1962-63 Ferrari Dino 196SP

This sports-prototype Ferrari was an ex-works/North American Racing Team entry in the 1962 endurance World Championship race series. It is one of a mere handful of surviving Dino ‘SP’ rear-engined sports-racing cars campaigned by the Maranello marquee.

This design had been masterminded by Ing. Carlo Chiti and in effect, it employed the Dino 246 4-cam V6-cylinder engines which had just been made redundant by the close of the long-lived 2.5-liter Formula 1 Grand Prix class at the end of the 1960 season. For rear-mounted use in the new sports-prototype chassis, these engines had now been modified to accept a new transaxle-type gearbox mounted in unit on the rear end of the crankcase.

Chassis 0806 began life on February 24, 1962, when it was ‘signed-off’ as the second of only two Dino SP V8-engined cars built at Maranello. It and its sister 0798 were equipped initially with 2-cam, 2.4-litre V8 power units, which had...