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Car and Driver

This Cannonball Run–Winning 1973 Dino 246 GTS Is Today's Auction Find

A Dino 246 GTS is a desirable collector car. This one just happens to be a Cannonball winner too. It was driven across the country from New York to Los Angeles in 1975 in just under 36 hours. Original and unrestored, this well-preserved example of 1970s road rebellion will go on the block at a Mecum auction during Monterey Car Week in August. On April 25, 1975, Jack May and Rick Cline rolled into the parking lot of the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach, California. Driving a white Ferrari Dino 246 GTS, the pair had just pipped the record set by racing hero Dan Gurney and Car and Driver's Brock Yates four years earlier by an improbable one minute, clocking a total of 35 hours and 53 minutes to drive from New York to Los Angeles at breakneck speed. Now, someone new will soon be able to own this Cannonball-winning Dino. The inaugural Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash is by now a legendary piece of Car and Driver history. Dreamed up as a sort of high-speed protest against the restrictive speed limits of the early 1970s, the first event was not really a race at all but a dash across the continental U.S. in a Dodge van. Yates named the event after Erwin "Cannonball" Baker, an early-20th-century daredevil who racked up more than half a million miles of cross-country records in his day and would later race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and be appointed the first NASCAR commissioner. The second Cannonball really was a race, though an unsanctioned and illegal one. At the time, the population of the U.S. was less than two-thirds of what it is now, meaning a lot of the interstate network was pretty empty apart from rush-hour traffic. Driving point to point across the country as fast as possible wasn't exactly safe, especially with 1970s tire and brake technology, but the risk to Cannonballers was mostly to themselves. Mecum Auctions The Gurney and Yates win was about as romantic as you can get, accomplished with a blue Ferrari 365GTB/4 Daytona. Gurney had plenty of experience driving at high speed for extended periods, being a Le Mans winner, and when an article about the 1971 Cannonball was published in the March 1972 issue of Car and Driver, it grabbed the public's imagination. After all it's hard to resist the allure of some wide open desert highway with the power of a Ferrari V-12 underfoot. Or a V-6 (yes, a Dino is technically not a Ferrari, but the engine is built by Maranello). The Cannonball-winning 1973 Dino GTS that's up for auction at this year's Monterey Car Week has a 2.4-liter V-6 that made just shy of 200 horsepower when new, pitted against around 2500 pounds. The S in "GTS" stands for spider, as the car has a removable top so you can listen to that six sing its heart out. With its five-speed manual transmission that has exposed metal gates, it's a wonderfully balanced and raw driving experience. Mecum Auctions A Dino GTS is rarer than an F40 and is a highly collectible machine all by itself. This one having the provenance of 1970s rebellion just adds to the appeal. Mecum notes it's in original and unrestored condition. The last official Cannonball ran in 1979, although there were many imitators and tribute runs over the years. But roads are far busier at all hours in modern times, and even though the elapsed drive time between New York and Los Angeles has been bested time and time again over the years, the romance of cross-continent record-setting wore off decades ago. This Dino hails from a time when it was still cool—daredevils against the system and its speed traps. It only beat the record by a minute, but it did so when the Cannonball still meant something. Brendan McAleer Contributing Editor Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels. Read full bio