Museo Stradale

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Dominic's Auto Museum
One man's passionate quest to survey finest motorcars in the world

#0059 - Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa TR59/60 by Fantuzzi, Gendebien/Frere, 1959

We are featuring a photo of this car as a desktop background image.

Photographed: Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, 2009. Owner: William E. Conner

Ferrari at Le Mans: This car, chassis #0774, is part of Ferrari's sports car zenith—a streak of seven outright Le Mans wins in eights years spanning 1958 to 1965. Winning drivers in 1960 were Olivier Gendebien and Paul Frere, both sportsmen to the fullest degree in the goldern era of international motorsport.

Design: Fantuzzi is best remembered for these late Testa Rossa cars, and for Dino series sports-racers. All cars share the same basic lines and proportions—they appear diminutive compared to a pontoon-fendered Testa Rossa by Scaglietti, (a most incredible shape), although the Fantuzzi design is slightly longer. The effect of diminution is caused by the englarged windscreen, which sits taller than any previous Ferrari sports car, matching the rise of the head rest and rear deck fairing. Sporting regulations demanded taller screens which, here in the early sixties, portend the closed cars that will appear at the end of the decade. For that matter, we're also looking at one of the last front-motor sports cars to find success at Le Mans. Ferrari were successful in this regard in both Grand Prix and sports car racing, being the last manufacturer to win either championship with front-motor machinery.

The undulations in basic fender line are most drastic, but perhaps not exaggerated in the sense of the car's contemporaries such as the Aston Martin DBR-1, or compared to its immediate follower, the 330 TRI-LM. It is the shape of a post-War Le Mans winner—designed by intuition, with aerodynamic theory directed by visual aesthetics, yet nonetheless commendable for handling the wind at high speed in spite of favoring the eye more so than science.

Fantuzzi designs are notable for functional racing paraphernalia, these being a collection of vents, clear plastic covers, and mirrors. Notice the vent placement on the bonnet, inside the front wings, the protruding cabin vents on the flank, and the rear brake vents high in the quarters aft of the doors. A well finished brake cooling screen completes the tail. Complementing the windscreen, a sporting scoop on the bonnet gives view to the trumpets of six twin-choke Weber carburetors, a sure influence on American hot-rod culture. Beside, a set of four round mirrors attempts to give rearward view to the driver, although its effectiveness is suspect.

Power in the Golden Era: To break down the 250 TR60's power-to-weight ratio consider that to provide the same oomf a modern Ferrari F-430 Spyder would need 620 horsepower, about 140 horsepower more than at its debut. Even a Ferrari F-430 GTC, with curb weight reduced by almost a third, is still about 14 bhp shy of achieving the TR60's power-to-weight ratio. Remarkably, the power-to-weight ratio of the new Ferrari 458 Italia is almost identical to this 250 TR. Weight of the classic Ferrari, (if you were wondering), is approximately 1,650 pounds; this yeilds a factor of .185, which is like strapping a 28 horsepower motor to the back of a typical 150 pound human.

In any case, the point of talking of power-to-weight ratio is to remark upon the great difficulty of improving sports cars—not to say that racing cars today are no better than they once were, but that their power production has increased as a necessity of off-setting weight increase. Much of this general weight increase is well spent on safety improvements, many of which come by way of structural advances in the chassis and frame. But, as Mark Hales noted on the topic of technological progress, "Ten years on, an extra 100 horsepower and three or four inches on the tyres had only brought a one and a half second improvement in lap times, and at the cost of so much pleasure." He was writing about Ferrari, as it happens, comparing the 250 GTO with its successor, the 365 GTB, underscoring the lament of the purest in seeing that a modern car's refinement is often just a replacement for an older car's simple formula of light weight and adequate power. The truth, of course, is maybe front-motor sports cars had a rough chance of getting any better through the sixties, which is why they were replaced by mid-ship power to begin with. But, where we dwell on the matter of advantageous power-to-weight ratios, these sports racers from the great post-War era are exemplary.

Sources:

At the Limit by Nick Mason and Mark Hales, MBI Publishing Company, Oscealo WI 1988, p. 118

Ultimate Car Page: Always an incredible resource, the 250 TR 59/60 is featured as well—an identical car as will soon appear in this collection.

 

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