Illustration by Alexis Marcou|Car and DriverFrom the September/October issue of Car and Driver.In my life, I’ve clapped eyes on exactly two Fiat Dinos in the flesh. The first was at the 1969 Can-Am race at Mid-Ohio. That’s where Formula 1 driver Jo Siffert arrived in a gunmetal Dino Spider and kindly said hello to 17-year-old me. The second was 55 years later, when John Bennett of Missoula, Montana, not only said hello to 72-year-old me but passed the keys to his personal 1967 Rosso Corsa Spider. I might have swooned, so brightly has my lust for this car burned.Dino was the nickname of Enzo Ferrari’s son Alfredo (also called Alfredino), born in 1932. He adored engines and proposed a V-6, then still something of a rebellious gesture. But Dino died in 1956, and his father was so grief-stricken that he mandated all Ferrari V-6 engines thereafter be called Dinos, at least while he drew breath sufficient to insult his F1 drivers. That engine eventually boasted scores of variants. Soon enough, five street cars were powered by Dino V-6s. What’s peculiar is that the models themselves became known as Dinos: the Ferrari Dino 206 GT and 246 GT, styled by Pininfarina; the Ferrari Dino 308 GT4, by Bertone; and the Fiat Dino Spider (by Pininfarina) and Dino Coupé (by Bertone; it was a sad and homely wallflower, of which we will not speak again soon).Fiat’s intention was to hoover up maximum prestige out of any clammy handshake proffered in Maranello. Ferrari’s, on the other hand, was to homologate 500 copies of the V-6 for its F2 team. In the end, it was Fiat that built the engines, not Ferrari. Is this all perfectly opaque?The 2475-pound Dino Spider was Fiat’s brightest star when introduced at the 1966 Turin auto show. It remains among the most fetching of two-seaters—squat and aggressive, with a catfish nose that lends the quad headlights a heavy-lidded look, like an early De Tomaso Mangusta. Or a drugged iguana. The Spider was rear-drive, and its aluminum DOHC V-6 drew ambition from a trio of two- barrel Webers. Sixty mph manifested in 7.5 seconds. The engine’s short stroke translated into an 8000-rpm redline, with no party-pooping limiter to intrude. Fiat ran them to 10 grand during development. “Don’t even say that out loud,” muttered Bennett. The 1967 Spider I drove had just emerged from an invigorating spa at Virtuoso Performance in California: eight years of fussing worth $112,000—engine, clutch, transmission, brakes, and a fresh soft top. Once Bennett picked himself up off the floor, his Spider was as perfect as Siffert’s. Top-shelf Spiders can currently fetch six figures, astounding given the car’s original $5860 sticker.Top up or down, the Spider is a mouthwatering confection, an Easter basket on alloys. Its banana-shaped accelerator pedal, in raw aluminum, resists your foot and delivers 5000 rpm in what feels like an inch of travel. The long-throw box relies on the driver depressing the clutch every single millimeter; narrow Italian footwear is mandatory. Locate some Italian gloves too, because the Nardi wheel was maybe sourced from a Greyhound. Even the horn makes demands: select a pitch, city or country. Sheep apparently notice.The Dino V-6 begins delivering useful torque as low as 2200 rpm. Its exhalations turn aurally transcendent beyond 3500—a cammy, burbling rumble that is surprisingly deep and resonant, almost the sound of a small V-8.Dinos evolved from 2.0 liters (158 horsepower) to 2.4 liters (178 horsepower) and from a live-axle to an independent rear suspension. The Dino I drove offered lengthy wheel travel and practically the ride of a grand tourer. Part of my drive was in near-freezing rain, where power oversteer demands the sort of focus and fear you’d summon for a blind date. It’s a surprisingly hairy-knuckles sportster, right down to the Cromodora knockoff wheels. You own a lead hammer, right?Fiat ultimately peddled some 6000 Dino Coupés and more than 1500 Dino Spiders. But buyers balked at the price, at least for a Fiat.The cars of my youth from the ’60s and ’70s have often disappointed. Not the Dino. It delivers—like attending your 30th high-school reunion to find your prom date hasn’t aged. So you introduce yourself and explain how rich you’ve become, and hideous trouble ensues.More from Phillips
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Source: caranddriver.com
