It’s Tuesday, it’s 21:30 here on the glorious Essex coast. But we can’t just sit here admiring the view, It’s high time we donned our disposable overalls, connected our breathing apparatus and took a cautious step into the dank, dripping cavern that is The Carchive. The most recent episode saw an upbelching from The Carchive’s Scandinavian outpost; I had no idea the caves reached that far, but apparently so. Antti uncovered a vintage brochure for the DeTomaso Pantera, and scanned it way too professionally. To try and avoid my being comprehensively outdone, here’s a 1988 brochure for the Ferrari Testarossa. Well, where do we begin? The Testarossa first shoulder-barged its way into existence in 1984, when it announced itself confidently as the Ferrari flagship, ousting the previous 512 Berlinetta Boxer. It retained a similar mechanical package, still a flat-twelve, still mid-engined, but this time the cylinder head covers were red. I’m going to make life easy for all of us here: As one of the most famous cars ever made, the technical nitty gritty is spread all over the internet so there seems little point in covering the same ground yet again. Instead, lets just concentrate on looking at lavish photography and muse over how incredible the Testarossa really was. I’ve made these images embiggenable for greater ease of droology. I’m a child of the ’80s and cars got a major grip on me for the first time at around the middle of that decade; coincidentally at around the time that the Testarossa and the 288GTO exploded onto the scene. Looking back it’s difficult to comprehend exactly how profound an effect my first sighting of a Testarossa, either on paper or in the flesh, truly had on me. I was already a Ferrari fan, because I was male and five years old. I had the baseball cap and everything. 308s and 328s (though I’m not sure I could tell them apart back then) were easily recognised and at that time I was starting to announce “Look Dad, a Ferrari” when I saw a Mondial or 412, too. Dad was a patient man. I vividly remember seeing a Testarossa in the flesh for the first time. I can’t tell you when, because I don’t have a clue. But I remember my Dad taking me to our local Ferrari showroom specifically because the Testarossa was there. I remember looking into it, the side glass was at my head height. I remember it taking quite a long time to walk around. But most of all I remember staring at wonderment into all the holes. It was that massive, ostentatious pair of air-intakes that became the Testarossa signature, to this day they continue to unite or divide depending on your point of view. I know that on that day, as a child in a showroom, they were the most exciting things I had ever seen. They’re not just a stylistic gimmick, either. Aside from their primary objective of allowing cooling air to the rear mounted radiators and other temperature sensitive systems, they performed a valuable aerodynamic airflow management task, too. Cool AND clever. It’s impossible to be objective about the Testarossa’s styling. A Pininfarina creation, of course, I’d struggle to call it pretty in the way that a 365GTB/4 or a 246GT might be judged, I guess striking is a more appropriate term. It’s as arresting to look at as the New York skyline. Iconic covers it pretty well. You’ve noticed by now that this brochure is pretty sparsely worded. Well, what would they say anyway? Marketing the Testarossa can’t have needed much hyperbole or lifestyle bullshit, just show a bunch of beautiful photos, describe the mechanical features and leave it at that. Do you want a Testarossa or not? Well of course you do. The very name, Testarossa became synonymous with the very worst of 1980s exhuberance and excess; a sybaritic declaration that the have don’t really give a shit about the have not, but that’s the fault of the people, not of the car. Testarossa was very comfortable with what it was. The badge wasn’t even capitalised. Once you’d made the buying decision; probably about six pages in, having still not read a single word, you were ready to contemplate the finer details of your new Ferrari. You could look forward to rich, stitched brown leather on the dashboard; and to prove the sheer practicality of your wise purchase, a set of custom fitted luggage to monopolise literally every spare cubic centimetre of storage space. With that in place, the Ferrari was virtually a Volvo. It can’t be said that the styling wasn’t influential, either; with a great many hideous glassfibre bodykits being produced to give your Ford Capri or gawd knows whatever other contraptions that “Testarossa look”. Soon Reiger kitted BMW 3ers and Peugeot 205s were breaking out like a rash, each boasting ridiculous moulded-in vents-to-nowhere. Even German tuning Meisters Koenig were at it; their fantasia on XJS had Testarossa-strakes; possibly the most inappropriate stylistic vandalism ever to be visited upon a car. It may have been irony alone that saw the Koenig Evolution, itself a heavily tweaked Testarossa, having its side strakes deleted. There was a welcome facelift in 1992 when the car became the 512TR, which I deeply enjoyed hooning on the original Need For Speed on my 100mhz Pentium PC. By the end of its life, the F512M, as the Testarossa had become, was looking a little like its time had passed. New spiral-duct wheels, quad round taillamps and fixed headlights managed to make the styling look fussy and contrived; fussier even than it was in 1984. The last one screamed out of Maranello in 1996, and that was it for flat-twelve road Ferraris. It’s place in the Ferrari lineup was taken by the 550 Maranello, switching to a front-engine configuration, and looking rather sober by comparison. And carrying far fewer intriguing holes to look into as a small child. Alas, my Dad never did buy that Testarossa. But at least I have the brochure. (Disclaimer: All images are of original manufacturer’s publicity materials, photographed by me. Copyright remains property of Ferrari S.p.A, who still receive reverence from this callsign. Need more stakes, though.)