Perhaps no other 1970s car has a more storied legacy in Hollywood than the Ferrari 365 GTB/4, commonly referred to as the “Daytona.” This Ferrari has been coveted by movie stars and rock gods alike and has even had several memorable screen appearances. From The Long Goodbye to 1976’s A Star Is Born to the original Miami Vice TV series, the Daytona has spent several decades being immortalized in film and television.
Now, the 365 GTB/4 is being revived. Ferrari design head Flavio Manzoni has said the Daytona inspired the brand’s new, $459,000 two-seater, the 12Cilindri.
A Design Ahead of Its Time
The automotive design of the Daytona, when it was released in 1968, was an immediate pop-cultural fixture. The vehicles’ design uniquely engaged with the moment’s cultural conversation and influenced future design trends. The late 1960s saw the rise of a more planar and angular language in cars, less adorned and more aligned with the Brutalist trend, having gained a foothold in architecture. Sports cars and supercars followed a similar trend, becoming lower, sharper, and more creased, almost as if they wanted to sneak under detection or slice through it. The Daytona was at the forefront of this trend.
Unlike its direct predecessor and nearly every Ferrari before it, it did not consist of voluptuously rounded forms, with prominent eye-like headlamps and a smirking grille. Instead, it was fronted by a razor-sharp prow that looked as though it did not care to meet your gaze and a pursed and nearly invisible grille veiled beneath its hidden pop-up headlamps. It was a radical break from the past and a high-water-mark moment for Ferrari’s cultural impact.
The Daytona’s Celebrity Legacy
Nowhere is the vehicle’s impact on pop culture more apparent than when one looks at the laundry list of high-profile, at-their-peak celebrities who drove the Daytona.
Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters bought one, and so did Eric Clapton. After his hugely successful album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Elton John splurged on a new one. Richard Carpenter, who, with his sister Karen, formed the soft rock duo The Carpenters, owned one that he loved so much he even featured it on the cover of the band’s platinum-selling 1973 album Now & Then. Infamous daredevil Evil Knievel bought one, which he sold a few years later to New York Yankees slugger Reggie Jackson. Academy Award-winning director Sydney Pollack also purchased one. But the Daytona’s legacy extended well beyond the ‘70s. In the ’80s, Van Halen singer Sammy Hagar bought one used.
The Daytona appeared in prominent films back in its day. In addition to its aforementioned roles in The Long Goodbye and A Star Is Born, it was one of the cars stolen in the original 1974 version of the car heist movie Gone in 60 Seconds.
The 12Cilindri: A Modern Tribute
The new 12Cilindri shares a silhouette with its ‘70s predecessor. Like its ancestor, it also sports a hugely potent V12 engine. This marks it as similarly out-of-time—albeit in a perhaps retrogressive way. As the rest of the auto industry leans into the efficiencies and emissions reductions of turbocharging and electrification, Ferrari’s thirsty, if mellifluous, V12 is an anachronism.
To say the new 12Cilindri bucks tradition and modern conventions would be an understatement, but in a unique way that keeps it more tonally and thematically in line with Ferrari’s storied past than many of its other most recent creations. Not unlike the actors, rock stars, and athletes who have long coveted and sought after the Daytona, Ferrari’s latest creation doesn’t simply aim to be a part of a cultural conversation, but rather to dictate it. In this way, Ferrari’s latest creation takes key inspiration from its past and uses it as fuel to go blaring into an uncharted future.
