£6.8M Could snag you the first ever Dino Prototype at Retromobile

Artcurial’s star lot in a blinding array of collectors’ cars, the 1965 Dino Berlinetta Speciale is the auction star of the year so far. The first mid-engined Ferrari GT, it is one of the most famous prototypes in automotive history and, as Artcurial says, “one of the most important, if not the most important, concept cars to come from the collaboration between Ferrari and Pininfarina.”

Apart from the historical significance of it, there’s a bonus: the car is, of course, drop down dead gorgeous. Artcurial calls this daddy of all Dino road cars “a unique piece of automobile design history with styling as beautiful as any masterpiece in the history of art.”

Which is perhaps just as well since after being on show in the Le Mans museum for the past 50 years this car is not about to hit the road.

The Dino Speciale was a fully functioning prototype in 1965. That was when Pininfarina designed it for Ferrari, clothing a Dino 206 P race car with a streamlined body of perfect proportions and ravishing curves. But it was the V6 engine – the unit named “Dino” by Enzo after his late son Alfredo – that was the most important thing. It needed homologating for Formula 2.

Ferrari couldn’t build the needed 500 cars itself so recruited Fiat to help which is why when the name “Dino” did appear on a road car it did so on two very distinct V6-powered machines: the front-engined 2+2 Fiat Dino and the two-seat mid-engined Dino 206 GT, and later more famously the 246GT and GTS, for Ferrari.

Pininfarina’s first prototype – the car in the sale – was built in 1965 and finished quickly so it could appear, as the Dino Berlinetta Speciale, at that year’s Paris Motor Show. Seeing it now, the front end is very Fiat Dino but the shapeliness of the rest of it will be familiar to all as Ferrari’s first mid-engined production sports car, and one of the most recognisable and lauded shapes on the road. 

The 246GT sired further generations of many of Pininfarina’s most beautiful Ferrari designs and ensured the success of the mid-engined two-seat Ferrari formula, which runs to the present day with the 488 GTB.

All in all, then quite a car to have in your collection…

But could it be made to run again? Artcurial says that for 50 years it has only ever been a static display, and while the exterior, interior, running gear and wiring harness are said to be complete, the engine is missing all its internals and the gearbox has no gears. Which is not something you’d want to find out when you got the car home after spending what Artcurial believes will be between €4-8m (£3.4-6.8) on it.

Artcurial’s Retromobile sale in Paris starts at 14.00hrs on Friday, February 10^th. The eyes of the Ferrari world will surely be on it.

Photos: Copyright Alexis Boquet