Peaky blinder

Half a century after Pininfarina's gorgeous 308 hit the market, an open GTS is the perfect steed for an epic road trip back to its homeland

- SIMON HUCKNALL

A road trip is a joyous affair. Armed with a fine car, great roads and good company, it can hold the recipe for all that is good in life, and leave you and your travel companion with an unerring sense of bonhomie. But it can teeter on the fringe of pointlessness, too: without a purpose at your final destination - a pot of gold, so to speak - it can also leave you feeling deflated and sad that, after days of adrenalin-filled driving, there is nothing left but a return ticket to normality. Thankfully, as indulgent as schlepping across the Alps in an open-topped, rosso Ferrari sounds, on this occasion there will be an endgame to make all of that 'hardship' worthwhile.

Currently it’s one that will keep ‘our’ car's V8 percolating in its upper register on these glorious Alpine roads. The Ferrari 308GTB was launched, to the day, exactly half a century before this edition of C&SC went on sale, on 2 October 1975 at the Paris Salon. To mark the anniversary, we are taking arguably its best-known variant - the open-topped GTS - on an 800-mile transcontinental blast from London to Turin to be reunited with the very man responsible for its existence: design legend Leonardo Fioravanti. Along the way, it will give us the chance to discover the 308’s enduring appeal that, in its various guises, was to make it Maranello’s biggest sales hit thus far. And at our journey’s end, we will learn from Signore Fioravanti about the challenges involved in creating this most popular and approachable of all classic Ferraris.