You know that phrase ‘if it looks right, it is right’? Were that always the case the Ferrari Dino 206 S would have won every race it entered, probably lapping the field for good measure. In the entire history of motor sport few, if any, have looked more right than this.

But it’s not what I’m thinking about just now. I’m just waiting for it all to go horribly wrong, which it well might at any moment. I’m at Donington, not for a relatively cuddly track day, but a full test day for unsilenced racing cars. I’m sat in a car worth £4m, without seatbelts, while professional drivers in their modern slicks and wings machines they’re paid to drive, dive and hustle their away about and around me. And with just one mirror loosely lashed to the windscreen, I can’t really even see them coming towards me.

“In the entire history of motor sport few, if any, have looked more right than this”

In that moment my mind fled back to my first ever race of the old Nürburgring. I was in a ratty old Renault Clio Cup car sharing track space with Le Mans specification Dodge Vipers. And Hans Stuck in a V8-powered BMW M3 GTR. They appeared to hunt in packs, appearing by the gridful over the brow behind you, a blaze of blinding white light heralding the attack, during which they’d find a way past whether it meant sticking to the track or not. I was so intimidated and miserable I was on the point of abandoning the whole stupid adventure when in a fit of pique I punched the interior mirror away. In an instant I could see them no more. It was their job to find a way around me, not vice versa, and I spent the rest of the race in a state of blissful ignorance of all that was going on behind me. I managed even to quite enjoy myself. So I did the same in the Dino, figuring that not even hardened touring car drivers would fancy having to explain to the authorities why they thought taking the side off a classic Ferrari racing car was worth a couple of tenths on a test day. It worked all over again.

And now I wasn’t thinking about anyone else. The little Ferrari came to me, opened its soul and let me in. I’ve driven many far faster cars, many with far greater success stories behind them, some that are even more valuable and just a few whose memories, for usually positive reasons, will live longer. But have I ever driven a sweeter racing car? One which has offered up the simple joy of driving in a more delectable form? I’ll need to get back to you about that.

The 206 S looks like a 330 P3 or P4 and there’s a good reason for that: they were all contemporaries at the Scuderia, their bodies shaped by Piero Drogo’s famed carrozzeria. But it’s tiny. I first saw it when I visited Girardo & Co for some entirely other purpose and saw it sitting there, whereupon I completely lost the ability to understand or respond to anything being said to me. Words became white noise. Until Max Girardo suggested I sit in it, whereupon I replied that sadly there was no chance of me squeezing my 6ft 3in frame into its interior and I wasn’t about to try as I feared what might happen next. The mind rewound again, this time some 25 years when it was my backside in the Motor Sport editor’s chair. I’d tried to squeeze into a Lotus 18, my feet had slid past the pedals requiring the car to be dismantled piece by piece to get me out. But Max looked me up and down and said he thought I’d be fine. And to my amazement, I was. “Then,” he said, “you must drive it.’

But what exactly is this exquisite little Ferrari? It was built primarily as a hillclimb car back in the day when the European Hill Climb Championship was a sufficiently big deal for companies like Ferrari and Porsche to build bespoke factory machinery for the purpose. But it was also intended to supplement or even sub for the big bangers at the more tortuous rounds of the World Sportscar Championship, such as those held at the aforementioned ’Ring and, of course, the Targa Florio.

“But what exactly is this exquisite little Ferrari? It was built primarily as a hillclimb car”

It succeeded the 206 P prototype that had won Ludovico Scarfiotti the 1965 European Hill Climb Championship (itself essentially a 166 P with an enlarged engine), but differed in one key regard: instead of being a one- or two-off prototype, Ferrari intended to build and sell 50, the minimum required to homologate it as a Group 4 sports car rather than a Group 6 prototype. He never got close. Labour issues meant Ferrari could not build as many cars as he wanted; faced with the need to cut production of something, it’s perhaps understandable why the little hillclimber wasn’t chosen ahead of his full-bore V12 sports racers, his beloved F1 cars and his lucrative road cars. In the end just 18 were built and this is the very last of them.

It was, however, less successful than its predecessor. Scarfiotti won a couple of climbs but over the season was well beaten by Gerhard Mitter’s Porsche 904/8, while on the circuits second place and class wins at both the ’Ring and Targa in 1966 were its greatest achievements. Improbably a couple were entered for Le Mans – it would be hard to think of a circuit to which it would be less suited, a pre-chicane Monza perhaps? – one entered by Maranello Concessionaires driven by David Hobbs and the late Michael Salmon. Both absolutely adored it but were perhaps more sad than surprised that it failed to go the distance.

“This near 60-year-old car has a comparable power-to-weight ratio to Ferrari’s new 12Cilindri”

As ever with Ferrari racing cars, particularly of that era, there was no innovation in its design. While Porsche was experimenting with beryllium brakes (a carcinogen in the same category classification as asbestos, mustard gas, benzene and plutonium), titanium springs, a silver-thread wiring loom and placing the fuel in a pressurised bag to negate the need for a fuel pump for its forthcoming Bergspyder hillclimb car, Enzo played it straight down the line. The 206 S has a tubular spaceframe chassis, a body made from aluminium and glass-fibre panels, a five-speed transaxle gearbox, double wishbone suspension at each corner, plain disc brakes and fat Dunlop tyres.

Even then the engine should have been a museum piece too, its design already 10 years old before it found its way into this Dino. But this was a Ferrari engine or, to be precise, an engine for a Dino Ferrari, worked on by the Old Man’s son before his death in 1956 aged just 24. Yes, its design was primarily the work of the master that was Vittorio Jano, but there’s no question the lad was involved in its conception and development though tragically he didn’t live long enough to see it run, let alone make its race debut in 1957.

But between them they designed an extraordinary engine and, to this day, a unique one too, being still the only V6 motor with a 65-degree bank angle. This was done simply to create space between the banks for optimal shaping of the inlet ducts, and compensated for by offset crankpins to create an even firing order. And they must have been onto something because back in 1992 Ferrari reintroduced the 65-degree bank into the brand new V12 designed for the 456 road car, a configuration retained not just for every V12 Ferrari since, but also adopted for the V12s in cars like the Aston Martin Valkyrie and GMA T.50. But Jano’s V6 remains unique. It went on to have an extraordinary life, powering not just sports and hillclimb cars like this one, but F1 and F2 cars, road cars and rally cars alike. It powered Mike Hawthorn to the 1958 F1 World Championship. It could be as small as 1.5 litres or stretched past 2.9 litres. Over the years it would feature two, three and four valves per cylinder, carburettors and fuel injection. And it was winning rounds of the World Rally Championship in the back of the Lancia Stratos as recently as 1981. As much as the vaunted V12s of Colombo and Lampredi, this V6 deserves absolutely to be considered among the greatest engines of the greatest engine manufacturer of them all.

In this 206 S it displaces 1987cc and is in ultimate specification, developing around 270bhp at 8800rpm on Lucas fuel injection. It doesn’t sound like much until you consider it’s parked in a car weighing just 580kg, giving this miniscule, near 60-year-old a comparable power-to-weight ratio to Ferrari’s brand new 12Cilindri flagship with its 6.5-litre V12 engine.

“I’d been told to wear earplugs, which sounds excessive until I thumb the button that fires it up”

Max has already warned me to wear earplugs, which sounds a trifle excessive until I thumb the button that fires it up. It’s like someone has dropped a thunderflash in the middle of the pit garage. Drivers, engineers and hangers-on from other teams all instinctively flinch. I’m sure I saw one duck. If ever there were a prize for the amount of noise relative to its number of cubic inches an engine can make, no other would bother entering.

But all seems well. The gorgeous old Veglia dials spring to life as the Jano/Ferrari motor bellows happily away to itself at a 2000rpm idle. I look down at the gearlever and see some complex machinery beneath its exposed gate. And again my mind is spooling back the clock to another time, to the first racing car I drove for this title in fact. It was the Maranello Concessionaires 412 P (essentially a customer P4 with carbs instead of injection and two valves per cylinder instead of three) and it was on the cover of the April 1997 relaunch issue. I’d got Richard Attwood along to drive it too because he was (and remains) a mate who’d raced it in period, and he pointed out the same mechanism to me, which turns out to be an interlock system making it literally impossible to select a gear more than one higher or lower than the one you’re in, making wrong-slotting almost impossible. Pure genius and as reassuring now as it was then.

I ease out onto the circuit and spend a couple of laps putting some heat into the brand new Dunlops and making sure all the other needles are pointing in the right direction. Then, having received none of the warning signs you come to recognise at times like this of a car whose agenda may not be exactly the same as yours, drop a couple of gears and let it do its thing.

At once your head fills with the sound of a Ferrari racing motor at maximum attack. The sound is not as pure as a V12 but it’s deep, complex, raucous and joyous all at once. I find it hypnotic. So much so that I have to really concentrate to stick to my self-imposed rev-limit of just below 8000rpm, because at those revolutions it’s yelling with such approval at you it feels like it would be no less happy with ten grand on the clock.

“The sound is not as pure as a V12 but it’s deep, complex, raucous and joyous all at once”

To drive it fast and well you need to play to its strengths: there’s not unlimited power, but it is ultra-light, beautifully set up and handles as precisely as you’d hope a car looking like this and from this era might handle. The trick is to carry speed, everywhere. This is not a car for rushing up to a corner, standing on its nose and chucking at an apex. It’s a car you drive with your fingers and wrists, not elbows and shoulders, using the electrifying throttle response to keep it beautifully balanced from entry to exit. No doubt you could skid it about and have huge fun, but it’s not how it wants to be driven.

So I savour the experience. Everything about this car – steering, brakes, gearshift – is as good as you could hope it would be, a car built as a true thoroughbred, to the same exacting standards as the P3s and P4s that stole the headlines. It’s not the fastest thing out there, but if you want driving pleasure distilled into its simplest, purest form, a few laps of Donington in this 206 S will provide it. A car, then, that is perhaps even more beautiful to drive than it is to regard. From one looking like this, that is some achievement.

Ferrari Dino 206 S

Engine 2 litres, 65 degrees V6
Chassis Tubular steel spaceframe, rear-engined
Bodywork Aluminium and glass-fibre panels
Power 270bhp @ 8800rpm
Transmission Five-speed manual
Suspension (front & rear) Independent, unequal-length wishbones, coil springs, telescopic shock absorbers
Weight 580kg

Thanks to Girardo & Co and Donington Park for making this feature possible. The Dino is for sale now. For further details go to girardo.com