Haynes' "Ferrari 250 GTO Owners' Workshop Manual"

The "Owners' Workshop Manuals" from Haynes have long been a staple of do-it-yourselfers' garages around the world, for all manner of cars and motorcycles. But in 2008, Haynes decided to try something different, and produced a manual for the Spitfire - by Supermarine, not Triumph! It sold quite well and has fathered quite a line of non-automotive manuals, on iconic aircraft, spacecraft (real and fictional), tanks and ships (even the Titanic!).

It was probably inevitable that Haynes would eventually turn to racing cars, and they started with the Red Bull RB6 F1 car, and followed that up with similar titles on the Maserati 250F, Lotus 72 and McLaren M23 (with a book on the Lotus 49 upcoming). So it is that they have now done a book on the Ferrari 250 GTO.

I know that there have been other books devoted specifically to the GTO, and as I do not own any of the others, I'll leave the comparison to others. But for the relatively modest price, I like the book. It is not a true "Owners' Workshop Manual", as any of the lucky few who own a GTO will find it difficult to service the car with what's in here. A more appropriate subtitle might have been "Would-Be Owners' Descriptive Manual".

Incidentally, the car featured primarily in the detail section is 3757GT, owned for many years by Nick Mason, which he says he purchased in 1978 for "five figures"! Ah, those were the days.

Rather than going into more detail, I'll just present scans of the covers, and the back cover has a pretty good description of the contents. And incidentally, their next such book on sports racers will be one on the Ford GT40.
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But then, they'd only be able to sell 36 of them!!

 

One of the better things in the book is the excellent cutaway shown on the cover, which is repeated inside across two pages with good annotation.

One small negative has to do with the individual chassis histories; unfortunately the current whereabouts of some of the cars is not divulged. While the owners might want to keep their identities private, it would at least have been nice to know what continent the cars were on, if nothing more.

Incidentally, a majority of the cars left the factory in a color called "Rosso Cina". How does this compare to Rosso Corsa, because it certainly looks very similar?

 

Don't laugh! Haynes will be doing a similar book on the Soyuz in a few months!
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