This is a 1987 Ferrari Testarossa flat-12 engine, it was fitted to a Testarossa that was, very unfortunately, caught up in a house fire and badly damaged. The car was beyond repair however the engine was recoverable and is now being sold separately.
The Testarossa flat-12 was the pièce de résistance fitted to the back of one of Ferrari’s most recognizable, and most mass-produced, supercars. Nearly 10,000 examples of the Testarossa and its direct descendants, the 512 TR and the F512 M, were made between 1984 and 1996.
Above Video: This is the scene from the TV show Miami Vice where Don Johnson’s character Sonny Crockett is assigned a Ferrari Testarossa to help him maintain his undercover ruse as a drug dealer.
The Ferrari Testarossa was developed as an entirely new car to improve upon the earlier Ferrari 512 BB series. It was also targeted squarely at the popular Lamborghini Countach which had successfully made the transition from the 1970s to the 1980s without losing any of its appeal or becoming dated – a feat that many other cars failed to achieve.
The Testarossa has a tubular steel frame clothed in gleaming bodywork designed by at Pininfarina by a team lead by Leonardo Fioravanti, consisting of Ian Cameron, Guido Campoli, Diego Ottina and Emanuele Nicosia.
Powered is provided by an advanced rear-mid-mounted Tipo F113 flat-12 engine with a displacement of 4,943cc (4.9 liters), double overhead cams, four-valves per cylinder, and a dry sump. It produced 385 bhp at 6,300 rpm with 354 lb ft of torque, and power was sent to the rear wheels via a rear-mounted 5-speed transmission.
The Testarossa would become an 80s icon in every sense of the word, it featured prominently in the TV series Miami Vice, it was front and center in the influential racing game Out Run, and it was owned by a huge number of celebrities including M.C. Hammer, Mike Tyson, Elton John, O. J. Simpson, Rod Stewart, Alain Delon, Michael Jordan, and Don Johnson who was gifted a brand-new silver 1989 Testarossa by Enzo Ferrari himself.
Today the Testarossa remains one of the more affordable vintage Ferraris, well affordable by Ferrari standards, with good low-mile examples selling for somewhere over $130,000 USD.
As mentioned up in the introduction this engine was originally fitted to a 1987 Testarossa that came to a grisly end in a house fire. The exact details aren’t laid out in the eBay listing but suffice to say, the engine survived but the car did not.
The design of the Testarossa is invariably featured on every list of influential supercars, it’s one of the truly great cars to emerge from Italy in the 1980s and it was wildly popular, with almost 10,000 made and sold. Image courtesy of Ferrari.
It’s noted that the engine does have some fire damage and it will need to be completed restored before anyone goes about installing it in a car. The company selling it is called Exotic Auto Recycling, and they’re asking for $20,000 USD for the engine, plus a $2,000 core charge if the engine isn’t being swapped for another unit.
If you’d like to read more about this unusual, and slightly crispy, Testarossa engine or make them an offer you can visit the listing on eBay here.
Images courtesy of eBay Motors via Exotic Auto Recycling
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.
