{"id":44360,"date":"2016-04-14T14:06:49","date_gmt":"2016-04-14T13:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.influx.co.uk\/?p=44360"},"modified":"2022-06-15T11:17:40","modified_gmt":"2022-06-15T10:17:40","slug":"gto-gran-turismo-omologato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adrianflux.co.uk\/influx\/features\/gto-gran-turismo-omologato\/","title":{"rendered":"GTO: Gran Turismo Omologato"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gran Turismo Omologato.<\/strong> There’s something in the vowel-heavy phrase that gets the juices going.<\/p>\n

Something in the way it rolls around your mouth. Only Enzo Ferrari could have coined such a phrase, when you think about it. 3 words. Nine syllables. A couple of generations of motor sport history.<\/p>\n

Car culture is full of such phrases, but none captures the imagination, or has had such an influence,\u00a0as the very idea of the GTO. Homologation may not be what it’s cracked up to be. Many race cars issued for the road to qualify them for a particular race formula are ridiculously impractical, ludicrously far away from the base brand they represent.<\/p>\n

But it’s this aspiration that is the key to the glamour of the GTO label. For John DeLorean, beavering away in the marketing department of Pontiac, it was a way of infusing rump Americana with a bit of Euro panache. For Mitsubishi it was a way of justifying the pony car references and the go faster stripes – until of the course the 3000GT muscle car it produced fulfilled its promise in spades.<\/p>\n

But whatever sticking GTO on the grill of your motor was meant to do – it ended up paying homage to some kind of deep-rooted idea of style, speed and derring-do. It’s this that we’re paying tribute to this month.<\/p>\n

And here’s a fistful of GTO heroes to get us going. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Ferrari: The Original<\/strong><\/p>\n

The original 250 GTO was produced by Ferrari from 1962 to 1964 for homologation into the FIA’s Group 3. Only 39 250 GTOs were manufactured. The rest is history. The 250 GTO is of course a beautiful totem of automotive art – and only people like Nick Mason can afford to own them. The 288 GTO, meanwhile, was an exotic homologation of the Ferrari 308 GTB, which was produced from 1984 to 1987. It was originally conceived as a Group B competitor, but the tragic end of the formula meant that the 288 GTO never raced and all 272 cars built remained purely road cars. The 288 has a re-bored, twin-turboed engine with kevlar and other trickery. The last Ferrari GTO was a road-going version of the 599XX – 100KG lighter than the road-going Fiorano, but is the only GTO not officially an homologation special.<\/p>\n\n\t\t