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Ferrari's front-engined V12 four-seaters sold well despite being derided by purists. Today, they remain great to drive, if costly to own...

- MARTIN BUCKLEY

In the world of Italian exotica of the 1970s and '80s, the Ferrari 365/400/412 series could not be deemed anything other than a commercial success. The total production of 2897 units doesn't sound like many until you learn that only 3256 of its four-seater successor, the 456, were sold. And its 17-year production run is still a Ferrari record.

So while Dinos, 308s and Mondials came and went, these substantial four-seaters maintained a tradition of front-engined V12 elegance for sporty tycoons the wrong side of 40 - the ones who had cured themselves of the urge to acquire a bright-red, two-seater thrill-machine, but couldn't quite give up on the idea of owning a Ferrari.

Always among the most expensive offerings in the Modena line-up (the £12,900 365GT4 2+2 was £2000 more than a Daytona in 1973), these Pininfarina-styled V12s suffered a brutal fall from grace once production finished. They were expensive to run but not rare enough to be valuable and proved once again that there is nothing so out of fashion as last season's supercar. Throw in the four-seat factor and you have a perfect recipe for a bargain V12 Ferrari that, even today, is a solid £100,000 cheaper than the 365GTC/4 around which it is based.

It doesn't make sense, but in a market driven by style and so many other intangibles, not much does. Even when Maranello was selling every four-seater it could build, the purists sneered. Here was a usable (as opposed to recreational) Ferrari that, in the minds of those who had neither the money nor the taste to aspire to such a vehicle, represented a moral lapse in the affairs of the company. A four-seater Ferrari could not possibly be a real Ferrari, they reasoned, forgetting that the firm had been selling four-seaters - profitably for more than 10 years before the 365GT4 2+2 appeared in 1972.