The Ferrari 250 GTO was a sports car and auto racing car made by Ferrari in the early 1960s . It is widely considered to be the quintessential Ferrari model, and one of the greatest sports cars - indeed, one of the greatest automobiles - of all time.

The numerical part of its name denotes the displacement in cubic centimetres of each cylinder of the engine , whilst GTO stands for "Gran Turismo Omologato", Italian for "Grand Touring Homologated. The homologation process requires that a certain number of cars have to be built by a manufaturer before they are allowed to race them in the GT championship. So, the Ferrari 250 GTO was a pure bred race car for the road.

Built between 1961 and 1964, it's 2953cc V12 engine produced 297bhp at 7400rpm which was good enough to get the Ferrari 250 GTO from rest to 62mph in 5.6 seconds and on to 155mph. At the time, this was good enough to allow Enzo Ferrari to win the GT Championship 3 years on the trot in 1962, 63 and 64.

Only 39 examples of the Ferrari 250 GTO were built and so not only is it regarded as the greatest road going Ferrari ever raced it is also the most valuable. On September 29th 2008, a 1961 Ferrari 250 GTO sold at auction for 20 million euros.