288 Ferrari.com

The 288 Ferrari GTO is undoubtedly one of the finest examples of automotive design.

Its introduction was a result of Ferrari’s intention to dominate the Group B racing series in the early and mid 1980’s. Group B referred to a set of regulations introduced in 1982 for competition vehicles in sportscar and rally racing regulated by the FIA.

This race series attracted the large manufacturers for a number of reasons. There’s an old racing adage known as “…Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday”, that basically describes the direct correlation between a car manufacturer’s successes on the racetrack translating into consumer sales at the dealership level.

The attraction of Group B to the manufacturers lie in the fact that there were very few restrictions on technology and design.

The manufacturers examined the regulations carefully and realized they would be able to build fire breathing monsters for Sunday and as a result garner all of the bragging rights on Monday.

High-tech materials were permitted, and there were no restrictions on boost, which turned out to mean almost unlimited power.

Group B cars could be two-seaters and the minimum production was only 200 cars/year. This proved to be a very important distinction in the regulations that the manufacturers quickly “interpreted” to their advantage.

Under normal circumstances homologation numbers would be much higher, requiring manufacturers to build thousands of production vehicles before they could then have the vehicle “homologated” and entered into a race series.

With the production requirement significantly lowered to 200 vehicles both Porsche,(with its 959) and Ferrari did the exact opposite of the norm. They built incredibly powerful “no holds barred” race cars for the track, and then built a limited series of only 200 street cars, just to satisfy the homologation requirement.

Group B was initially a very successful concept, however,the performance of the cars proved too much, resulting in a series of fatal crashes.

When these rules were initially drawn up it was felt that displacement restrictions would be enough to control power, but in the early and mid-80s engineers learned to extract almost unlimited amounts of powerand as a result Group B regulations produced some of the quickest, most powerful and sophisticated cars ever built.

The Ferrari 288 GTO was designed to compete in the 4000 cc (2857 cc), 1100 kg class.

Unfortunately, Group B was cancelled at the end of 1986 and as a result the 288 Ferrari GTO never got the chance to actually race, leaving the 272 cars built to remain purely road cars.