Steve Winwood certainly has a taste for “The Finer Things,” as evidenced by the Ferrari Dino that he’s finally cutting loose after an astounding 50 years of ownership. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer—who co-founded the psychedelic English rock band Traffic and short-lived supergroup Blind Faith with Eric Clapton before recording timeless megahits like “Higher Love” and “Roll With It” as a solo act—is selling his Ferrari Dino 246 GTS, the most covetable of the three Dino variants. He even sat down with Gooding Christie’s, the auction house selling the car, at its upcoming Pebble Beach sale in Monterey, to splash a little color on the lot, which he first acquired in 1973.
“I just went down to [Swindon, England] into a car dealership that I knew sold them and said, ‘I want one.’ And they showed me all the details of things you get at the factory. Chairs and flare sounds good to me. Whatever that is,” of the Dino’s most sought-after trim, featuring Daytona-style seats (“chairs”) and flared arches (“flares”) to accommodate wider Campagnolo wheels. Adding an extra cool factor is the fact that, as Winwood tells it, a ride in his Dino 246 GTS inspired Clapton, a future prolific Ferrari collector, to purchase his first Prancing Horse(s).
“[We] were just forming this band, and I drove down to where his house was in the country. I came to the door and he said, ‘What? What’s that? What are you driving?’ I said, ‘Would you want to come for a ride?’ So we jumped in and we were going around these little side roads. Shortly after, probably within a couple of days, Eric had bought three Ferraris.”
While at first teased by purists as a volume Ferrari, today the Dino is considered nothing less than a landmark—the legendary progenitor of a Ferrari mid-engine bloodline that paved the way for the F40, F50, Enzo, and LaFerrari. It’s hard to imagine that Winwood would be unaware of its significance, but even if that’s the case, he still drove it the way Enzo would have intended.
“I had a recording session in Chipping Norton, and I’d been using this car as an everyday car for five years by then. There was an engineer who came down, stayed with me, and he said that driving him from here to there at 3:00 in the morning in the Ferrari scared him to death. I didn’t realize it scared him to death—I thought that was just the way I drove, because these cars, they do need to be driven. You can’t just poodle along in the highest gear you can find. You’ve got to give it a bit of oomph.”
According to Gooding Christie’s, “This right-hand-drive E-series Dino is one of only five ‘Chairs and Flares’ examples delivered new to the UK, and uniquely the sole example originally specified in the period color of Nocciola Metallizzato (Metallic Hazelnut) over black upholstery. Approximately two decades ago, Winwood commissioned a restoration by noted Ferrari specialist Bob Houghton, refinishing the car in its present dark blue livery with tan leather upholstery.”
Valued between $750,000 and $1 million, Winwood’s 1973 Ferrari Dino 246 GTS hits the block on August 15.
