You can pick up one of these in restored condition for around $700,000. So what is this Ferrari even doing on the street at the Greenwood Car Show? Someone might breathe on it! Well I don't know how much this car is worth, because it's been repowered with a Chevy V-8. I'm informed that "dozens" of old Ferraris received this treatment back in the day. Certainly its value is still way up in the six figures.
From drive-my.com: "The concept of ditching Ferrari’s glorious V12 for V8 iron may be hard
to digest in today’s world, when ‘matching numbers’ authenticity is
all-important. Back in the 1950s and ’60s, hot-rod culture was second
nature to kids in America, when virtual wrecks could be ‘chopped’ and
tuned to become the fastest things on the road. The most straightforward
way of achieving that was by transplanting a bigger-capacity engine
from an American car. When your Ferrari engine went terminal, or
couldn’t easily be fixed, the pragmatic move was to whip out the V12 and
install a Chevrolet or Ford unit. Hey presto, your gorgeous Italian
stallion was up and running again – at a stroke, going from 3.0 litres
to 5.7 litres, with 100 extra horsepower to boot. The Chevy’s advantage
was its compact – ‘small block’ – size and short stroke, which reduced
piston speed at high revs. It was reliable, too."
Ferrari built 353 copies of this car between 1958 and 1960. That's a lot of cars by old-time Ferrari standards. The previous 250 GT coupe sold 138 copies between 1955 and 1958.
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