The Ferrari F40 is defined by many things: its ultralight carbon fibre body, its wedgy Pininfarina-penned styling, but perhaps most memorably, its savage 2.9-litre twin-turbocharged V8. For a company that’s so associated with V12 engines that it’s literally named its latest car the ‘12 Cylinders’, the F40 is arguably the most iconic car to stray from this formula.
But what if it didn’t? What if, like so many other legendary Ferraris, a free-breathing V12 nestled beneath its slatted engine cover? Well, there is one way of finding out, and it’s up for sale.
Simpson-Ferrari V12 GTR – interior
This, officially, isn’t a Ferrari F40, but a Simpson-Ferrari V12 GTR. Rather than a dysfunctional yellow family, this particular Simpson is Simpson Motorsport, a British racing team that ran Ferrari 348 LMs in various endurance championships during the 1990s, on behalf of driver Stefano Sebastiani.
Through Sebastiani, Simpson was able to build a relationship with the Ferrari factory, which is how it came to acquire a genuine post-crash test F40 chassis from Maranello in the early noughties. It set about turning it into a sort of Ferrari greatest hits album – the gorgeous body of the F40 with the naturally aspirated 5.5-litre V12 from the 550 Maranello crammed into its engine bay in place of the old twin-turbo V8.
Simpson-Ferrari V12 GTR – engine bay
It didn’t stop there. The car was subsequently fitted with lightweight bodywork modelled after the F40 GTE racer, custom suspension, and a full FIA-certified roll cage. The gearbox was also swapped from a traditional manual to a six-speed sequential unit.
The result was a car that was actively raced throughout Europe between 2002 and 2006, clocking up a best finish of second at the 2006 Britcar race at Oulton Park. Despite that competition history, it’s fully road registered, and has just been given a shakedown after the best part of two decades in dry storage.
Simpson-Ferrari V12 GTR – rear
It’s going under the hammer at Iconic Auctioneers’ Silverstone Festival sale on 23 August, where it’s expected to fetch between £500,000 and £600,000. By F40 standards, that’s a steal – original cars are comfortably worth over £1 million these days.
For that ‘bargain’ price, you’re not getting originality, or something that’s going to win any concours prizes. What you are getting is something arguably more usable and easy to run than an original F40, and – let’s be honest – with a nicer engine note to boot. If this, in the eyes of Ferrari purists, is wrong, then we don’t want to be right.
