Five Things: Ferrari V6 facts

Sunday, 27 June 2021

Ferrari's Dino V6 only was only ever used in one car to actually wear a Ferrari badge - here's five things about it that you also mightn't have known.

The Ferrari 296 GTB is the first road-going Ferrari to pack a V6 engine, but it isn't the first V6 Ferrari has made – that is because the company developed a V6 for racing back in the late 1950s and even put it in some road cars, but it was never called a Ferrari. And neither were any of the road-going cars it went in…

So today we bring you five things you might not have known about the fantastic Dino V6 engine that was developed by Ferrari, but never appeared in a road car branded as a Ferrari…

It was developed for racing first

The Ferrari 246 F1 was a development of the Dino 156 F2 and was the only Dino V6-powered car to wear a prancing horse on its nose.

While the Dino V6 might be most well-known for its appearance in the painfully pretty Dino 206 GT and the later 246 GT and GTS (often mistakenly called the “Ferrari Dino”), as well as other cars that also weren’t Ferraris, it was actually conceived and developed as a racing engine and appeared in a number racing cars over the years.

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Enzo’s son, Alfredo ‘Dino’ Ferrari, was the man behind a Ferrari V6, but he died before he could see it run.

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The idea for a Ferrari V6 came after Enzo Ferrari’s son Alfredo (who was called ‘Dino’ by his father) and Ferrari engineer Vittorio Jano convinced Enzo to develop a car for the Formula 2 race series that was switching to 1.5-litre engine regulations for the 1957 season.

The sexy Fiat Dino was the first road car to use the Dino V6. Ferrari’s Dino sub-brand would make it to the roads a year later.

Enzo agreed, and a 65 degree V6 (Dino’s idea – Jano wanted a traditional 60 degree V) was developed in 1956 to be ready for the 1957 season.

It was named after Enzo Ferrari’s son

Sadly, the discussions with Dino Ferrari about the engine took place when he was hospitalised with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and he died in 1956 before the engine even ran.

The awesome Lancia Stratos was the last race and road car to use the Dino V6, as Ferrari had replaced it with the Dino V8 by the time it dropped the Dino sub-brand.

As a result, Enzo decided to name the engine – and even the cars it appeared in – after him, establishing the Dino sub-brand for its smaller V6-engined racing – and eventually road – cars, while Ferrari would stay exclusively V8 and V12.

The first racing car was the 1957 Dino 156 F2 for the Formula 2 series, but the Dino V6 would remain in competition use up until 1975 in F2, Sportscar racing, sports prototypes and rally (more on that soon…), even making its way to this part of the world in the Dino 246 Tasmania, built by the factory to take part in the 2.5-litre Tasman Series driven by Kiwi legends Graeme Lawrence and Chris Amon.

There was one Ferrari-branded car that would use the Dino V6 though – a development of the 156 would be used in Formula 1 as the Ferrari 246 F1 in 1958, where it won the World Championship at the hands of Mike Hawthorn. Quite the exception.

The V6’s replacement would go on to great – and insanely powerful – things. Like powering the mighty F40.

The first road car it was used in was a Fiat

In 1965 the FIA changed the homologation rules for F2 so that engines had to be based on a production engine for 1967. Even worse, the engine had to be produced in 500 road cars within 12 months, and there was no way that was going to happen for Ferrari.

So Enzo struck a deal with Fiat to build the 500 engines and use them in an “unspecified GT car” for the road. This would become the impossibly sexy Fiat Dino from 1966. The Dino V6 was enlarged to 2.0-litres and was hooked up to a 5-speed manual transmission.

Things didn’t quite go Ferrari’s way, however, as he wanted to build the V6s at Maranello, but Fiat management insisted on taking control of production and shifting it to Turin. Ferrari’s own Dino 206 GT would debut a year later and, despite Ferrari claiming it produced 20hp more than the Fiat, the engines all rolled down the same production line in Turin…

The last car it was used in was a Lancia

In keeping with the Dino V6’s habit of never landing in a road car badged as a Ferrari, it is fitting that the last vehicle it was used in was the mighty Lancia Stratos HF.

After Ferrari replaced the Dino V6 with the V8 in 1973, it handed the V6 on to Lancia who promptly jammed it into what would become one of the most iconic rally cars of all time. Apparently Lancia had wanted the Dino V6 from the start of the Stratos’ development, but Enzo was reluctant to let them use it because he saw the Stratos as a competitor to his own cars, but the introduction of the Dino V8 changed his mind.

By this time the Dino had been enlarged to 2.4-litres, and in the featherweight Stratos (it weighed between 900 and 950kg, depending on configuration) would go on to win 18 WRC races and three world championships before finally being retired in 1975.

Its replacement was a V8 that would become the backbone of Ferrari

In 1973 Ferrari replaced the Dino 246 with the wedgy Dino 308 GT4 that was based on the 246, but packed a new Dino engine – a 3.0-litre V8 – but it was more significant for what it would become; namely the first production Ferrari with a V8.

How? Well, by 1976 the Dino sub-brand was retired and the 308 GT4 officially became a Ferrari, but the Dino V8 would go on to dominate the future of the company. In turbocharged form it would appear in the mighty 288 GTO, as well as the legendary F40, while it would continue on for close to 30 years, doing duty in ever V8 Ferrari up to the 2004 360 Modena, after which it was replaced in the F430 by the then-new Ferrari-Maserati F136 V8.