Leonardo Fioravanti of Pininfarina’s, who already designed the 246 famous lines – beside the Daytona as well- was in charge for the 308’s body and what a great job he did. Far away from Bertone’s very angular design, not too close to the roundness of the Dino, Fioravanti designed a car that fitted the mid 1970s very well.
The shark-style design, the pop-up headlights and the round rear lights, already seen on the Boxer became Ferrari’s theme for the next 25 years – until the F355. The engine produced 227 hp to reach a max. speed of 255 km/h – unbeatable by its competitors those days.
The first –our database says 712 units- examples have been fitted with a GFK body, called Vetroresina in Italy, bodies that are doing surprisingly well until today. Scaglietti made all bodies. #21289 is said to be the last Vetroresina and the reason for replacing the GFK bodies with Steel bodies from #20805 seemed to be that the productions of the plastic bodies was costly in terms of time. Several US-cars have already been produced with steel bodies below S/N 20805 and it is rumoured that only 100 units of the Vetroresinas have been built to US-specifications.
Returning to the hour of birth of the Vetroresina and returning to Paris where the car was presented to the public at the Salon Auto from Oct. 2nd to Oct. 12th. French main dealer Charles Pozzi displayed #18677, the first production car, livered in Giallo Fly and on Pininfarina’s stand appeared #3 in rare Celeste. Sadly #18679 was subject of a Rosso Corsa repaint later.
There are no special cars except the Group IV-conversions, done by Michelotto, but that’s truly a different story.
Well, the Slide Show is somehow unspectacular – you cannot put a magnet to the picture to proof if it is a real Vetroresina and certain cars are not really different, except from their colour.