Is A V12 Powered Ferrari F40 Totally Awesome Or Sacrilegious?
It’s still all Ferrari powered. But could an F40 be better than it once was?
It’s difficult to change a Ferrari for the better. It is even more difficult when the car in question is an F40. This car has earned a legendary status because of the sum of its parts. So changing any of those parts ruins it. Or does it? With a V12 engine, The Drive seems to suggest this might be the an improvement on the legendary prancing horse.
Don’t worry about cutting up a real F40. Because this one was technically already cut up by Ferrari. Used as a crash test car, this one could have ended up recycled. But keen racer and race car builder Stefano Sebastiani worked with the factory to get this particular car. It was then built by Simpson Motorsports from the UK.
Given the chassis was a roller, powertrain options were limitless. Its not like F40 turbo V8 engines are just laying around, however. But what about a different powertrain? Why not something with a few more cylinders? Simpson picked a V12 from a 550 Maranello, significantly updating the F40 in the process. But the power isn’t that much different. Though the V12 is rated at 6 more horsepower than the V8 at 478 ponies, its actual output is 542. Weight didn’t get hurt all that much either. It’s a featherweight at 2370 lbs.
We’d almost almost like to think the V12 makes the car drive better, too. Without having to deal with turbo lag, you can dip into the immense torque of the 550’s engine from relatively low RPM’s. That better tactile difference would make the F40 even more of a joy to drive. Or at least so we’d like to think.
So why didn’t Ferrari do this from the start? Well, that’s an easy answer. There wasn’t a 12 cylinder suitable for the F40. Ferrari did have the Testarossa, but that was a flat-twelve arrangement. And the V12 in the 412 wasn’t exactly a fire breather. But the compact, technical and turbo V8 in the F40 was the right choice at that time. And it seems now, a V12 might be better.
Photos Courtesy of The Drive
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