The P.I.'s Prancing Horse.(Escape Roads)

Byline: ERIC TEGLER

A quarter-century ago Magnum P.I. introduced millions of Americans to Ferrari. With each episode Thomas Magnum would look to the camera then nail the throttle of his Ferrari 308, plowing two furrows in the soft shoulder. The monster TV hit helped to make the already popular 308 Scuderia's best-selling car ever.

More than 12,000 308s were produced. That many sales, combined with the car's good, if less-than-exotic performance and relative affordability, has led purists to cast it as entry-level, or an everyman's Ferrari. Yet the 308 has the visceral feel of a Ferrari, and Pininfarina styling that, unlike its Testarossa contemporary, hasn't dated. Perhaps that is due to the 308 having retained the same basic configuration and some styling cues from the highly regarded 246 Dino it replaced.

The 308 GTB debuted to public acclaim at the 1975 Paris Salon. 308s through '77 had fiberglass bodies fabricated by Ferrari's Scaglietti subsidiary, but production complexity combined with plans for the Targa-style GTS necessitated a switch to steel. The car shared its basic chassis and mechanicals with the Bertone-styled 308 GT4, including its 2926-cc V8 producing 240 hp at 7700 rpm. Double wishbones and coil springs all around made for fine handling in a package weighing about 3050 pounds.

Magnum rolled around Oahu in a GTS, the most recognizable of the 308 variants. Aside from the car's removable roof, only the louvers covering its rear quarter-windows distinguished it from the GTB. Between 1977 and 1980 Ferrari sold 3219 copies of the GTS. To meet emissions requirements all 308s got Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection in 1980, reducing output to 205 hp. Later Quattrovalvole models recouped some of the power loss. Despite a recession, sales climbed in the following two years.

A share of the credit undoubtedly goes to Magnum P.I., which debuted in December 1980. Tom Selleck would squeeze his large frame into a Rosso ...