how many points would a new Dino get?

yes, at least in the "Preservation" class.....

 

I think that's a good question, and I'd like to hear the answer from a participating judge!

I think my 330 GT is probably nicer than when it left the factory.

Ken Purdy wrote an excellent article in the 1960s about Ferrari. He described the crudely finished bodywork, and the nearly flat blood-red paint, and how the unrefined look of the cars were a stark contrast to how well they really were engineered, and how well they performed.

Perhaps the question should be asked: if a top-notch presevation Dino were to enter a regular concours, how many points would it receive?

 

I posted this last February - I think it's the article you speak of;

"no doubt about it, the race cars were workhorses and treated as such.

One of my favorite passages of all time describing the feel and treatment these cars got when they were run in anger was by the great automotive writer, Ken W. Purdy. This following is an excerpt from his book "The Kings of the Road" and is about a practice session at Sebring - I believe 1956. Pardon the length, but I think everyone here will enjoy it.

"Years ago I was looking at three cars in the Ferrari pits at Sebring. It had rained in the afternoon and the Florida sun, dropping to the rim of the great plain, shone red in the black pools of water on the circuit. There were only a few cars running in practice, howling separately in the distance, out of sight most of the time. The blood-red Ferrari cars would go a few laps as soon as the mechanics were finished with them. These were stark, open two-seaters. Their paint was flat and crude. The bucket seats were upholstered in wide-wale corduroy. Everything else in the cars except the wood steering wheels was bare unpainted metal, much of it roughly finished. Heavy welding seams joined the thin tubes of the frames. Shiny streaks here and there showed where oil had been mopped up. A man next to me turned, remembering the old pilots' gag: "You wouldn't send the kid up in THAT!" he said. A small, dark, red-eyed mechanic got into one of the cars. An ignition key looped in a piece of sisal wrapping twine stuck out of the dashboard. He leaned on it with the heel of his hand and a bare-metal clanging and clattering began. You wanted to move away before the thing exploded. It fired suddenly, all of a piece, and pumped out a gout of blue smoke that drifted low over the wet grass of the infield. The mechanic sat there with his foot in it for five minutes.

There was somebody in each of the other cars, and they were running, too. Juan Manuel Fangio materialized, pear-shaped in a rain jacket. He looked sleepy, he looked bored, he looked indifferent, until one noticed the incessant flickering of his eyes. The mechanic yelled somethin into his ear. Fangio let him see a sad smile, he shrugged massively. He got into the automobile, stared briefly at the instruments and then he went away and the other two, Eugenio Castellotti and Luigi Musso, howled after him, down the straight and under the bridge and around the corner out of sight. We could hear them through the esses and into the Warehouse road and then not again until they showed up on the back straight, the three of them in echelon astern, the howling of the engines squeezed down by distance to a thin buzz, their progress across the horizon apparently so leisurely that you wondered why this would be called racing. They were running around 140 mph.

They went down through the gears for the hairpin turn, a 180-degree reversal, the rear wheels spinning, or trying to, and then sudenly they were in the hole at the bottom of the finishing straight, drifting up to the edge of the concrete, coming past the pits, Fangio first, sitting there limp as pasta, the Castellotti, then Musso, all of them turning 7000 rpm and then one after another they shifted up a gear, three successive explosive 'whacks' as the engines bit, and they were gone again.

They ran over the five-mile circuit a dozen laps like that, tight together, so stable they seemed locked to the ground like buildings, but flying past light as deer at the same time. Wet with rain, the hurried-on paint glistened like oven-fired enamel as the cars screamed down the shiny concrete chute, the drivers sitting back from the wheels, their arms straight.

These were beautiful objects, perfect of their kind, there was nothing of crudity or starkness about them now. I was hard to believe that any of the other sixty cars that would start the race the next day could run ahead of the red Ferraris, and none of them did."

 

FCA concourse rules have deductions for over restoration, and it is used. Likewise added patina is also a deduction. Restoration should be done to origional standards, but if you enjoy doing a little more and it makes you happy - then do it. No one should take away any pleasure that you can derive in owning these and enjoying them.

 

That's the article exactly. Well done, Bryan.

 

Mine has plenty of patina and isn't nearly as shiny as most repainted cars, that's why I keep it well away from Tom S. Patina on 2+2's = potential GTO conversion .

Regards,

Art S.

 

My old car has mostly original paint which is just okay from a technical point of view, yet people always comment on how nice it looks. Naturally it can't compare to a modern $10k paint job in gloss, depth, vibrance etc. but when people see it they know I have a "real" car that really drives on real roads. They see a history in that paint; a classic charm that new paint couldn't convey. It looks like a car, not a museum piece.

I used to be dying to repaint it not having the experience of ownership and an appriciation for what a vintage car is, only wishing for the gloss and perfection. I've changed my mind.

Ken

 

I remember visiting Scaglietti during the "Lusso" days (64?) and seeing body panels (stamped in Torino or Milano, I forget) sitting outside getting a coat of rust before assembly on a jig. After assembly, the body was sanded down on the outside only, before paint! And we wonder why they are rust-prone? The point is that they were not, in those days, built very well. The engines were a marvel, but much of the balance of those early Ferraris was , in some ways, pretty ordinary. So I agree, an original Dino might garner a "preservation" award, but many restored cars are much better than when new. As a senior judge, however, I must agree with Jim Riff, who knows his stuff.