The N.A.R.T. 308GT4 LM

This is from Girardo &Co.’s newsletter. Coincidentally Harley Cluxton and I went to university together.

http://girardo.com/features/the-spellbinding-story-of-the-unique-ferrari-308-gt4-lm

There was a lot of fog surrounding the story of what happened with this car at Le Mans, the drivers, officials, Chinetti, etc. I have no idea about the accuracy of what’s in this article but it’s pretty interesting nonetheless.

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Interesting car, sadly the racing history at 74 Lemans wasn't very good. Retired due to clutch failure and qualified poorly at 38th place. The Porsche RSRs were just in another league by comparison, but the fastest 3L car there were the Ligier-Maserati JS2 which finished 8th overall that year and qualified 10th, which was likely why the GT4 was disqualified from group 5 competition. The real issue was Ferrari didn't want to make the 4v cylinder head for this engine yet. Porsche could not make a 4v head for the 911 due to heat issues, simply not possible with that engine being air cooled so they were sitting ducks for anyone making a 4v head. Maserati had made a 4v head for the Ligier (which ran the Citroen SM / Merak engine) hence why it ran rings around everyone the 3L category, GT class or group 5. Had Ferrari made a 4v head like they did for the Stratos Dino engine, I have no doubt they would have done very well at Lemans with this car. It wasn't until the 308 GT/M that Ferrari finally saw the light and did just that.