Against the Bougainvillea: A Ferrari 308 GTS in Taormina
The Ferrari 308 GTS does not require a good photograph to look like what it is. It requires only sufficient light and a clear line of sight, and the rest follows inevitably from the Pininfarina body and the Maranello badge. The photograph taken somewhere below Taormina — the white hotel building visible on the hill above, the bougainvillea erupting in deep magenta from the volcanic rock, the cypresses marking the sky — provides considerably more than sufficient conditions, and the result is the strongest image produced by this Sicilian rally and possibly the best argument for the event’s existence.
The 308 GTS is the targa variant of the 308 GTB, introduced in 1977 to address the American market’s preference for open-air motoring without the structural compromises of a full convertible. The removable roof panel stores behind the seats; the flying buttresses that frame the rear window remain in place, defining the car’s rear three-quarter view and giving it a silhouette that works from every angle the camera can find. Pininfarina designed the 308 body in 1975 and produced something that has aged with the kind of total immunity that only a handful of cars from any decade can claim. It does not look like a 1970s car in the way that most 1970s cars look like 1970s cars. It looks like a car that was drawn correctly the first time.
The engine is a 3.0-litre V8 mounted transversely behind the cockpit, producing somewhere between 230 and 255 horsepower depending on specification and market, driving through a five-speed manual gearbox to the rear wheels. Early cars used carburettors; later examples switched to fuel injection, which reduced power slightly and annoyed the purists considerably. The black engine vents on the rear quarter panels are functional, not decorative, which is a distinction that Ferrari in 1977 was still making as a matter of engineering principle rather than marketing strategy.
The car carries a rally plate but sits some distance from the camera — photographed from above on a wider road than the tight Sicilian corners that framed the earlier entries. The effect is to place the 308 in its landscape rather than isolating it against it: a red car on a grey road at the base of a cliff covered in pink flowers, below a white building, under a sky that has nothing to recommend against it.
Every other car in this rally has something to prove. The 308 GTS arrived already proven, and the photograph confirms it.