The story of a British Ferrari Le Mans triumph | Thank Frankel it's Friday

But they weren’t the only cars out there with Union Flags on their sides showing the world how it should be done. The car that came home 10^th overall was a Ferrari 550 Maranello developed by Prodrive and driven to such a dominant victory in the GTS category by Jamie Davies, Tomas Enge and Peter Kox that the next car home, a Corvette,  was fully 10 laps – around 40 minutes – behind the Ferrari. It was the first victory of any kind by a Ferrari at Le Mans in 22 years, and to date remains the last powered by a V12 engine.

I can remember talking to Prodrive’s Nick Fry around that time about the cars. Far from being works-backed pristine units plucked brand new from the Maranello line, he’d find himself scanning the ads in Exchange & Mart trying to find the leggiest, least loved and therefore most affordable 550s he could. This was because by the time Prodrive was finished with them, so little would be left of the original that it could be considered an essentially new car. They just needed the identity of one that already existed.

What I have only just come to appreciate is how enormously successful these cars were. Prodrive created just ten of them, but incredibly they raced competitively for eight seasons from 2001-2008, entering 343 races, winning 69 of them, with 60 pole positions and 151 podium places. One of those victories was an outright win the Spa 24 Hours. It was by a distance the most competitive car of its kind in the world.

So, to commemorate the 20^th anniversary of that class win at Le Mans, Girardo & Co commissioned well known Ferrari author Keith Bluemel to write a book about the cars. It is called: Ferrari 550 Maranello Prodrive – The Last V12 Ferrari To Win At Le Mans

I get to see dozens of car books every year, few worthy of mentioning in a space such as this. But just occasionally I’ll read one and feel an uncontrollable urge to broadcast its existence. This is one of those books.

I’ve written a few books before, including the eminently forgettable ‘Dream Cars’, a Clarkson cast-off he didn’t have time to write which I gratefully took on because I’d just gone freelance and didn’t fancy starving, and rather more serious works about Bentley (see above), and Aston Martin. I mention this only because those experiences give me some idea of what it take to produce a half decent book that functions not just as a narrative, but a reference work too. And this book is not half decent, it is absolutely sublime.

Published in two volumes, the first about the cars and their development, the second their racing exploits, it amounts to 592 pages and no fewer than 832 illustrations. These include photographs, drawings, memos, letters… you name it, it’s there. So too are interviews with near enough every single surviving person who was closely connected to the cars at the time – drivers, designers, engineers, team bosses and so on.

Each car gets its own section, every significant race described, illustrated and its results published. By the time you reach the end it seems inconceivable that there could be a single facet of this car’s gestation, birth, life and afterlife into which a bright light has not been shone.

If I think of a book whose quality and values most closely mirror those of this book, it is ‘Driving Ambition’, the book that aimed to do the same job in much the same way for the McLaren F1. It is not only one of the most cherished members of my small automotive library, but also among the most well thumbed. For both that book and this were born for far better things than to sit on coffee tables and impress your mates. Both are serious, definitive works of reference and anyone not treating them as such are seriously missing out on the true pleasure of owning them.

There is some bad news however: the book costs £550, a price that reflects in part the fact that only 550 of them will be sold. But if you’re interested, don’t go rummaging around Amazon hoping to find one for a few quid less. At least for now they’re available to order here. I know it’s a great deal of money, but if that doesn’t put you off, I can think of nothing between its covers that could possibly make you regret your decision.

Images courtesy of the Girardo & Co. archive