512M, on the pole at the 1971 24 Hours of Daytona and was leading the race with co-driver David Hobbs.
#70s ferrari models driver
The Penske Ferrari, developed under the brilliant driver Mark Donohue, was blisteringly fast and utterly gorgeous. In 1971, Roger Penske’s team bought a 512S, rebuilt it from the ground up, and entered it in the World Sportscar Championships. A 512S entered by the North American Racing Team (NART) finished fourth-30 laps behind the winning Porsche.īut that doesn’t mean that the 512S wasn’t without potential. In the real 1970 Le Mans race, 917s finished first and second with a Porsche 908 coming in third. In Steve McQueen’s fictional 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Gulf Porsche 917s fought the fiery red Ferrari 512S race cars to the closest finish in the event’s history.
But the Ferraris listed here are easy to hate. And while a lot of those four-seat machines from the 1960s, like the porcine 365GT 2+2, weren’t much more than Thunderbirds with prancing-horse badges on their noses, it’s hard to hate on them. No one here works up much lust for that late-1990s bathtub, the F50, but it’s a few steps too far to call it one of the worst. Some cars came close to making this list of shame but just weren’t lousy enough. (Call us provincial, but our province is a country that spans a continent and then some.) This allows us to exclude the wholly terrible 208GTB, 208GTS, and 208GT4 models-powered by a 2.0-liter V-8-that were sold only in Italy during the 1970s as tax-avoidance gimmicks. Also excluded here are road cars that never were extensively sold in the United States, whether through legit channels or the gray market. See, racing always matters to Ferrari, so the way a Ferrari fails even worse is when it doesn’t win. It’s important to note that our list aims to avoid being a tired retread of the same road Ferraris you already knew were kind of vile (although a couple of those were too awful not to have here).
Yes, even the lousiest Ferrari is still cherished by someone, somewhere. While Ferrari’s record for automotive excellence is spectacular, it has built some stinkers.
0 kommentar(er)
