The Ferrari F40 LM is almost certainly the most red-blooded example of what many consider to be the most red-blooded supercar ever made. Ferrari introduced the F40 in 1987, it was to be the last car ever personally approved and overseen by Enzo Ferrari.
Just 19 Ferrari F40 LMs were created by Michelotto, and each had full Ferrari authorisation. Whereas the original F40 shipped with 471 hp, the F40 LM arrived in customer’s driveways with 720 bhp. It also benefitted from a full rework by the engineers at Michelotto, which included full body bracing, new suspension, a new competition-spec transmission, a futuristic digital dashboard and new front and rear bodywork.
The real lure of the LM however, was the engine.
In its upgraded guise it was known as the F120 B, although it had the same displacement as the original, the output pressure of the IHI turbochargers was upped to 2.6 bar and the compression ratio was increased to 8.0:1. The engineers at Michelotto also fitted larger Behr intercoolers, new camshafts, and a new Weber Marelli electronic fuel-injection system.
Michelotto officially listed the power output as 720 hp at the crank, but without the air restrictors required for sanctioned competition, the engine could produce up to 760 bhp – utterly mind-bending figures for a road-legal car in the late 1980s.
The car you see here is the 18th of the 19 produced, an unlike most of the others – it was never raced. This means that it’s still exactly as it was originally built, with no replacement panels, patches or reproduced parts.
If you’d like to bid on it, you can click here to visit RM Sotheby’s – it’s due to be auctioned on the 13th of August 2015 and it has an estimated value of between $2,000,000 and $2,500,000 USD. That said, the Ferrari market is hotter than the core of Betelgeuse at the moment so it could go for far more.
Photo Credits: Patrick Ernzen ©2015 Courtesy of RM Sotheby’s
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
