Giotto Bizzarrini, who has died aged 96, was the creator of one of the undisputed masterpieces of Italian car design. Only 36 examples of the Ferrari 250 GTO were built between 1962 and 1964, but the coupe’s sleek alloy bodywork, its highly tuned three-litre V12 engine and its appearances on the world’s race tracks made it so highly venerated by enthusiasts and collectors that in 2018 one changed hands in a private sale for $70m.
The cost to its new owner, a Chicago businessman, was five times the value placed in the same year on a painting of the Madonna and Child by Giotto di Bondone, the Italian renaissance master from whom Bizzarrini’s parents took their son’s Christian name. At the time it was the highest price ever paid for a car, until surpassed last year by the $142m paid at auction for a special 1955 Mercedes 300 SLR coupe, of which just two examples were built.
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