EVERYONE knows that Fiat owns Ferrari. The Prancing Horse gives the Italian conglomerate a sprinkling of much-needed stardust - as well as a very handsome annual profit.

Once upon a time, Ferrari needed Fiat almost as much as Fiat now needs Ferrari.

In the early Sixties, motorsport’s rule-makers introduced minimum production quotas for engines. The idea was to make manufacturers use cheaper production-based powerplants, thereby reducing the cost for hard-pressed teams.

Unfortunately, the manufacturers took the opposite view - instead of racing mass production powerplants they just mass produced their costly racing engines.

Fiat, which already had a small financial stake in Ferrari, provided the necessary outlet for the Scuderia’s 2.0-litre engine built with Formula Two racing in mind.

Fiat couldn’t believe its luck when Ferrari came calling.

In return for giving the Scuderia somewhere to install its engine, the Italian giant would have access to a race-bred power plant with which to launch a new two-seater sports car.

The result was unveiled at the 1966 Turin Motor Show in the shape of the Fiat Dino Spider, one of the world’s first homologation specials.

In order for the engine to be approved for competition, Fiat/Ferrari had to sell 500 examples so the project was pulled together in record time.

The engine may have been designed for racing but the chassis, with its live axle and front end derived from a humble saloon, certainly wasn’t.

Despite that, the Fiat Dino was hugely successful and production lasted for more than six years. Fiat made more than 8,000, rather more than the 500 Ferrari originally envisaged.

The Spider was quickly joined by a coupe, styled by Bertone, and - when Fiat finally bought out Ferrari in 1969 - production was eventually transferred to Maranello.

The later cars lost something of the Ferrari magic. Fiat’s bean counters insisted the quad cam V6 was too expensive so they ‘productionised’ it by simplifying the specification and increasing the capacity (from 2.0 to 2.4 litres) to disguise the impact these changes made to the performance.

At least the chassis was improved. The live rear axle was binned and replaced by the single-leaf spring set-up from the Fiat 130 saloon.

Visually the cars looked exactly the same but this was deceiving because the changes forced Fiat to subtly extend the Dino. The only interchangeable parts were the doors.

Both the engines had their peculiarities. Owners who didn’t warm them up properly found that the profile on the camshafts wore down - reducing the Dino’s performance.

And they used a special Ferrari oil filter with a small ball in it that trapped half a litre of oil so that the cams could get their precious lubrication much quicker. Non-approved filters often left this out with predictably disastrous long-term results.

The Dino was the first road car to be fitted with electronic ignition, developed by Marelli after the pre-production models suffered terrible misfiring due to spark plug troubles, and the tuned exhaust had no fewer than eight silencers.

The dual-circuit brakes featured four-pot calipers biting on ventilated discs - almost unheard of on a mass production car at the time. Nevertheless, the Dino still had its heart-stopping moments due to the brakes being over-servoed. On early cars the vacuum dropped in the system leaving drivers with no retardation after a couple of hefty stamps on the brake pedal. This was solved later on with the addition of an electric vacuum pump which cut in to top up the reservoir when required.

Ultimately, the Fiat Dino was all about the engine (which bore remarkable similarities to the pukka Ferrari Dino power plant). An output of 180bhp may be nothing to get excited about nowadays but it was hairy stuff 50 years ago.

And with Fiat working on a spiritual successor to the Dino - due for release later this year - wouldn’t it be wonderful if a Ferrari lump once again ended up beneath the bonnet of a mass production sports car?