Ferrari 288 GTO Review

Ferrari built the GTO to go racing and never raced it. The aim was the 200 road cars needed for Group B homologation; the circuit series was suspended at the end of 1986, and the six Evoluzione racers built for it were left without a championship. The road car, unveiled at the 1984 Geneva show, sold out anyway. Ferrari built 272, the last of them a gift from Enzo Ferrari to Niki Lauda, and contracts changed hands before cars were delivered, which Ferrari's own history calls the springboard for the supercar syndrome: the short, pre-sold run of extreme cars that every Ferrari flagship since has followed.

Very little of the 308 survived underneath. Nicola Materazzi's 2,855 cc V8 was turned to sit lengthwise, with two IHI turbochargers and Behr intercoolers, and made 395 hp at 7,000 rpm; the capacity was chosen so that, multiplied by the FIA's 1.4 turbo factor, it slipped just under the four liter class limit. The wheelbase grew, the flared body was mostly fiberglass, with Kevlar in the hood and Kevlar and carbon fiber in the roof, and Ferrari quotes 1,160 kg and 189 mph. Road & Track ran 0 to 60 mph in 5.0 seconds. Michele Alboreto, who gave the factory feedback on it, called it cattiva, angry, and praised how low its engine sat compared with the Testarossa's.

Ownership is a curatorial job now. Ferrari did not offer the GTO in America because engineering and certifying so few cars was not worth the cost, so the ones there arrived as grey imports converted to local rules. Parts for a 272-car run are scarce, the turbochargers, fuel system and cooling need specialist attention, and buyers pay for provenance: Ferrari Classiche certification, matching numbers and a continuous service file count for as much as the paint. Its list price was the equivalent of about $83,400 at the time, converted from the home market because there was never a US price. Auction results have run past $11 million, a record set at RM Sotheby's Monterey sale in August 2026.

The F40 gets the posters, but the GTO did the harder thing. It showed that Ferrari could sell a short run of extreme cars at a premium before one was delivered, and it wore a shape that improved on the 308 rather than shouting over it. Sports Car International ranked it second among the sports cars of the 1980s, behind the Porsche 959. Its running costs are a specialist's business; as a piece of Ferrari history it sits very close to the top.