This is a 4.9 liter Ferrari Colombo V12 that was sourced from a Ferrari 412. It’s now sitting in a crate waiting for a new owner to do something interesting with it, like drop it into their Miata.
The version of the V12 used in the Ferrari 412 would be the final version of the legendary Gioacchino Colombo-designed engine that had first entered production all the way back in 1947 as Ferrari’s first in-house designed engine.
Here we see Gioacchino Colombo (center) with engineers Pasquale Cassani (left) and Luigi Bazzi (right). This picture was taken at the 1949 Italian Grand Prix, a race that was won by Alberto Ascari driving a Ferrari 125 powered by a Colombo V12. Image courtesy of Ferrari.
The Importance Of The Colombo V12
The Colombo V12 was a masterpiece of engineering by anyone’s standards, but particularly by the standards of the time it was first designed. The engine debuted in 1947, just two years after World War II, with a design so sophisticated it quite literally left most of the competition in the dust.
Gioacchino Colombo had started out working under the great Italian engineer Vittorio Jano at Alfa Romeo. In the mid-1930s he had designed the elegant Alfa Romeo 158 engine for the Alfetta, it would be this design that caught the eye of former racing driver Enzo Ferrari, who had lofty plans to establish his own automotive marque.
The V12 that Colombo would design for Ferrari had a 60º V-angle, an aluminum block and heads, a single overhead cam per bank, crossflow heads, and a displacement of 1.5 liters. It was a revelation by the standards of the time, many sports cars still relied on far more rudimentary engines with iron blocks, iron heads, pushrod actuated valves, and non-crossflow heads.
The Colombo V12 would be used in many of the first Ferraris, it was even used in Ferrari’s Formula 1 cars in supercharged form for a time before it was usurped by the much larger Aurelio Lampredi designed V12.
This Colombo V12 was factory fitted to a Ferrari 412, the final production car to receive the engine.
Colombo’s V12 would remain in use in most of Ferraris sports racing cars, and production cars, including icons like the Testa Rossa, 250 GT SWB, 250 GTO, and countless others. The engine would grow in displacement from 1.5 liters all the way up to 4.9 liters, it would switch to fuel injection replacing the carburetors, and it would get an additional overhead cam per bank.
Production continued until 1988, 41 years after it had first been introduced, and today it is unquestionably one of the most important engine designs of the 20th century.
The 4.9 Liter Ferrari Colombo V12 Shown Here
The engine you see here was factory fitted to a Ferrari 412 – this is important as it was the final production car from Ferrari ever fitted with the Colombo V12. The version used in the 412 had quad cams, Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection, a displacement of 4.9 liters (4,943cc) with a bore of 82 mm and a stroke of 78 mm.
The car this engine originally came in had a manual transmission, this is now long gone and the engine comes with a 3-speed automatic. A flywheel for an automatic transmission is also installed.
The engine is now stored in a wooden shipping crate, and it comes with a 3-speed automatic transmission.
In the listing there is a video of the engine being turned by hand, when its in full operating condition it will be good for 340 bhp and 332 lb ft of torque.
The engine is now being offered for sale out of North Salem, New York in a wooden shipping crate, along with that 3-speed automatic transmission. If you’d like to read more about it or place a bid you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Bring a Trailer
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.