Explore Cars›Ferrari Daytona

Ferrari Daytona

Overview

Ferrari showed the 365 GTB/4 at the Paris Salon in October 1968, two years after Lamborghini had put the engine behind the driver in the Miura and half the motoring press had declared the front-engined grand tourer finished. Ferrari's reply was to build the fastest one yet. The Tipo 251 V12 grew to 4,390cc and gained a second camshaft per bank, fed by six twin-choke Webers and lubricated by a dry sump, good for 352hp at 7,500rpm. The gearbox went to the back, as it had on the 275, and the whole thing sat on a welded tubular chassis under a Pininfarina body that Leonardo Fioravanti drew as a set of hard creases and a single knife-edge running nose to tail. Road & Track timed one at 173mph in October 1970, which made it the fastest car you could buy. Ferrari never officially called it the Daytona; Enzo killed the name in temper after the press leaked it before launch. Everybody else used it anyway, and 1,406 cars later it is the only name anyone reaches for.

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

6/10

Driving thrill

8/10

Investment trajectory

6/10

Usability

5/10

Ease of restoration

4/10

Cultural impact

8/10

Electronic dependence

Fully analogHeavily electronic

Six twin-choke Weber 40 DCN carburettors, twin coils and two distributors driven off the back of the engine, and no fuel injection, engine management or ignition computer anywhere. Throttle, clutch and the five-speed transaxle are all mechanical linkages, the steering is unassisted with no power option offered, and the ventilated discs are servo-assisted hydraulics with no anti-lock. The only meaningful electrical actuator on the car is the pop-up headlight mechanism fitted from 1971, and the earliest cars do not even have that: their lights sit fixed behind a Plexiglas panel.

Market data

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

Demand tier

EntrySolidHighBlue-chip

Strong, sustained collector demand. Good examples never wait long for a buyer.

Value trajectory

AppreciatingStableCooling

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

Price by condition

Driver

$400k

Excellent

$600k

Concours

$850k

The band describes an ordinary pop-up-headlight coupe, which is what most buyers will actually meet: 1,284 of the 1,406 cars built are berlinettas. Recent results bracket it. RM Sotheby's sold a Classiche-certified, 5,710-mile, largely original 1973 coupe for $544,000 at Monterey in August 2025, while British results the same year ran lower, at £320,000 in RM's London sale that November and £309,350 at Bonhams' Goodwood Revival in September. Classic.com's running average across the model sits around $644,000. Plexiglas-nose cars sit above the band, and Spyders are a separate market entirely, with recent results from $2,200,000 to $3,635,000. The fifteen factory Competizione cars are higher again: $8,145,000 at Gooding Christie's Pebble Beach in August 2025, a world record for the model. Stable rather than appreciating is a deliberate call. Hagerty's Ferrari index recorded the Daytona coupe down about 3% in a recent quarter and the wider Enzo-era market has been picky rather than rising, so the honest read is a flat market with a very strong floor.

Values as of August 2026.

Buyer's guide

What anyone seriously considering this car should know first.

Why it's worth it

The fastest production car in the world when it launched, and Ferrari's last front-engined V12 berlinetta for the next 23 years

Callout

In November 1971 Dan Gurney and Brock Yates drove one from Manhattan to Redondo Beach in 35 hours 54 minutes

What to watch for

Two questions decide a Daytona: is the shell honest, and is the roof original. Ferrari bought the same cheap steel everyone else in the Fiat orbit was using in 1970, and these cars rot in the rear wheel arches first, then the sills, then the closed sections of body and frame you cannot see without a lift and a camera. Almost every survivor has had bodywork; the only question is whether it was done properly or hidden under fresh paint, so budget for a proper inspection with the car in the air before you budget for anything else. The roof question is the expensive one. Factory Spyders trade at several times coupe money, so the 1980s produced a trade in cutting coupes open, and the better conversions copied the reinforced inner wings and reprofiled A-pillars well enough to fool people. US-market cars carry no VIN distinction between berlinetta and spyder at all, which is why chassis records matter more here than on almost any other Ferrari. One quick tell: factory Spyders have an L-shaped trim surround at the window that conversions usually cut straight. Then check it against Ferrari Classiche and an independent chassis history. Early cars have aluminium doors; from chassis 15701 they are braced steel.

The Story

Driving character

The Daytona asks for commitment before it gives anything back. There is no power steering and there never was, so parking it is genuine physical work and the first mile always feels like the car is winning. The transaxle wants heat in its oil before the Porsche-type synchromesh does its job, and first gear is over to the left and back, a dogleg reached across a wide console. Rush either and the car punishes you. Then the road opens and everything changes. Above about 6,000rpm the steering lightens, the nose settles, and the four-cam V12 stops sounding like an engine and starts sounding like a mechanism: six Webers drawing, twelve pistons at 7,500rpm, and 352hp arriving as one long uninterrupted pull rather than a step. Road & Track ran one to 173mph in 1970 and 60mph in 5.9 seconds. It is not a nimble car and never pretends to be. It was built to hold three figures across a country, and period racers' accounts of what the wheel did to their hands over 24 hours tell you the rest.

Design

Fioravanti was young and newly arrived at Pininfarina when he drew this, and it is widely described as his best work. What he did was throw out the vocabulary Ferrari had used for a decade. The 275 and the 330 GTC are built from curves and soft shoulders; the Daytona is built from two hard lines. One runs the full length of the car as a crease from nose to tail, splitting the body into an upper and a lower half. The other is the tail itself, cut flat and finished with a full-width light panel. The nose is the signature: on the first cars a single Plexiglas band across the whole front with the headlights fixed behind it and fine vertical etchings between them, a shape with no precedent in the Ferrari catalogue. American regulations killed it in 1971, and the replacement pop-ups left a blank painted panel where the drama had been. Scaglietti built the bodies in steel with aluminium doors, bonnet and boot lid, later switching the doors to braced steel. Ferrari's own 12Cilindri of 2024 quotes this front end deliberately.

Motorsport pedigree

Ferrari never intended to race the Daytona, and then raced it very well. The factory built fifteen Competizione cars in three batches of five, in 1971, 1972 and 1973, lightened and tuned to roughly 400hp and then about 450hp, and put them with the people who actually campaigned Ferraris: Luigi Chinetti's NART, Charles Pozzi in France and Jacques Swaters' Ecurie Francorchamps in Belgium. The results were remarkable for a road-derived GT car racing among prototypes. A NART car took a top-five overall finish at Le Mans in 1971. In 1972 five Daytonas filled fifth through ninth overall and won the GT class, and they took the class again in 1973 and 1974. They were still finishing twelfth and thirteenth in 1975. The model's last real result came four years after that: at the 1979 24 Hours of Daytona, John Morton and Tony Adamowicz drove chassis 16407 to second overall and the GTO class win, in a car that had left Maranello as a road model. Around 27 Daytonas were prepared for competition in period, only fifteen of them by the factory.

In culture

Two stories carry this car outside the hobby, and neither happened on a circuit. On 15 November 1971 Dan Gurney and Brock Yates left the Red Ball Garage in Manhattan in a Daytona, chassis 14271, and reached the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach 35 hours and 54 minutes later, 2,863 miles at an average over 80mph, collecting exactly one ticket. Gurney's line afterwards, that at no point did they exceed 175mph, is the most quoted sentence in the history of illegal road racing. The other is Miami Vice, where Sonny Crockett's white Daytona Spyder defined a decade of television and was not a Ferrari at all: Tom McBurnie built it on a Chevrolet Corvette C3 chassis, Ferrari sued, and the settlement put two real Testarossas into the show in exchange for the replicas disappearing. The Daytona was written out in a season-three explosion, though the shell that blew up was an empty body rather than either screen car. Add the Carpenters photographing theirs for a 1973 album sleeve and The Gumball Rally, and the Daytona is one of very few Ferraris famous to people who do not follow Ferrari.

Rivals

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

Owning One

Why collectors want it

The Daytona is the last car of the old Ferrari and the first of the modern one, and that is why it has never gone out of fashion. It is a hand-built Scaglietti body over a tube frame with a carburetted four-cam V12 and no electronic assistance of any kind, and it will also cross a continent at three figures without complaint. Very little built before it does both. The internal hierarchy is steep and well understood. The Spyder sits at the top of the road cars, 121 or 122 built against 1,284 coupes, and trades at several times coupe money. The fifteen factory Competizione cars sit above everything: one took $8,145,000 at Gooding Christie's Pebble Beach in August 2025, a world record for the model. Among ordinary coupes the Plexiglas-nose cars built before the 1971 switch to pop-up headlights carry a clear premium, and fewer than a third of the coupes have one. Everything below that is condition, mileage and paperwork, which is unusually good news: this is a blue-chip shape you can still buy without a competition history attached.

Which one to look for

Start with the nose. Cars built before the 1971 change wear a full-width Plexiglas panel with the headlights fixed behind it, and that is the shape Fioravanti drew and the one the market wants. Fewer than a third of the 1,284 coupes have it, the changeover happened between roughly chassis 13800 and 14200, and it was forced on Ferrari by an American rule banning headlights under covers rather than chosen. Pop-up cars are the same car underneath and cost meaningfully less, which makes them the sensible way into the model. Above both sits the 365 GTS/4 Spyder, built only from 1971 and only in 121 or 122 examples, seven of them right-hand drive. It is the grail of the road cars and priced accordingly. Above everything are the fifteen factory Competizione cars, five each in 1971, 1972 and 1973, running roughly 400hp in Series II trim and about 450hp in Series III, with aluminium and then part-fibreglass bodywork. Around 27 Daytonas were prepared for racing in period, so a competition car is not automatically a factory one.

365 GTB/4 Berlinetta (Plexiglas nose) · 1968–1971

The original Fioravanti front end: a full-width Plexiglas panel with the headlights fixed behind it and fine vertical etchings between them. Mechanically identical to later cars, and the shape the market wants.

365 GTB/4 Berlinetta (pop-up headlights) · 1971–1973

The same car with retractable headlights behind a painted panel, forced on Ferrari by an American rule banning headlights under covers. Meaningfully cheaper than a Plexiglas car and the sensible way into the model.

365 GTB/4 Competizione · 1971–1973

The factory competition cars, lightened and tuned, campaigned by NART, Charles Pozzi and Ecurie Francorchamps. Series I bodies were all aluminium; Series II used a steel centre section with aluminium opening panels.

365 GTS/4 Spyder · 1971–1973

The factory convertible, built by Scaglietti alongside the coupe and the grail of the Daytona road cars. Trades at several times coupe money, which is exactly why so many coupes were later cut open to imitate it.

What owning one is like

Rust is the whole story and most of the rest is manageable. The steel Ferrari was buying in 1970 was no better than what the rest of the Fiat orbit used, and it goes in the rear wheel arches first, then the sills, then the box sections and closed cavities in the structure where nobody can see it. That is why almost every Daytona has been restored at least once, and why genuinely original bodywork is a real find rather than a sales phrase. The frame tubing itself is heavy and usually sound; it is the panels and the hidden sections that cost money. Beyond corrosion the car is tougher than its reputation. The four-cam V12 is a stout engine that dislikes being run cold and short-tripped rather than being fragile, and the transaxle is durable once it has heat in it. Wire wheels, when fitted, are a known weak spot: they corrode at the spokes, and the knock-off spinners get rechromed until the prancing horse on them is barely legible. None of this puts people off. A sorted Daytona is one of the very few early-1970s Ferraris you can genuinely use.

Upkeep & parts

Parts are better than you would expect for a car built in four figures. Maranello Classic Parts publishes full illustrated diagrams for the 365 GTB/4 down to the chassis components and the tool kit, and Superformance carries the classic V12 catalogue including Daytona suspension parts as stock items rather than special orders. Between them most mechanical and chassis items are on a shelf somewhere. Body panels and interior trim are the expensive end, because Scaglietti built these by hand and a replacement panel is a fabrication job rather than a part number. On the labour side the specialist list is short and well known: DK Engineering, Barkaways and Foskers in Britain, Ferrari Classiche in Maranello for certification. Classiche paperwork is not decoration on this model. It is the document that separates a factory Spyder from a well-made conversion, and it prices accordingly. Budget for a proper annual fluid and carburettor service with someone who has balanced six Webers before, and accept that a full rebuild of a four-cam V12 is specialist money whoever does it.