Presented by RM Sotheby's. With the sale of road cars declining in the early-1980s, Enzo Ferrari concluded that his company had strayed too far from its
It’s an oft-overlooked fact, but regulations are as much a factor for change in motorsport as new technology. Prior to 1956, World Sportscar Championship regulations insisted that competing cars had to be road-legal, so contenders like Aston Martin’s DB3S and Jaguar’s D-type were sold as road cars. It was presumably intended to stop manufacturers building thinly disguised race cars and barely civilising them for highway use, though back in the mid- ‘50s there wasn’t so much difference.
The road-legal regulation was relaxed for 1956, although that was immediately offset by a 2.5-litre limit imposed in the wake of the 1955 Le Mans tragedy. Aston Martin nevertheless embraced this new freedom to create the DBR1 from a clean sheet of paper. The 2.5-litre limit didn’t suit Jaguar or Maserati and both pulled out of the championship, leaving Aston’s bespoke baby to face a lone but formidable factory foe in Ferrari.