Ferrari GTO: A reputation undeserved?

When George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty Four, his dystopian vision was set far into the future. But the year 1984 is now far closer to when the book was written than the present day. It was in 1984 that the very first Macintosh computer went on sale, the year the Soviet Union boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics, the year of Band Aid.

It was also the year the Ferrari GTO was launched. (Not 288 GTO? That’s actually an unofficial sobriquet.) If you’re a bloke born in the UK that year, I’m afraid to say that, statistically speaking, you’re already over half way to pushing up the daisies.

Rather more recently (in 2022, no less), former Car magazine editor and regular Ti contributor Gavin Green wrote a fine piece for us explaining not just why the GTO was the world’s first hypercar (even though the term did not exist at the time) but why it remains his favourite such car to this day. Based on two drives, one over 1000 miles in length, and written by one of the most reliable, insightful brains in the business, it’s not a judgement you’d question lightly. And nor am I going to.