The Austrian auction house Dorotheum is auctioning an ex of Niki Lauda. It is a Ferrari 365 GT4 2+2 with a somewhat sloppy history. The condition is not concours, it has been repainted once from silver to a rather stylish non-Ferrari red, the leather has crackle. Future misery is smoking towards you. The last owner, I read on the Dorotheum site, did not even know that he had belonged to Lauda.
Can’t bomb me. In all his vagueness he remains SICKLY DESIRABLE. I’m not much for Ferraris, but I am quite fond of the 2+2s or semi-four-seaters the brand made in the 1960s and 1970s, and this is one of them. For a 330 GT, this one, a 400 or 412 I’d kill. Those cars had glamor and a more or less social signature; the back seat showed you were willing to take someone with you. They were for movie stars, rock heroes with taste and top drivers, classical piano virtuosos like Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, and as it was then still out of reach for mere mortals. Some 330 were ridden by guns like John Lennon. Lauda was of course also elite, racing elite – and economic elite, because he came from a good family.
It remains astonishing what they thought of Ferrari-worthy capabilities fifty years ago. The V12 of the 365 produced 340 hp from 1972. You couldn’t get much more intense then. In my youth I was blown away by it. Now you are with such a bucket of horsepower at the bottom of the upper middle class.
The Tesla Model 3 Single Motor already comes in at the equivalent of 325 horses. A BMW i4 eDrive 40 sits exactly at 340. The twin-engine Polestars and the thickest e-trons from Audi go far beyond it. Even the most muscular plug-ins from Stellantis, neat civilian cars, are pretty close. Such a Peugeot 3008 Hybrid4 delivers with a poker face 300 hp, three hundred. Mind you: that’s exactly as many as the perhaps most coveted Ferrari of all time, the 250 GTO. By the way, the Hybrid4 drives 100 times faster from a standstill than the auction piece.
Why would you invest big money in that? Compared to those electric or hybrid technological feats, the performance of the 365 GT4 is pretty mundane on paper. They can’t all reach his top of 250 anymore, lauda’s car himself probably not anymore, the average plug person is faster at the traffic light than Niki Lauda at the time with his 2+2. On track, Lauda had lost the regular Model 3 man with his historic Ferrari, but not when the Tesla had been driven by Max Verstappen.
Now Porsche is working on a Taycan with 1000 hp. Another stupid Nordschleife record had to be shattered because of Lucids Air and Tesla’s Plaid. That’s going to crush that vacuum cleaner from Stuttgart with two fingers in the nose. That’s the way it should be. It’s just so sad and so childish. Because although the future owner of Niki’s 365 will take twice as long, he will feel twice as fast with that overdose of acoustic Viagra than the intrepid Porsche test driver. Today’s account manager has no V12, no sound, and zero experience. Little does he know that one hundred and sixty in a 365 feels more spectacular than 300 in a Taycan? Therefore, if I had more money than I have, I would immediately bid on that Ferrari.
As a car enthusiast, I have another reason for that, the lesson I learned from my test practice. We are in the phase where speed threatens to become unpleasant. Acceleration from 0-100 in four seconds and less is unpleasant and potentially harmful to body and mind. Towards three seconds, and we are fast on our way even with ordinary street cars, it becomes life-threatening on the public road. The brain and senses cannot properly process the speeds and corresponding g-forces. Fellow road users cannot process you. Your pace is getting in the way.
I admit: I’m afraid to go all out in those missiles. Twice I nearly lost my life in a Taycan and a Model S. In the near future, we’re going to see a whole new type of accident. In the past, clumsiness made you lose control, now you’re knocked out.
There’s only one thing to do. To slow down. Because slowing down is actually speeding up, as Lauda’s Ferrari teaches. It also has to do with expectations. A friend’s Volvo 240 GLT turned out to be an incredibly smooth, light-footed thing with its old-fashioned turboless four-cylinder engine and the power of a Peugeot e-208. What a nice ride that was! The registration certificate reveals the secret; the Swede weighs less than 1300 kilos. You always feel lightness, even if you still fall short in terms of speeds.
Now Lotus comes with the inevitable suv. The powers go up to more than 900 hp. I know it has to go off the market, but for the real Lotus feeling you end up with a simple Elise with a K engine; 700 kilos, 120 hp. The man or woman behind the wheel has their hands full at the limit, you need so little to explore your limits. And my dear, what a spectacle. You can buy an Elise like that for a fraction of the money that Lauda’s Ferrari will possibly fetch, now that everyone knows who owned that mispainted red thing. While his heritage is as insignificant as its power and its top speed. That car is a sickeningly desirable work of art, period.
Photo: dorotheum
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl