In the winter of 1953–54, Enzo Ferrari concentrated his engineers’ attention upon perfecting a line of large-capacity sports-racing cars for customer sale, backed by a secondary line of smaller variants. To promote and publicize the new sports cars, he approved development of a muscle-bound, outsized “big bazooka” for his Works team.
Mr. Ferrari authorized construction of a handful of very special, even larger-capacity Works team competition spiders, which were intended as his main defense of the World Sportscar Championship title.
The result would become known by the French racing community as “Le Monstre” and by the British as “The Fearsome Four-Nine.” The Works car chassis to accept this outsized V12 featured two crucial differences from the 375 MM production model: an F1-style rear-mounted gearbox in unit with the final-drive, plus De Dion rear suspension in place of a live axle.
Thor Thorson is president of Vintage Racing Motors, a Seattle-area collector-car dealer and vintage-racing support operation. He has been actively involved with racing for over 40 years, dealing with racers from Ferraris to Sprites, but is mostly seen driving Elva sports racers. He has been writing the race-car profiles for SCM since 2003.
