Model
250 GTE
Make
Ferrari
Body
Coupe
Year
1962
Colour
Blue
Description
The 250 GTE was famously, Ferrari’s first in-house four seater. Not noted for pandering to client requests, Enzo realized that the commercial reality of producing road-cars would mean that if there was demand for something, he best respond, and the greatest request was to have a capable four-seater, with sufficient room for luggage. The response was this car, the ‘elongata’ or lengthened chassis model, that was fitted with the Colombo V12, in three-carburetor, three litre form.
Ferrari’s 250 series was studded with cars that became legendary for the company, not least the halo GTO, the TdF, the ‘SWB’ and the fabulous Testa Rossa, the California Spider and of course the Lusso. GTE production however, amounted to one thousand units, accounting for over half of the series’ volume.
GTE’s are elegant cars, like this one – an Australian delivered example, which has spent time in the same family on two occasions and was delivered new by W.H Lowe in Whitehorse road, and sits here today, resplendent on its Borrani RW3591 wire wheels, shod with the correct Pirelli Cinturato CA67 radials – the very type that were fitted to the cars at Maranello when they were built.
The engine is a jewel, one of the world’s legendary units. It sits low in the chassis, and further forward than it does other cars in the same series, as a means of generating more room in the cabin, and remarkably the Colombo V12 weighs less than Jaguar’s six-cylinder XK!
To drive a 250 GTE today is to experience what a proper nineteen-sixties grand tourer stood for; opulent within and comfortable; at 100 kmh with its Laycock De Normanville overdrive engaged it is relaxed and quiet enough, but when asked, it responds like a true sports car, and the aggression of the engine that won multiple Le Mans and World Championships reminds the driver why that was so. The car tracks true and responds to large inputs into the wood-rimmed wheel and low-geared steering, and today one finds themselves transported nostalgically, perhaps imagining that they could emulate Stirling Moss in Rob Walker’s 250SWB!
It is thus, a great shame that so many GTEs have been lost. Not just to the ravages of time, but to the converters, who chose to use GTE underpinnings to construct replicas of more valuable and exotic 250 models. Consequently, GTEs are rare today.