Car lovers holding out for a hero during the malaise era of the Seventies and early Eighties found one in the Ferrari 308—in Rosso paint, always. As Enzo Ferrari may have said, “If you ask a child to draw a car, certainly he will draw it in red.” Or film it in red, for the Hollywood execs who gave the 308 top billing.
TV’s best buddy pairing was on Magnum, P.I. As played by Tom Selleck, beginning in 1980, Thomas Magnum was an ex-Navy Seal, solving crimes on Oahu in a Detroit Tigers cap, Hawaiian shirt, and a crimson 308. Selleck’s famous mustache was a perfect Y-chromosome twin for the Ferrari’s dashing black bumper, the latter skimming below Pininfarina-drawn pop-up headlamps, de rigueur on the era’s coolest cars. If the man-God message wasn’t clear, Magnum’s equally brimming chest hair matched the exposure of his targa-roofed 308 GTS, inspiring a generation of hirsute imitators
Ferrari history winds like vermicelli, but let’s untangle: The 308 GTB arrived in showrooms in 1975, replacing the Dino-branded 246 models that were denied Enzo’s Prancing Horse badge. The ’73 Berlinetta Boxer had become Ferrari’s first “official” mid-engine road car, but it featured a flat-12. Then there’s the Dino/Ferrari 308 GT4 2+2, whose Bertone-styled angles were as of-the-Seventies as Farrah Fawcett’s red maillot and feathered ’do—minus the bedroom-poster impact.
So it was the sensational 308 that ushered Ferrari into the cocaine-dusted Eighties to dominate the pop-cultural automotive headspace. The 308 more than doubled the sales of any previous Ferrari model.
The 308 also put the V-8 front and center (okay, mid and center) at Ferrari. Its place remains 45 years on, deified under glass in the F8 Tributo. Front-engine Ferraris are now the outliers.
For younger readers spoiled by hypercars who can’t fathom the 308’s clout, I get it. In today’s Hollywood semiotics, a Ferrari tends to denote a villain, or the oblivious douche. That includes The Fast and the Furious’s drag race between Paul Walker’s Supra and a rich weasel in a Ferrari F355 Spider. But in the pre-David Letterman Eighties, before irony and winged Toyotas, a Ferrari was just a car one could fantasize about without shame.
Road and Track
Emilio Gómez Islas
