Still Crazy After All These Years (About The SWB)

These "Carshow Classic" video walk-arounds are good enough that I struggle against linking to all of them.  (There are a couple of good Aston Martin ones, for example.)

But the Ferrari 250 GT SWB is too delicious to resist.  For fifty years, it has been my fantasy "If you could take one car to a desert island..." car.  (What would you do with a Ferrari on a desert island?  That's the problem with fantasies.)

You can make an argument (I do) that it was the last of the "true" GT racers.  In this sense: it was a catalogued, steel-bodied, car available for sale to the general public.  The only difference between the street car and the race car was that the latter had an (identical) aluminum body and a race-tuned engine.  Tape the lights, remove the bumpers (or not) and go racing!  The SWB showed the way to Jaguar and Aston Martin with the "lightweight" E-Type and the racing DB 4, both aluminum replicas of the street cars.

While the GTO was a derivation of the SWB, it came only with an aluminum body and racing-spec engine (without a radiator fan).  No heater or other creature comforts.  Under FIA regulations, it was a GT, but it was conceived as a racing car.

And I love the looks of the SWB.  A few posts back I used the term "close-coupled:" there's no extra sheet metal or overhang on this car.  When the owner says it is "the first car with disc brakes," he means the first production Ferrari with disc brakes.  They were not a novelty on British cars.  As for power: 270 h.p. was a lot.  The 283 cu. in. Corvette fuelie claimed 283 h.p., but was closer to 250.  Jaguar claimed 220 for it's 3.8 liter six.  The SWB was probably the fastest car you could buy in 1960.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yuy1hvjIUQ

How could this be improved?   Eliminate the rear side vent and make the taillights flush.  That's it.  What a sweetie!