Ferrari 275

Overview

The 275 is where Ferrari's road cars caught up with its race cars. Launched in 1964 as the GTB berlinetta and the open GTS, it took the Colombo V12 out to 3,286cc and, for the first time on a Ferrari road car, mounted the gearbox as a rear transaxle rather than bolting it straight to the engine, spreading weight front to rear for handling no earlier 250 could match. Pininfarina drew the GTB's fastback shape and Scaglietti built it, and the range kept evolving fast: a longer nose fixed high-speed lift in late 1965, a torque tube quieted the driveline in 1966, and the GTB/4 arrived the same year with a second camshaft per bank, Ferrari's first four-cam road car engine, and 300hp. A handful of open GTS/4 NART Spiders, just 10 built, became the rarest and now the most expensive cars in the family. Production across every variant runs to roughly 1,000 cars, all of them recognizably the bridge between the 250 era and the Daytona that followed.

Distinctions

The defining attributes and collector status that make this car garage-worthy.

Legend

A car that transcended the hobby, known far beyond the people who drive them.

Poster Car

The car on the bedroom wall, the one people dreamed about before they could drive.

Octane Files Select

Renowned for its history, engineering, or cultural weight.

Collectibility scorecard

Rated 1 to 10 on the traits that matter for owning, driving, and holding on to a car like this.

Desirability

9/10

Rarity

7/10

Driving thrill

8/10

Investment trajectory

8/10

Usability

4/10

Ease of restoration

4/10

Cultural impact

6/10

Electronic dependence

Fully analogHeavily electronic

Entirely mechanical, in keeping with every Colombo-descended V12 Ferrari of this era. Weber carburettors, coil-and-distributor ignition with mechanical advance, and a rear-mounted manual transaxle connected to the engine by a driveshaft, later enclosed in a torque tube to control vibration, are the whole electrical and mechanical story. The four-cam GTB/4's extra pair of camshafts and dry-sump lubrication are mechanical refinements, not electronic ones. There is nothing on any 275 variant for a computer to manage.

Market data

Demand tier, price trend, and typical values by condition. Our own assessment, not a quoted valuation.

Demand tier

EntrySolidHighBlue-chip

The proven elite. Values are established, liquid, and defended at every auction.

Value trajectory

AppreciatingStableCooling

Values are holding steady. What you pay today is what it's worth tomorrow.

Price by condition

Driver

$1.8M

Excellent

$2.4M

Concours

$3.2M

The 275 family prices in a clear hierarchy that tracks the variant ladder closely. classic.com's tracked average for the steel GTB sits near $2.38 million, with a 1966 alloy GTB/6C reaching $3.48 million in August 2024. The four-cam GTB/4 averages higher still, near $3.38 million, with a 1967 alloy car reaching $6.05 million in January 2026. Above all of it, the GTS/4 NART Spider has sold for as much as $27.5 million, reflecting only ten cars ever built and the model's Steve McQueen association. One aggregator's reported $25,200 sale for a 275 GTS appears to be a data error, wildly out of step with every other GTS result found this session, and was not used anywhere on the page. The band below describes a documented steel-bodied GTB, the volume specification most buyers will actually encounter; the GTB/4, alloy cars and the NART Spider all trade well above it and are addressed here rather than folded into one number.

Values as of August 2026.

Buyer's guide

What anyone seriously considering this car should know first.

Why it's worth it

The 275 GTB is where Ferrari first built its Colombo V12 with a rear-mounted gearbox for proper front-to-rear balance

Callout

Ferrari's first road car with a rear transaxle, and its first four-camshaft road-car engine two years later

What to watch for

Know exactly which specification you are looking at before anything else, because the differences are real money, not trivia: short nose versus long nose, steel versus alloy body, single-cam GTB versus four-cam GTB/4, and torque-tube versus earlier driveline all matter to both character and price. Early cars without the torque tube can develop driveline vibration that later cars engineered out, so a test drive should include time above town-centre speeds. Verify chassis and engine numbers against Ferrari's own build records and, ideally, Ferrari Classiche certification, since these cars have spent six decades being bought, sold, raced and restored, and identity questions are common at this value. The GTS/4 NART Spider in particular has a well-documented, closely tracked ownership history for every one of the ten cars built, so a seller who cannot produce that paper trail in full is not selling a genuine one. Buy through a specialist who has specifically handled 275s, not classic Ferraris generally.

The Story

Driving character

The rear transaxle is the whole story of how a 275 feels different from a 250. Moving the gearbox to the back shifted weight rearward and evened out the front-to-rear balance, and the result is a car that turns in more neutrally and holds a line with less of the nose-heavy push earlier V12 Ferraris were known for. The V12 itself, 3.3 litres on triple or six Weber carburettors depending on specification, pulls cleanly through the range with the same metallic snarl every Colombo-descended engine has, and the GTB/4's four camshafts sharpen the top end further, spinning to 8,000rpm for its 300hp peak with none of the flatness a single-cam engine shows near the redline. Early cars can transmit driveshaft vibration into the cabin at speed, a genuine period complaint the torque tube fixed from 1966 on, so an early short-nose car feels subtly rougher at pace than a later long-nose one even before the four-cam engine enters the conversation.

Design

Pininfarina drew the GTB's fastback silhouette and Scaglietti built the bodies, continuing the same design partnership that shaped the California Spyder, the SWB and the GTO before it. The shape itself changed fast in response to what the road revealed: the original short nose lifted at speed, so Ferrari extended it roughly two inches and softened the angle for the long-nose cars that followed from late 1965, a change that improved both aerodynamics and, most owners agree, the car's proportions. The GTS swaps the GTB's fastback roof for an open body while keeping the same mechanical layout underneath, and the rare GTS/4 NART Spider takes that open shape and adds the four-cam engine, a combination Ferrari built only ten times. Inside, the cabin is unmistakably a mid-1960s Ferrari GT, with the same relationship between form and speed that defined every Pininfarina-bodied 250 before it, just wrapped around a chassis that finally balanced properly.

Motorsport pedigree

The 275 raced, but never as a full factory programme the way the 250 GTO and 250 LM did before it. A small run of lightweight, largely alloy-bodied GTB competition cars, sometimes called the GTB/C, gave privateers a genuine racing 275 in period, entered at events including Le Mans and the Tour de France Automobile by independent teams rather than the Scuderia itself. Results were respectable rather than dominant: by the mid-1960s Ferrari's serious competition attention had moved on to purpose-built prototypes like the 250 LM and its successors, leaving the 275 to earn its reputation as a fast road car with real competition ancestry rather than as a title-winning race car in its own right. That balance, genuinely track-capable but never campaigned as hard as the cars either side of it in Ferrari's history, is a fair summary of where the 275 sits in the marque's motorsport story, closer to a gifted amateur than a works champion.

In culture

The 275's best-known cultural moment belongs to one specific car and one specific film. Steve McQueen saw a Ferrari 275 GTS/4 NART Spider in the 1968 heist film The Thomas Crown Affair and was taken enough with it to buy one of the ten ever built. He later crashed that car and, unable to find a replacement NART Spider, bought a 275 GTB/4 berlinetta instead, a car that itself later sold at auction for millions on the strength of his ownership alone. That connection has done more for the 275's public profile than any factory campaign, and it is a large part of why NART Spiders in particular carry such enormous premiums today: buyers are paying for one of the rarest Ferraris ever built and for a direct link to one of the most Ferrari-associated actors in Hollywood history, a pairing few other cars in this price range can claim.

Rivals

Cars from other manufacturers that competed for the same buyers when new.

Jaguar E-Type Series 1

UK·Sports·1961–1968

Aston Martin DB6

UK·Grand Tourer·1965–1971

Owning One

Why collectors want it

The 275 sits at the hinge point of Ferrari's whole V12 GT story: the last car built on Colombo-family engineering before the Daytona reinvented the front-engined Ferrari for the 1970s, and the first to get a rear transaxle, a change that made the driving experience genuinely different from every 250 before it. The GTB alone offers a real internal hierarchy for buyers to chase, from steel long-nose cars through alloy short-nose specials to the four-cam GTB/4, with classic.com tracking GTB averages near $2.38 million and GTB/4 averages near $3.38 million. Above all of it sits the GTS/4 NART Spider, only 10 built, one of which briefly belonged to Steve McQueen after he saw a sister car in The Thomas Crown Affair, and which has sold for as much as $27.5 million. Few Ferrari families offer this much genuine mechanical range, and this much genuine rarity at the very top, inside one nameplate.

Which one to look for

The GTB is where the real hierarchy lives. Early short-nose cars, built to early 1966, suffered genuine front-end lift at speed, which Ferrari corrected with a longer, more sloped nose that also happens to be the more sought-after look today. Steel-bodied cars are the volume spec; roughly two dozen alloy-bodied competition-leaning cars, sometimes called GTB/C, command a real premium for both rarity and lighter weight. The GTB/4, introduced in 1966 with a second camshaft per bank and dry-sump lubrication, is the specification most enthusiasts rate as the best all-round 275 and prices accordingly, offering meaningfully more top-end power without giving up any of the earlier cars' usability. The open GTS is a genuinely different car under a shared name, a spider rather than a berlinetta, and the ten GTS/4 NART Spiders sit above everything else in the range, rare enough that most buyers will never see one in person, let alone own one.

GTB Long Nose · 1966

The aerodynamic fix for the short nose's high-speed lift: a longer, more sloped front end and a smaller radiator opening. Most enthusiasts consider it the better-looking and better-behaved of the two GTB noses, and it commands accordingly.

GTB Short Nose · 1964–1966

The original berlinetta, with a shorter, more abrupt nose that Ferrari found lifted at speed once cars reached real velocity on the road. Steel-bodied cars are the volume specification; a small number of alloy-bodied competition-leaning cars command a real premium.

GTB/4 · 1966–1968

The four-camshaft engine, one per bank in addition to the single-cam layout's originals, paired with dry-sump lubrication and 300hp, Ferrari's first four-cam road car. Widely rated the best all-round 275 to drive.

GTS · 1964–1966

The open spider version, sharing the GTB's mechanical layout under a different, Pininfarina-styled open body rather than the berlinetta's fastback roof.

GTS/4 NART Spider · 1967–1968

The rarest and most valuable specification in the whole family: an open body over the four-cam GTB/4 running gear, commissioned through Luigi Chinetti's North American Racing Team. Steve McQueen owned one after seeing a sister car in The Thomas Crown Affair.

What owning one is like

A 275 is a sixty-year-old hand-built car, and the known issues reflect that rather than any inherent fragility. Early short-nose cars without the torque tube can transmit real driveshaft vibration into the cabin at speed, corrected by Ferrari's own 1966 running change and worth checking for specifically on any pre-1966 car. The rear transaxle and independent rear suspension are more mechanically complex than a simple front-engine, front-transmission layout, and specialists familiar with this specific arrangement, not classic Ferraris generally, are worth seeking out for anything beyond routine service. Rust follows the usual Scaglietti-body pattern: sills, floors, boot floor and lower rear wings, plus the tubular chassis itself on cars that were not stored well through the decades. As with every high-value 250-adjacent Ferrari, the dominant risk at this money is documentation and identity, not mechanical condition, and a buyer should weight an inspection accordingly rather than assuming a clean-looking car is automatically a genuine one.

Upkeep & parts

Parts and specialist support for the 275 benefit from its close family relationship to the 250 range that preceded it and the Daytona that followed, so a meaningful amount of engine and driveline knowledge carries across from specialists who work on either generation. Ferrari Classiche in Maranello remains the reference point for authentication and certification, and its involvement is treated as a real value factor at this price level rather than a nicety. GTO Engineering, DK Engineering and other marque specialists named across the 250 family's own cluster notes are equally relevant here, since the same engine family, the same coachbuilder, and often the same personnel worked on both ranges across the 1960s. Budget for the rear transaxle and driveline to need specialist attention specifically, since that is the one major mechanical system this car has that no 250 before it did, and treat routine servicing on any 275 as a job for a marque specialist rather than a general classic-car garage.