Leonardo Fioravanti on Ferrari’s mid-engined revolution

By Simon Hucknall

| 2 Feb 2026

Classic & Sports Car – Leonardo Fioravanti on Ferrari’s mid-engined revolution

The irony of our final approach to Leonardo Fioravanti’s lofty residence, perched high in the hills above Turin, is not lost on me.

After emerging unscathed from a high-speed, near-1300km (c800-mile) journey from the UK (click here to read the full story), ‘our’ pristine Ferrari 308GTS qv is now hovering on the brink of oblivion at walking pace.

In order to meet with our man, we’ve been told to thread our way along a narrow, gravelled track that borders his property’s outbuildings.

But the Ferrari is almost too big for the final turn, and its inside-front Michelin is making a perilous arc just millimetres from the beautifully cultivated garden that falls away acutely down the hill from the road’s edge.

Leonardo Fioravanti is responsible for some of Ferrari’s all-time greats

Our host, beaming at the sight of the car like a father ready to greet a long-lost child, is unfazed; I even ponder if he mandated the track’s width just enough to accommodate the 308’s limited steering lock.

Which, as we will soon learn, would be just his style.

Immaculately suited, lightly tanned, with a full head of greying hair, Signore Fioravanti appears at least a decade younger than his 88 years suggest.

Immediately affable and courteous to a fault, he appears genuinely humbled that we’ve driven all this way to see him (he tells me that he’s turned down plenty of other media requests to travel far and wide to celebrate the 308GTB’s anniversary this year (2025), but Classic & Sports Car has been the only magazine to meet him on home turf, which he prefers).

Leonardo with his 2009 Fioravanti LF1

We’re congregated before the entrance to an Aladdin’s cave of concept and show cars that Leonardo has designed, including the 1998 Ferrari F100 commissioned to mark a century since Enzo Ferrari’s birth; the 2009 Fioravanti LF1, showcasing a simpler, more cost-efficient Formula One car; and one of the original 2005 Lexus LF-As – “My initials, but Lexus always claims that LF is for Lexus-Finesse,” he demurs.

But it is his designs for the 308GTB family, as well as a succession of other landmark Ferraris from the mid-1960s – including the 365GTB/4 Daytona, Dino 206/246GT, Berlinetta Boxer and 288GTO – for which he is best remembered.

And yet, Leonardo tells us, at Politecnico di Milano, where he graduated as an engineer of aerodynamics in 1963, his early inspiration came from Browns Lane, where he admired models such as the Jaguar Mk1 and E-type.

The 1998 Ferrari F100 (on right) with other quirky concepts

He raced – “but perhaps not always legally!” – from the age of 18, before eventually joining Pininfarina as a stylist in 1964.

And it was there that he soon became embroiled in Enzo Ferrari’s firm edicts regarding sub-12-cylinder mid-engined road cars, which had resulted in the company’s initial ‘middie’ offerings – the V6-powered 206/246GTs and the later, V8 308GT4 – being badged as Dinos, rather than Ferraris (the latter was only awarded a Ferrari badge in 1976, after the launch of the GTB).

It also delayed Leonardo’s development of the 308GTB, which had originally started in 1969, born from his P6 concept unveiled the previous year at the Turin Salon.

Leonardo Fioravanti at work

“The design process was interrupted,” laments Leonardo, “because Il Commendatore decided that [the first mid-engined Ferrari] should be a 12-cylinder car.

“He was contrary at the start: ‘Mid-engined cars are for racing, but too much for normal driving.’ But after the Lamborghini Miura appeared [in 1966], he finally decided to have a mid-engined Ferrari, but with 12 cylinders.

“So he stopped the design process of the 308GTB and all other programmes to make it happen. The Berlinetta Boxer was my design and was first shown at the Torino motor show in 1971.”

(Though the model didn’t reach production until two years later, due to technical complications.)

The 1968 P6 show car previewed the Ferrari BB and 308GTB © Ferrari SpA

With the BB unveiled, Leonardo returned to developing the 308GTB. From the start, his 1968 P6 concept car had been the guiding light for both the BB and 308GTB production models.

With its pointed nose, flowing lines, and rear buttresses swept back to a Kamm-style tail, it was a ready-made template for what was to be Ferrari’s road-car design language moving into the 1970s and beyond.

Leonardo soon created a 1:1 scale model – “my shape-surface design” – followed by the first prototype: “There were two main differences [versus the eventual production model].”

‘By the early 1970s, Enzo had bought into the idea of a smaller, cheaper mid-engined car he could still call a Ferrari’

“I designed it with the bumpers of the P6 at the front and back [which, he says, were rejected by Ferrari because they were wraparound items, and were replaced by more conventional units].

“The second difference came after we went to the wind tunnel: I put the little spoiler on the rear, and a dam at the front.”

Interestingly, Leonardo tells me that the 308’s distinctive side scoops were not inherited from the 206/246GT, as you might expect, but rather influenced by those of the Ferrari P3 sports-prototype.

The Ferrari 308GTS retains the elegant lines of the fixed-roof GTB, a shape that defined the junior supercar genre

According to Leonardo, Enzo Ferrari – or Il Commendatore, as he always refers to him – had by the early ’70s fully bought into the concept of a smaller, cheaper mid-engined car with fewer than 12 cylinders, which he could still call a Ferrari.

Maranello’s production numbers were faltering at around the 1000 mark at the time and, being pragmatic and commercially hard-nosed, Enzo could see the potential huge lift in sales that such a model could generate.

While the 1973 Marcello Gandini-styled GT4, with its 2+2 configuration, was substantially more powerful than the outgoing 246GT (255bhp versus 190bhp), it was only initially another Dino and, as Leonardo recalls: “It was known as the ‘Urraco of Maranello’, which was also my opinion…”

A new Ferrari 308GTB at a Fiorano test session with Niki Lauda and Clay Regazzoni, 1975 © Ferrari SpA

With Il Commendatore now backing the development of the very first Ferrari-badged V8 production model, I ask Leonardo if there were any particular challenges in producing what was also Ferrari’s first – and, to date, only – glassfibre-bodied road-car: “The 308GTB was always planned with a resin body because of the benefits of lighter weight [estimates vary, but use of glassfibre represented a 100-150kg weight saving compared to the later, steel-bodied cars].

“But the original design allowed for either GRP or steel manufacture.

“We also worked closely with Scaglietti [which was to manufacture the panels]; they were already very experienced after producing GRP bodies for Ferrari racing cars.”

Leonardo Fioravanti (on right) at the presentation of Gilles Villeneuve (left) and Jody Scheckter (second on left), works drivers for 1979 © Ferrari SpA

So why, after just one year, were all 308GTB bodies manufactured in steel, rather than glassfibre? Leonardo points to our GTS parked across the entrance, which we view in perfect profile.

“You see the line is… one line? Well, in resin the car was a little bit like that,” he says, making a wavy, uneven gesture with his hand. “It was difficult to obtain very good quality.

“So this is the official reason – and it’s true.” He then laughs: “But the other reason is that Ferrari’s English and American dealers were upset, and said that plastic was for Lotus!”

Leonardo Fioravanti is proud of the neat way the roof of the Ferrari 308GTS stows behind the seats

Talk of material quality has moved us back outside to the 308GTS, resplendent beneath the mid-morning Torinese sun.

Leonardo describes the model as “a natural evolution” of the GTB, especially in view of the previous sales success enjoyed by the 246GTS.

While he was satisfied that extra reinforcement along the car’s sills had largely compensated for its lack of a fixed roof – with which I’d concur after our drive – he was most proud of the top’s cut-out section, designed to fit over the central tunnel when it was stored behind the seats, thereby dropping it below the rear window line.

The Ferrari 308GTS quattrovalvole makes 240bhp at 7000rpm

But for Leonardo, the 308GTB was the first in a gene pool that was eventually to spawn 18 unique models, only ending 12 years later with the launch in 1987 of the Ferrari F40.

He shows me an artfully designed page from his autobiography, Il Cavallino nel cuore (The Cavallino in the heart), showing every iteration of the 308 – including the F40, which uses its entire centre section – laid out around a plan view of its engine’s crankshaft.

As well as a plethora of derivatives never officially sold in the UK – the tax-break, 2-litre 208GTB/GTS in both atmospheric and turbocharged guises, and the later GTB/GTS turbos – there was the homologated 288GTO from 1984, which marked the start of Ferrari’s path to hypercar brilliance, and the 15 308GTB rally machines (11 Group 4 cars built by Michelotto, and a further four Group B cars produced prior to the class being banned in 1986).

The 1977 Ferrari 308 Millechiodi showcased new tyre and aerodynamics technologies © Ferrari SpA

But perhaps one of the most unusual was the 1977 Millechiodi (thousand rivets) concept car, which set out to prove that the latest performance technologies could be incorporated into the 308 without recourse to ever more bloated bodywork and extra weight.

And this is something about which Leonardo is still clearly passionate.

I ask him whether he prefers designing front- or mid-engined cars: “It is the same thing; [the aim is for] both with many years’ life in production.

“The important thing is the Cavallino emblem [Ferrari’s iconic Prancing Horse]. It is so small – do you know why? Because the design of the cars was so well-known around the world.”

Leonardo Fioravanti became deputy general manager at Ferrari in 1988

But Leonardo is far less complimentary about Ferrari’s current production designs: “Today, it’s not so good because they are too complicated; [applying] the aerodynamics of a sports-racing car to a touring car is a stupid thing.”

It’s a good point well made, and as Leonardo happily poses for some more snaps with the 308’s elated owner, I wonder what his take on a modern-day 308 would be? He and Gordon Murray should start talking…

Images: Max Edleston

Leonardo Fioravanti’s greatest hits

1967 Dino 206/246GT

After initial designs by Aldo Brovarone, Leonardo penned the production 206GT – the beginning of Ferrari’s production mid-engined lineage (although because they had just six cylinders, all cars were badged Dino, not Ferrari).

The aluminium-bodied, 2-litre 206 was soon replaced by the 2.4-litre, steel-bodied 246.

1968 Ferrari 365GTB/4 Daytona

Replacing the 275, the Daytona shared equal billing with Lamborghini’s Miura as the fastest production car of the 1960s, with a claimed maximum speed of 174mph.

Its classic front-engined proportions were to be the last for a Ferrari two-seater until the 1996 550M.

1972 Ferrari 365GT4 2+2/400GT/400i/412GT

This four-seater V12 grand tourer’s elegant, three-box lines endured for 17 years and four iterations after it replaced the fastback 365GTC/4.

Like the Daytona, Leonardo gave the car a distinctive swage line dividing its upper and lower body sections.

1973 Ferrari 365GT4 BB/512BB/512BBi

Enzo Ferrari’s indifference to mid-engined cars ended with the Daytona’s replacement, the Berlinetta Boxer.

Powered initially by a 4.4-litre flat-12, with its lines influenced heavily by Leonardo’s earlier P6 concept car, the lower body was painted black to disguise its visual mass in profile.

1984 Ferrari 288GTO

The 308’s evil sibling, the GTO was a homologation special that, despite its similar profile, had virtually nothing in common with the cooking V8 model.

Rip-roaring performance came from a twin-turbo 2.9-litre engine producing 395bhp, while composite materials resulted in a kerbweight of just 1195kg.