A Ferrari 330 GTO will be among the featured entrants at the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance 2012, scheduled for March 9-11 in Amelia Island, Florida.
“This is our ‘marque car’,” said Amelia Island Concours founder and Chairman Bill Warner, “It’s the car on our website and, with its deep and pronounced hood bulge, the most recognizable and voluptuous of the GTO breed.” The Ferrari 330 GTO of Jim Jaeger (s/n 3765) is one of the first two four-liter GTOs built by the Ferrari factory.
“Ferrari fans will want to get here early to hear ‘3765’ drive onto the field,” said Warner, “The four-liter GTOs have a deep, sharp, bark to them, not the soft muffled exhaust of the three-liter GTOs. It’s a sound few race fans have heard and no one will ever forget,” continued Warner.
The 330 GTOs were Ferrari’s in-house hot rods: prototype Grand Touring cars with four-liter V-12 engines instead of the GTO’s traditional 3-liter V-12. Just two were built; a cross between a pure prototype and a road going Grand Touring car.
Assigned to Ferrari Engineer and racer Mike Parkes and factory F1 and sports car ace Lorenzo Bandini, Jim Jaeger’s 4-liter GTO appears as it did on June 23, 1962 when gridded seventh at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It was in good company, parked next to the eventual winner, the #6, Phil Hill and Olivier Gendebien’s factory Ferrari 330 TRI LM prototype: blood relatives.
But 330 LM/GTO “3765” never made the finish at Le Mans that year. After 56 laps it retired with overheating due to an accident and didn’t race again until 1965. By then the new owner had installed a three-liter V-12 engine scavenged from a Ferrari prototype. This swap allowed “3765” to compete as a GTO in Italian GT races.
On June 13, 1965 new owner, Ferdinando Latteri, scored five straight class wins in Italian hillclimbs after retiring from the Targa Florio in May. He ended the car’s competition history with a class victory in the Coppa Gallenga Hillclimb in March, 1966.
In 1967 “3765” came to America. Jim Jaeger took possession of this prototype GTO in 1985 and began a historically fastidious restoration. Once he had obtained the car’s original 4-liter V-12 engine block, Jaeger returned the car to its original 1962 Le Mans livery. Today “3765” wears the number seven, just as it did 50 years ago at Le Mans on Saturday afternoon, June 23, 1962.
The 2012 Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance will be held March 9-11 on the 10th and 18th fairways of The Golf Club of Amelia Island at Summer Beach adjacent to The Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island. The honoree for 2012 will be rally and endurance legend Vic Elford and the iconic Ferrari GTO will be featured. The show’s Foundation has donated nearly $1.8 million to Community Hospice of Northeast Florida, Inc. and other charities on Florida’s First Coast since its inception in 1996.
For more information, visit www.ameliaconcours.org.
[Source: Amelia Island Concours]
