Ferrari Dino 246 GT

The Story

The Dino 246 GT was the first ‘junior’ mid-engined road car from Maranello — and, pointedly, it did not wear a Ferrari badge. Sold under its own ‘Dino’ marque, it was Enzo Ferrari’s tribute to his only son, Alfredo ‘Alfredino’ Ferrari (nicknamed Dino), a gifted young engineer who died of muscular dystrophy in 1956 at just 24, having helped conceive the V6 engine concept that bore his name. Enzo created the Dino sub-brand partly to market a sports car powered by something smaller than a V12 — and partly out of his conviction that a mid-engined layout was too much for ordinary drivers — positioning the car a notch below the Prancing Horse.

Whatever the badging politics, the result is one of the most beautiful shapes ever to come out of Italy. The body was penned at Pininfarina — Aldo Brovarone authored the foundational design under Leonardo Fioravanti — and hand-built by Scaglietti in Modena. Beneath those sensuous curves sat a transverse 2.4L 65° V6 producing ~195 hp, debuting in production form at the Turin Show in 1969. A targa-topped 246 GTS followed at Geneva in March 1972.

The 246 mattered because it was the first Ferrari product built in real volume — ~3,569 cars across GT and GTS — proving the brand could sell a smaller, more attainable sports car without diluting its mystique. For decades purists sniffed that ‘it isn’t a real Ferrari,’ but the Dino’s driving purity, its motorsport-derived engine and that timeless Pininfarina form have long since won the argument. Today it’s embraced as a genuine and beloved part of the Ferrari canon.