3x8 Production Numbers by Year of Manufacture

I would have expected this would be a topic flogged and flailed many times in this forum, but I cannot find a single thread which addresses the topic or lays down the numbers.

What is the YEAR BY YEAR breakdown of 3x8 cars manufactured by Ferrari? Ideal would be the usual breakdown of GTS vs GTB by year, Euro vs USA by year etc. (Because I own an '83 GTS QV, I am most interested in that year.) Does this info exist?

I am hoping I am a bad searcher rather than learning that the information is unavailable. If the information doesn't exist, any inferential estimates?

 

There were 3042 308QV produced world wide. Ever.

I found this referance above somewhere here in Ferrarichat. But it will be all 308QV versions I believe.

Hope it helps, others with more info will comment,

i also have an 1983 QV. enjoy

 

This might help, got it from a book titled Ferrari Dino by Alan Henry
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I asked about the number for the last carb'd 308 a while back and that turned up a huge amount of info about dates and numbers - might give you some insight into the word and wonderful world of Ferrari numbering.

 

How do you define year?

Everyone does it different. In the US model year is declared by the manufacturer and does not reflect production date. It describes the year regulations the car was designed to comply with. Some countries define it by when imported others by date first sold.

Ferrari really doesn't tell us anything and it is up to the researchers like Matthias Urban or Carbon to figure it out.

And to compound the confusion VIN's are not always built in order.


The US 83 QV had the longest production cycle of any of the QV's so many of them were built outside of the normal calendar dates for a given MY.

 

Brian,

Got a photo and a VIN of a car near me. I'll send you and Carbon the data shortly.

I think I have your email address. I have Carbon's.

Mark


Clean out you PM box will Ya?

 

Most Ferrari books say that the total number of carburetted 308 GTB's produced between 1975 and 1980 is 2897. But on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the 308 GTB the Ferrari Owners Site has published an article, which mentions the following production numbers:

308 GTB (Fiberglass) 1975 — 1977 808 (s/n 18677 — 21289)
308 GTB (Steel) 1977 — 1980 2185 (s/n 20805 — 34329)
308 GTS 1977 — 1980 3219 (s/n 22619 — 34501)
208 GTB 1980 — 1982 160 (s/n 31219 — 41329)
208 GTS 1980 — 1982 140 (s/n 31249 — 41265)
308 GTBi 1980 — 1982 494 (s/n 31327 — 43059)
308 GTSi 1980 — 1983 1743 (s/n 31309 — 43079)
308 GTB QV 1982 — 1985 748 (s/n 42809 — 59071)
308 GTS QV 1982 — 1985 3042 (s/n 41701 — 59265)
208 GTB Turbo 1981 — 1985 437 (s/n 41357 — 59277)
208 GTS Turbo 1982 — 1985 250 (s/n 42863 — 59279)
308 GTB Michelotto 1978 — 1985 15 (s/n 08380 — 31559)

This would mean a total of 2993 carburetted 308 GTB's. To complete the confusion, another source from the UK, which also relies on factory figures, mentions the production of only 2721 308 GTB's. The actual number of cars built will probably never be confirmed. I assume that – if at all – only the archives of Ferrari or Ferrari Classiche could be able to provide an answer.

The early cars were built with lightweight fiberglass (vetroresina) bodies, from mid-1977 the bodies were made of steel. It is believed that the first 712 cars were fiberglass, the rest of 2185 cars had steel bodies. But the official factory number for fiberglass cars is 808. Another of the many Ferrari mysteries.

How can you distinguish a fiberglass car from a steel one? Fibreglass cars have a little seam at the top of the windscreen pillar, where it touches the roof. Further differences for the European version: The space for the rear license plate is plain, while steel cars have a hollow there. On glass cars, the rear driving lights are located in the bumper, while on steel cars they are in the centre of the indicator lenses.

 

I guess we can try and figure out a real number.

Reality is 25% of those cars probably no longer exist , from either flooded, crashed,or parted cars by now.

 

There must be a typo in the 308GTB (steel) data, as I am selling late 1976 production (steel) VIN #20405!!

 

I spent some time yesterday searching the general internet for information to see if I could piece together an overall estimate of the numbers of 308s manufactured each year.

I discovered there was a remarkable amount of information available, although scattered all over the place. Noteworthy is FerrariChat member "Neofer" of France who had posted many summaries. I own Keith Blumel’s book “Original Ferrari V8” and the totals below generally correspond with those in his book.

There are certainly inaccuracies in the yearly counts in my summary. In working the data, we are probably to an accuracy of plus / minus 100 cars or so. Some data is exact; other data is rougher. Despite these inaccuracies, I believe this is worthwhile posting as it is useful sense of how many of everything was built and when. If you do not find these estimates useful: please just move on.

I tried to divide the data into meaningful design changes (e.g. separated QV production into four pieces) to avoid the "Model Year” (MY) issue. The "Date Started" and "Date Ended" were often determined from Registry databases by looking for build dates of the first and last car listed in the registry (i.e. the last serial number).

Data shown in black is pulled directly from one of the information sources listed below. Data shown in red was calculated. If yearly production of a particular 308 variant is shown in black and the total is shown in red, the total is simply the sum of each year’s production. If the yearly production is shown in red and the total is shown in black, I have evenly distributed the total production number by month in proportion to the months that the subject 308 variant was manufactured in each year. If both the yearly production numbers are in red and the dates of manufacture are in red, I used the bottom line assembly line totals to guide an estimate of when the 308 variant began or ended production. This was not as flakey as it may seem since it is unlikely that the overall assembly line production rate whipsawed year-to-year. These however are certainly the softest numbers.

The 328 numbers are most clearly documented. The QV data is good too. I am most unclear about the carbureted cars. I have no idea about the Michelottos but the numbers are so small I just made an educated guess and moved on. I did not research the Italian market cars, so just distributed their numbers across their production years.

This may be the best we can do. It is not perfect. For me, it is interesting to see just how many of each of the variants were produced and even just to see all the variants listed in one place.

I ask one thing: if you spot a gap in accuracy, please post the data to improve the numbers by providing data in the format of the table, such as “308 GTS steel bodies commenced production in July 1977, with xxx produced in 1977, xxx produced in 1978, and … etc”. Just saying, "there is an inaccuracy somewhere in the GTS numbers" will not be useful.

Main Sources:
Production number for 308 GTS

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/308-328/412930-328-production-number-breakdown.html

Welcome to the 308 GTB Register

Production number for 308 GTS

Ferrari 308
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This is very interesting and thanks for taking the time to put it together. I am sure others are interested as well. I know there is also lots of uncertainty about many of the numbers and VINs but that is part of the 308 family.

I always thought my '79 was one of the last carburated cars from December of '79 #30585 but it looks like there was a large overlap with the GTxi's. I always thought they started manufacturing the GTB/Si's in October '79. Those Aug-80 cars would be model year '79 in the US.

Anyway, all very interesting.

 

Yeah, that is the part of the production numbers that are most mysterious; it sounds like there was a lot of ramp-up, overlap, non-sequential serial numbers and general suffle-ation. The exact answer we'll never know.

My hope was to just sketch the production of the various 308 variants through time. I was particularly curious about how many of my GTS QV K-Jet Basics where built and I think I now have a fairly good estimate. Hopefully the table is interesting to others too.

It might of been better if I did not show the "Date Started" and "Date Ended" dates since they are accurate enough for my table but are sometimes not representative of the actual dates of the first or last cars in a version, which might have happened much earlier or later than the bulk of the cars. My "Date Started" and "Date Ended" represent the "bulk" as they were distributed in time.

The amount of work to do the tables wasn't too too bad; I was in that weird mental "zone" yesterday where I could mentally juggle arrays fairly easily so it went quickly. Zen or something.

 

that's indeed a nice overview, thank you!

One comment, the start of the steel carbed gtb was not in June. My steel one is from Februar 1977.

One question i'm still trying to get anwered, how many of the steel carbed GTBs were deliverd to where? How many were dry sump and how many were wet sump?

 

To add a small missing detail, the chassis number changeover from series 1 to series 2 328s is 76625-76626.

 

I would keep the dates, there are helpful and of interest. In time, they will likely become more accurate as individuals chime in like Steven did.

Agreed, we may never know the actual production history but what else will we talk about if we did.

 

...for listing the production numbers. I vaguely recalled the 1978 GTB production number to have been about 500 and the number of all Ferraris made in 1978 to have been 2,500. So I was close! While at the Factory in Nov. 1983, I was told (paraphrasing after all these years) that "approximately 30% of total production goes to the USA and 30% of that goes to California." That info made me feel rather exclusive as a California owner of a '78 GTB. But it was a different time and so much has changed since those days. I visited again the next year and saw at least 50 GTOs sitting there and, by 1998, I found the old factory almost unrecognizable. And yes, I still have the car.

 

To nitpick, the US market share is a bit less than 30%: about 28% and that percentage has remained fairly constant along the years:

For What it is Worth, a few elements about the production of “our” cars during the middle of the eighties:

Quote (maybe not absolutely litterally, transated from french by yours truly) from an interview of Giovanni Sguazzini, Managing Director of Ferrari’s road cars, as published in the annual special supplement Ferrari 1985-86 of the French magazine Auto-Hebdo:

“Our production was 2850 cars in 1984 and will be 3056 cars in 1985; from these, about 80% are V8s, either 2 litre or 3 litres, and now 3,2 litres; the Testarossa accounts for 12% and the 400 for the rest, but we encountered some difficulties with the 400 production in 1985 so it is not fully representative of our aim with that model.

As for our markets, 78% of our production is exported, as 22% is sold here in Italy.

The United States of America is our main export market, with 28% of the total of our production.
By volume you have then Italy, as already said, with 22% of the total
The whole of Europe accounts for 40% of the total,
And rest of the World accounts for 10%.

Among Europe, four countries are very signifiant:
Germany is our main European market, with 11-12% of our total production (NOT 11% of the 40%!)
Then three countries are tied for the same volumes, France, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, each receiving between 7 and 8% of our total production each year, that is about 220 to 240 cars.
So these four countries, Germany, France, UK and Switzerland absorb about 33-35% of our total production together, and about 80% of our sales in Europe excluding Italy, which is our domestic market.

It should be noted that these market shares for our exports are more or less decided by us, and not by orders, as we know that each of our main market is ready and willing to receive a greater number of cars than the volume we allocate to them, but we do not have the capacity to, neither do we want to, produce a significantly greater number of cars”

(Please bear in mind that if those market shares are fairly constant and a good ballpark, there were variations among the models delivered to each market: for instance, almost all the production of the first 308 GTSs during the first six months (oct ‘77 to march ’78) was allocated to the United States; a late ’77 308 GTSs in Europe is a rare bird)

Rgds

 

The information in the table (which comes from my website, btw) was taken directly from an article on the official Ferrari website.

Of course this is not correct, as we know that (another quote from my website):

"...The last fiberglass car is, according to most of the books, s/n 21289. The first steel-bodied car is regarded to be 20805. But there is at least one steel car known in the USA with a lower number, having definitely a steel body! Experts claim that all 308 GTB's destined for the US market with numbers higher than 20000 are steel cars. And most of the literature says that the last carburetted 308 GTB built in 1980 was s/n 34349. But according to the Servizio Assistenza Tecnica of Ferrari, after this there were manufactured another five: 34377 - 34379 - 34389 - 34465 - 34503!"

Robert

The Ferrari 308 GTB Register

 

Look at all the numbers in the 1977 column in the chart of production.

Something seems off, as 1977 steel shows 300+ steel GTB, only a few cars, yet 500+ 1977 GTS?

I have rarely if ever seen a 1977 NON CAT GTS.
North American 1978 catalyst equipped GTS were the first ones here.

There were that many GTS for the rest of world?

It is had to drill into any area of the study.

 

Alan,

Figures as given in Dirk-Michael Konradt's book are:

Carburatted GTSs by PRODUCTION year (Jan 1st, to Dec 31st)
1977: 106
1978: 884
1979: 1029
1980: 1200
Total carbed GTSs produced: 3219

Carbed GTBs produced in 1977: 963, of which 135 Glass cars (he admits the factory figures of 808 glass cas total, not 712)

And look at the last sentance of my post before yours: almost ALL the GTS produced during the first six months of production (sept 77 to march 78) were sent to the USA. A 1977 produced GTS is very, very rare in Europe.

Rgds

 

Has anyone found information about manufacturing specifics such as exterior or interior color production? I am researching a 1980 308 GTSi with a rare Oro Chiaro (gold) exterior and what seems to be a special order off catalog interior Testa di Moro. Would love to find out how many of this combination were manufactured, but the info may just be next to impossible to find. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

 

The answer is very easy: the information about colors for 308s does not exist, except perhaps at the factory, and that is not accessible. Numbers and figures usually quoted are impossible to cross-check, and the sources are almost never given, so it is worth "about nothing" except in a few specific situations for countries where the importer has archives and is willing to let you access these, such as "Maranello concessionaires" for the United Kingdom.
"Oro Chiaro" is rare indeed. "Testa di Moro" is a standard carpet color of the catalogue, certainly not a special order.

Rgds

 

"Not accessible" because no one has compiled it, or because it's secret?

We can't figure out colors for 3x8s, but for my other car (Porsche 356 Speedster) we have color codes for every car produced 1954-1959. That's from the era of Kardex, hand assembly, etc. Mind boggling.

 

Oh, the factory has it, Jon; a long time ago, it was still on small carboards, which were in shoeboxes, for cars produced before 1984 or so. After "1984 or so", it was computerised. I don't know if they have compiled it, or computerised it, to the point that they are able to make statistics on colors?

My GUESS (only a guess, I have no certitude) is that they do not want to give free access to it because it would undermine the "Classiche", etc...
Remember that the factory was sending you a free certificate (yes: FREE, I mean: no money asked) for your car, this about ten years ago, giving the original colors, production date, etc...and I have reasons to believe that for the rarer colors, they are sometimes not exactly sure of the paint reference.

You know of course that Italians build cars with their heart, Germans with their head. You cannot compare.

Rgds

 

What if your 308 is smack down right in the middle between the very first and the very last production, does that count for anything?