250 GTO Red

250 GTO Red, the red of a legend among circuit grand tourers

Few cars have a color so unmistakably bound to their name. The Number Five shade aims at the 250 GTO, that is at the red of the racing cars of the early 1960s, which tends to be a little more muted and less orange than the reds of modern road machines.

The subject of the shade

The Ferrari 250 GTO was made between 1962 and 1964 and only a few dozen finished cars were built. The GTO abbreviation refers to homologation for the grand touring class, on account of which the car had to be made in a minimum series. Under the long hood sat a three-liter V12 derived from Colombo's design, and Scaglietti built the thin sheet metal body to the results of aerodynamic tests. The car collected class victories in long-distance races and helped the brand to grand touring titles for several seasons in a row. Today it is one of the most expensively traded automobiles in history.

Where the color is used

• racing grand tourers of the first half of the 1960s
• cars with period race numbers on white circles
• Italian circuit machines where red is meant to look period rather than modern
• dioramas from the paddock of long-distance races of that era

Who the paint is for

It will be appreciated by builders of historic racing cars and by collectors who set store by a period-faithful tone of body. Not every example of the real subject carried red, however, because they were built to order and some of them left in lighter and darker body colors. No particular chart or standard number is declared for the shade, and because the red cars of that time were painted at various coachbuilders, period variations in tone are common on the real subject.