Some cars get remembered by auction records. Others by the stories nobody bothered to write down. The Ferrari 275, built between 1964 and 1968, sits in that rare space where the numbers and the myth actually agree with each other. It was the car that bridged Maranello's competition DNA with a level of grand touring refinement the old man hadn't really allowed before. The 250 was the legend. The 275 was the proof it wasn't a fluke.
Sixty years on, Bacchelli & Villa, the Modena-based restoration house that's touched more 275s than probably anyone on earth, has partnered with Artioli Editore to publish what they're calling the 275 Book. Limited to 1,275 copies. 275 pages. The kind of numerological neatness Enzo would have hated and Piero, who wrote the foreword, apparently does not.
This isn't a coffee table book. Or rather, it is, but it's also the thing underneath the coffee table book. A full archival compendium. Every 275 ever produced in GTB, GTS, and NART Spider form, catalogued by chassis number, Maranello approval date, and original color specification inside and out. Side-profile silhouettes for each car. Previously unseen factory production documents and technical records. A QR code in the back links to a private digital archive reserved for owners of the book. Old world meets new, but tastefully. Not desperately.
Then there's Charles Leclerc. The Scuderia driver owns a 275, and the book includes a feature on him with his car. It's a smart inclusion. Leclerc isn't just famous. He drives. And for a book about a car that was always meant to be driven hard and parked somewhere beautiful afterward, the fit works.
Enzo Mattioli Ferrari, great-grandson of the founder and CEO of Bacchelli & Villa, put it plainly on the duPont REGISTRY Talks podcast. The shop has done more than 90 restorations of 275s. Probably a world record. The book took two years. It wasn't rushed and it wasn't supposed to be. The goal was documentation, not decoration.
The first signed copy sold for $19,200 at an RM Sotheby's auction during Cavallino Palm Beach, proceeds going to The Cavallino Classic Foundation. Which is nice. But the real value of a project like this is simpler than that. It's the insistence that provenance matters. That the details of where a car came from, what color it left the factory in, and who signed off on it in Maranello are not footnotes. They're the whole dang story.
The collector car market keeps maturing, and with it comes a growing appetite for this kind of rigor. The 275 Book isn't selling nostalgia. It's selling receipts. And for a car this significant, it's overdue.
Pre-orders are open at 275book.com.
