For many years Ferrari was famous only for making two-seater cars, it's very first close-coupled four-seater (the 250GT 2+2) going on sale in 1961.

That car soon established a new pedigree within the brand, leading to the arrival of a new, larger, and more spacious 365GT4 2+2 in 1972, and to the car which supplanted that model, the 400GT, in 1976.

All Ferraris built in this period were costly, low-production machines, based on increasingly complex tubular chassis frames, clad in hand-crafted body shells which had been styled by Pininfarina, and which were produced at the Scaglietti coachbuilding works in Modena.

At this time, progression from one model's chassis to the next was evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, so even when the 400GT arrived it was possible to trace its lineage back to the 1960s, though, of course, the newcomer had all-independent suspension and four-wheel disc brakes.

All the four-seaters were powered by one or other of the several types of Ferrari's famous...