Nice car. Old days

Pic of Alain delon and Jane Fonda. I heard it was his car but can’t confirm. I see the black one has marker lights and hideous bumper guards. The red one does not.


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I like the cars but as usual Jane is just along for the ride with no redeeming qualities.

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Help, I can’t identify the cars!
As far as Delon, I have seen a few of the movies he was in, but only recall him as the French pilot in Airport 79 and as Gauch in Red Sun. Whereas, definitely have watched many more of Jane’s films.

They’re definitely Ferraris, possibly 250 GT Spyder models.

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Thank you,
I thought they might be Ferrari, but could not read the script on the trunk.

They look like 1962 250 GT California models. I’ve seen pictures of the 1962 cars with and without bumper guards. There weren’t federal regulations until 1973 so the bumper guards aren’t mandated for the US market. I’m not sure about the European market.

On a side note, back in the '60s, Luigi Chinetti, the Ferrari importer/distributor/dealer in NYC, had his service facility located in the West 40s of Manhattan. I used to purposely walk past that facility because there were always a few Ferraris parked in front, or in the entryway to the garage. If you peered inside, there were even more.

This was the only way (at least for me…) to see significant numbers of those incredible cars. I know that I saw a few 250 GTs, as well as some that were even more exotic.

Even further West was his showroom, but, because I was a kid, I never had enough nerve to walk in there. Both the showroom and the service facility are long gone, and have likely been replaced by $5k per month 3 room apartments.

This was the showroom, on 11th Avenue:

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When I was in Tokyo for a rest day I used to walk around a lot. I passed by the Bugatti dealership on a Sunday. They were closed, and I saw a couple of Veyrons on the showroom floor.

When I was in Seoul for a conference my hotel was across the street from the Rolls Royce dealership. There were two Rollers parked out front. Between them was a Chevrolet Spark. It must have been a salesman’s car. I also walked by a large Toyota dealership but never saw a Toyota or any Japanese car on the road in Seoul.

Can you blame the Koreans? As a nation, they don’t exactly have warm feelings toward Japan, as a result of harsh Japanese rulers/overlords for 35 years.

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Bonus points for knowing what the “250” means…

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Europeans liked small displacement motors. 2 liter v8’s? For tax purposes been told. They had a 308 gts. And a Europe only 208 turbo model. That you could bore out to 3 liter. As if rebuilding a new motor is practical.

Presumably, it meant 2.5 liters of displacement, but with Ferrari, who knows? The “308” models meant 3.0 liters of displacement and 8 cylinders.

It meant each cylinder had 250 cc displacement, for a total of 3.0 liters for that V12. An engine built to rev.

V12 1.5 liter.

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Talk about a screamer!

By contrast, the famed Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 engine (27 liters!) maxes out at 3,000 RPM. But, it definitely sounds good! The various versions of that engine produced anywhere from 1,000 hp to 2,050 hp.

At the Imperial War Museum in London, one of the many exhibits is a Merlin engine, with a plaque stating, “The engine that saved England”.

Looks good in a car too! Jay Leno owns a 1934 Rolls Royce with the Merlin engine too, of course. This one is not Jay’s BTW.

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