KING OF 3085

German tuner Willy König found his Ferrari 308 a little underwhelming, so he doubled its power and created a 1980s icon

- Jonathan Manning

It takes a certain confidence to challenge genius. Francesco del Giocondo, aka Mr Mona Lisa, may have been sublimely wealthy, but there's no record of him asking Leonardo da Vinci to level up the horizons of his wife's portrait. Pope Julius II did not urge Michelangelo to hurry up with his painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and nor are there any royal edits in the margins of Shakespeare's plays. All of which leaves Emperor Joseph II, ruler of territories that stretched from the Netherlands to Hungary, as something of an outlier. He famously had the audacity to criticise Mozart for writing 'too many notes' in an operatic masterpiece.

Then there's German publishing magnate, Willy König, who had the temerity to think that Ferraris fresh from the production line were in need of serious improvement. But to view König merely as a tuner is to do him a disservice. He didn't just tweak cars but oversaw their complete re-engineering. Turbos were fitted, intercoolers installed, chassis fine-tuned, suspensions lowered, aerodynamics sharpened, and tyres and rims widened. The results were instantly recognisable as Ferraris, yet distinctly different, as if a supermodel's identical twin had started power-lifting - the same bone structure, just with muscular bulges.

König had a racer's innate sense of where a car could be enhanced. From as young as 17 he was 'borrowing' his mother's car to compete in airport races that hurtled down long runways. In 1962, driving a Ferrari 250GT SWB Berlinetta, he won the Deutsche Bergmeisterschaft (German Hillclimbing Championship), leading to a personal invitation from Enzo Ferrari to join other victorious Ferrari drivers in Maranello.