The story
The beach car was an Italian summer habit: take a small Fiat, strip off everything that keeps the weather out, and drive it to the harbor in August. Willy Felber, the Swiss Ferrari and Rolls-Royce importer with a weakness for spectacle, wondered what would happen if the donor wore a prancing horse. In early 1976 he gave Michelotti chassis 16017, a 1972 365 GTC/4 that had lived quietly with a Lausanne surgeon, and 3 months later it returned with no doors and no roof. The body sides drop away in one deep curve where the doors should be, the pop-up headlights are pure GTC/4, and a badge reading BEACH CAR settles any lingering doubt.
Then the Emir canceled. Shown in bronze at Geneva in 1976, it found no buyer, was rebodied as a brown shooting brake for 1977, failed again, and was put back the way it was. A buyer finally came along in 1978, and Swiss road papers took until 1989. None of that shows from the driver's seat. The 4.4-liter V12, a softer wet-sump relative of the Daytona's engine, is smooth and patient, and the open cabin stays calm at 60 mph. Faster Ferraris existed. Few were sunnier.
