Say you’ve always wanted a Ferrari F40 but simply can’t justify paying the several million dollars that they command in 2024, what do you do? If you’re YouTube fabricator nerd Mike Burroughs, you buy a complete F40 body and get started building your own almost from scratch. But even if you have the body and the know-how to build a complete chassis, you still need an engine. An F40 engine is still way too expensive, and Ferrari isn’t exactly known for turbocharged V8s anyway, so why not go whole hog and get the V12 that a car like this has always deserved?
Ferrari has been building V12s for as long as Ferrari has been building engines, and its high-rev sing-songy character has been a flavor of the brand all along. Not only that, but Ferrari has been improving these V12 engines all along, so why not try to find one that is as modern and powerful as possible to slam in your F40?
So Mike went to Germany to buy an F140-GA engine ripped from the engine compartment of an 812 Superfast. In that 6.5-liter configuration, it’s an identical 789-HP engine to the one found in the LaFerrari, but without the hybrid gubbins. An 812 Superfast was capable of a 2.8-second 0-60 time and a top speed of 211 miles per hour, despite the car’s 3,362 pound weight. You can all but assume Mike’s F40 will weigh a good bit less than that. I look forward to seeing what it’s capable of once all this is done in two or three years.
This project is still in its infancy, but given the guy running the shop is constantly wrenching, you can bet it’ll keep chugging along until it’s done. Maybe you (and I) should use Mike’s continual progress as motivation to get out in the shop and finish some projects. With enough time and effort, we could all build our own V12-powered F40s, and that sounds like a world I want to live in.
