“My dad bought this car in 1974 when it was a year old, and so was I a year old,” says Matthew Lange. “He bought it to use every day, and in fact, it was his company car.”
It’s quite rare to see a 1973 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 “Daytona” pressed into daily service, racking up nearly 40,000 miles in the process. Lange’s dad passed the car onto him at 30—much earlier than promised, so that his son could enjoy the car.
“It just puts a big smile on my face, getting behind the wheel and driving this car,” he says. “But when I first got the car, it scared me. A lot.” With more power and less grip than he was used to, he had to learn how to operate the 12-cylinder “Daytona.”
Now, he takes it on long drives with his wife to central Europe, racking up thousands of miles in the process—something the car was built to do from the outset. With the same trusted mechanic for around 30 years, Lange says it frees up and starts to drive much better once the miles pile up.
“It’s a car to use, it’s certainly not in concours condition,” Lange says, “I like to keep it that way, I don’t want to spend my money polishing it up nice to win a trophy.”
With the intention of keeping it in the Lange family, this stunning “Daytona” will live on through generations to come, all with the promise of using it on the open road—where the car was meant to be.
