Cars
Mythbusters: The first Ferrari V12
In 1946, Enzo Ferrari began gathering old friends and contacts as he set about creating an automotive and motor racing organisation under his own name for the first time. Gioachino Colombo made his way to Modena, despite still being in the employ of Alfa Romeo at the time.
When Ferrari outlined his plan for a 1.5-litre engine, he asked Colombo how he would proceed. ‘In my view,’ he replied, ‘you should be making a 12-cylinder.’ To which Enzo Ferrari replied, ‘Dear Colombo, you read my mind…’
Cars with 12 cylinders were not uncommon back then but these mighty engines were generally restricted to high-end luxury or racing cars. Indeed, Enzo Ferrari later reminisced about hearing a Packard V12 during his youth in the WWI years.
Today the V12 is Ferrari’s signature engine but Gioachino Colombo’s concept bravely broke convention in 1946. Click the video to learn more
To contemplate so many cylinders in an engine of a mere 1.5 litres marked Ferrari out as progressive – perhaps even eccentric in some eyes. “I gave the four, six and eight cylinder a chance,” Enzo Ferrari later noted. “I came in for a great deal of criticism; it was forecast that I was bringing about my own downfall, the experiment being too daring and presumptuous. But our 12 cylinder turned out to be the crowning glory of my ambitions.”
Colombo decided this new unit should be ‘over-square’; in other words that the cylinder bore would be larger than its stroke. This would enable higher revs by reducing the piston speed, which would ease stress on the crank. His design used a single overhead camshaft operating the valves on each bank. He had begun sketching his initial thoughts on paper in his sister’s back garden during ferragosto, Italy’s traditional summer holiday, in 1945.
A five-speed transmission was also developed by Colombo’s old friend Angelo Nasi, Ferrari’s still-secret operation now also bolstered by the arrival of the great Aurelio Lampredi working alongside Giuseppe Busso. Both men had considerable experience in aviation engines, and the so-called ‘thin-wall’ bearings they used on the engine had been proven in aircraft.
12-cylinder milestones: the very first Ferrari; 125 S; Lampredi V12 debuted with the 275 S; 250 GTO is most revered of the 250 series; 365 GT4 BB introduced the mid-engined flat-12; Testarossa is the definitive 1980s supercar; 456 GT marked a return to front-engined V12s; Daytona SP3 is the most powerful Ferrari V12 road car ever
The prototype for the first Ferrari was tested, minus its bodywork, on March 12th 1947. Franco Cortese was the first man to race with the new engine, a few months later, and observed that its high revving qualities meant that “you had to drive with your head… and with your eye on the tachometer.”
Ferrari, of course, later famously noted that his clients were paying for the engine, the rest being thrown in for free. This idea was rooted in his company’s earliest days. “Enzo Ferrari, at least at that time, believed that the engine was 100 per cent of the automobile,” noted Carlo Felice Bianchi Anderloni, who over-saw the coachbuilder Touring Superleggera, the company that designed the body for the 166 MM, amongst others. “Only later did he consider it 50 per cent.”