GLORY BE

With the Ferrari 288 GTO, Enzo himself kicked off a series of supercars to reinvigorate his over-gentrified marque. Now, 40 years on, Octane examines a genuine legend

- Ben Barry

"The 288 GTO commanded a premium from the day it was launched in 1984 and has never fallen below the original £73,000 list price, even in the worst economic climate the Ferrari F40 did," says Tom Hartley Jnr, who confirms prices are now well up into the millions.

Yet there is so much more to this homologation special than seven-figure values. Known officially as the Ferrari GTO, inspired by Group B motorsport and developed by Ferrari F1 royalty Harvey Postlethwaite and Nicola Materazzi, the GTO's cocktail of turbocharging and lightweight composite bodywork owes as much to the 126C F1 racer of 1981 as it does Group B's radical rally cars.

That it reprised the Gran Turismo Omologato initials for the first time since the 250 GTO, kick-started Ferrari's hypercar lineage (F40, F50, Enzo, LaFerrari and the new F80 have all followed), and reinvigorated a portfolio that Enzo Ferrari himself believed excessively gentrified is also important. But right now prestige dealer Hartley Jnr would like me to dwell quite intently on how much these things are worth 40 years on.

I'm about to drive a customer car, after all. He is well placed to comment on values, having sold around 45 examples since 1997, sometimes three or four times over. Prices have rocketed during that time. "The cheapest I ever bought was £115,000 with only 14,000km," he says. "I remember when they were £250k, and when they lingered at £350k for a while before jumping up very quickly to three-quarters of a million around 2008 or 2009. The first I sold for £1m was in 2010. Ah, if only... today Hartley Jnr reveals he has just agreed a sale at £3.5m, a figure that is both astonishing and par for the course. Then he hands me the keys to his client's car, chassis number 54781. "Please be very careful," he asks.