212 Body Buck

We spend a considerable amount of time and effort to find out what our Ferrari 212 project looked like from new. Like most early Ferrari racing cars, the original bodies were scrapped in favor of new designs, destroyed in races or in the case of this car, a combination of bodies from different cars! We understand that this car has the rear section from Ferrari 340 serial number 0030 grafted onto the chassis.

This car has had a few cycle fender style bodies and had a very tidy Vignale body that was later altered to be a station wagon looking thing. With the current body having little historical significance (except that it has been clothed in this aluminum for 40 years) we wanted it to look as it did when it raced in the 1951 Mille Miglia.

With some help from noted historians we located a photo of the car at the staging line for the ‘51 Mille Miglia. This is a excellent left front shot and we found a right rear shot of the car when it was just completed at the body builders “Carozzeria” or body shop. With these to photos we were in the position to call on a specialized design shop to scan both the car and the historical photos to create a body buck for shaping the new aluminum body.

A man named Mike came in with nearly a million dollars in scanning equipment to “shoot” the car to get the overall proportions and details. He sprayed the entire car in a flat white paint and placed dime sized reflective stickers on every part of the car. He stuck them to the wheels and tires, to the engine block and gas tank, and the suspension arms and frame rails. He spent two days digitizing every nook and cranny of he car while saving it to his computer.

He took this digital image to his design office and layered the current scans over the historical photos and figured out what the car should look like with all proportions accurately detailed. We were able to review the renderings and alter them slightly to make it look accurate to the human eye and could easily alter things like the amount the headlights stuck out or how tall the spare tire opening should be.

With the digital image complete, it was programed to cut MDF plywood on a CNC router to form the stations of a full-sized body buck.