This is the V12 engine and 5-speed gearbox out of a Lamborghini Espada, and they’re now being offered for sale as a pair, including the wheeled stand they’re currently sitting on.
The Espada version of the Lamborghini V12 has a displacement of 3,929cc or 3.9 liters. It’s capable of up to 350 bhp at 7,500 rpm, powering the Espada to a top speed of 150 mph (241 kmh) – making it the fastest four-seat Lamborghini made up until that point in time.
From left to right: Giotto Bizzarrini, Ferruccio Lamborghini, and Gian Paolo Dallara at Sant’Agata Bolognese in 1963, with a Lamborghini V12 engine prototype. Image courtesy of Lamborghini.
A History Speedrun: The Lamborghini V12
The Lamborghini V12 is now remembered as one of the most enduring production car engines ever made, and the most long-lived V12 ever designed – outlasting even the Ferrari Colombo V12.
The only reason the Lamborghini V12 came into being is that Ferruccio Lamborghini owned a number of Ferraris and had an argument with Enzo Ferrari about one of them – it’s one of the most over-told stories in the world of motordom – and it ended with Enzo telling Ferruccio to stick to designing tractors and leave the cars to him.
This so insulted Ferruccio that he embarked on what would become probably the greatest act of retribution in automotive history – founding Automobili Lamborghini, hiring a team of brilliant engineers, and developing a car that was faster than anything Ferrari had on offer at the time – the Miura.
One of these engineers would be Giotto Bizzarrini, a man who had worked for Alfa Romeo initially before moving to Ferrari where he became Chief Engineer. At Ferrari he would work on the 250 TR Testa Rossa, the 250 GT 2+2/GTE, the 250GT SWB, and perhaps most memorably, the Ferrari 250 GTO.
After a disagreement with Enzo Ferrari, Bizzarrini would end up working for Ferruccio Lamborghini developing an all-new V12 engine. Ferruccio offered him a bonus for every unit of horsepower the new engine could produce over the Ferrari V12.
This is the V12 engine and 5-speed gearbox out of a Lamborghini Espada, and they’re now being offered for sale including the wheeled stand it’s currently sitting on.
Bizzarrini would develop a new V12 with a displacement of 3.5 liters, it would have a block and heads made from aluminum alloy, double overhead cams per bank, and early prototypes could produce as much as 370 bhp at 9,000 rpm.
Bizzarrini wanted to keep pushing for 400 bhp at 11,000 rpm, however by the time the road-going version of the engine was ready it was turning out a more modest 280 bhp.
The Lamborghini V12 would remain in production for almost 50 years, from 1963 right the way through until 2010. The final production car it would be fitted to would be the Lamborghini Murciélago LP 670-4 SuperVeloce, where it had a displacement of 6.5 liters and it was producing 661 bhp.
The Lamborghini Espada V12 Shown Here
The engine you see here was sourced from a Lamborghini Espada, the avant garde four-seater designed by Marcello Gandini at Bertone and given the name “Espada” from Spanish, meaning “sword.”
The engine you see here was sourced from a Lamborghini Espada, the avant garde four-seater designed by Marcello Gandini at Bertone and given the name “Espada” from Spanish, meaning “sword.”
The listing doesn’t give a whole lot of information about this engine or the included 5-speed manual transmission that also came out of an Espada. It does note that the engine does come with the six original Weber 40 DCOE twin carburetors, and that the engine number is #0577.
It’s now being offered for sale by Artcurial and it’s due to roll across the block with them in mid-March with a price guide of €20,000 to €30,000 or approximately $23,800 to $35,700 USD. If you’d like to read more or register to bid you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Peter Singhof via Artcurial 2026©
Articles that Ben Branch 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.
