Not sure who owns these cars but they are the ones that were transported in the FIAT truck in the Ferrari team livery. The cars are in excellent condition mechanically but they are appropriately rough on the outside, a refreshing change to the glossy perfection that you typically see at the Cavallino. The Daytona that you see here was racing against a Michelotto 308 GTB on Friday for one of the best Vintage Ferrari races I have ever seen.

Ferrari Race cars

This is a super cool truck, a former Ferrari team transporter that is now hauling some vintage cars.. The truck hauled a competition Daytona, a 750 Monza and a 275LM to Palm Beach International Raceway.

FIAT Ferrari truck

Ferrari Red

A gorgeous Dark red that a prominent Ferrari Historian calls “mature”.

This is just out of the paint shop, no wet sanding or polishing on an overcast day. The camera is one of those heavy duty LUMIX point/shoots.  The car looks particularly amazing right now because it basically has 3 finishes, the glossy red, brushed aluminum and black Excelsior tires from Coker. It is beautiful!

1956 Ferrari 750 Monza paint detail

A customer asked about a harlequin bit of paintwork on the boot lid of the 1956 Ferrari 750 Monza. A section of paint was masked and carefully sanded to expose the layers of paint the car has worn. The result is a twelve square inch testament to the heritage of the car. It’s a trait more common to European restorations, and generally unseen in the United States.  Europeans prefer to celebrate history, while many Americans prefer to erase it with perfection being achieved through a sterile final product, and allowing the owner to forget that anyone was ever there -  an oh-so-human reclamation of virginity.

The Monza shows many colors including blue and yellow in addition to more than one shade of red, and a few layers of primer, and the foundation of bare metal clear coated for protection. This badge of visual history is especially rich as the car was born into racing, changing liveries often. We hope to see more cars like this, though few will exhibit as much character.

Ferrari 750 Monza paintwork

Here is a photo of the body on the 212 on the chassis. Since this photo was taken we have dialed in the wheel openings so, when steered with the suspension compressed, the wheels will clear the bodywork. The shape of this car is very exciting, another example of how it is hard to argue with the creative styling of these cars.

Aluminum bodywork close to finished

A Ferrari 212 Coupe came in about a month ago and we met with the owner to make a list of things that we need to address. The car ran very nicely since it has the single Weber carburetor and actually drove quite well. Unfortunately the engine smokes like crazy and has a few major oil leaks.

Among all of the things that the car needs, we started on the engine as it takes so much time to schedule a machine shop and to get the parts in – like new head studs –  and pistons made. We pulled the engine from the chassis and began the break down to see what was making this thing smoke so badly. When it was on the bench, Karl did a leak down test to find that the first two cylinders that he tested had about 60% leaking past the piston rings. We only tested those two cylinders figuring that these alone necessitate an overhaul. » Continue reading “Ferrari 212 engine”

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.