1956 Ferrari 860 Monza

This 1956 860 Monza sold for $2,057,001, including buyer’s premium, at the RM Monterey auction, held August 15-16, 2003.

Four-cylinder Ferraris-and Maseratis, for that matter-are a problematic subset of the wildly desirable category of Important Italian Racing Cars. Though they’re every bit as fast, every bit as beautiful, and almost as exotic as their six- and 12-cylinder brethren, they’ve never come close to matching the values assigned to the “big” cars. Chalk it up to our distinctly American belief in the supremacy of displacement and a machismo desire to have more pistons than the next guy.

When honestly evaluated next to its twelve-cylinder contemporaries, the 860 Monza stands tall. First, let’s put some numbers to its “unknown, yet certainly tire-shredding torque.” Rick Hall in England just finished building an 860 3.5-liter engine and reports 280 lb-ft at 4,000 rpm, exactly what you need when you’re trying to out-muscle somebody leaving a corner. By comparison, the 360 Modena’s 50-year newer design, a 3.6-liter, five-valve V8 with computer-driven fuel injection and state-of-the-art everything, makes just 276 lb-ft at 4,750 rpm. The Monza gives ferocious yank, particularly when you’re trying to put the power down through vintage rubber with about five inches of rock-hard contact patch per tire. Fangio’s preference for the 860 Monza over the 12-cylinder variant reveals another of the big four’s merits. When the 860’s brakes go away (and they surely will) at least in the Monza you’ve got good engine-braking, he maintained, something the 12-cylinders wouldn’t have.

But the big fours, for all their merits, weren’t perfect. They had a bad, though nowadays less deserved, reputation for being fragile. A fresh, well-maintained race engine was easily capable of 6,200-6,500 rpm with no particular risk, and many were regularly driven that way. But when the engines got old and tired, their rods would break in a weak spot just below the wrist pin. It is thus rare to find a 750 or 860 engine that doesn’t have serious patches on the block. This mostly happened later in life, often resulting in a frustrated owner slapping a Chevy V8 into what was no longer a competitive car anyway. If you find a virgin, be very suspect. The good news is that nobody uses the problem rods anymore and virtually all the engine parts, including castings, are currently available from England.

The more serious problem that plagues the Ferrari fours is that they tend to blow up their valve train. The cams are driven through a gear tower in the front of the engine and Ferrari made the unwise choice to use straight-cut gears. At about 5,300 rpm, the mechanism develops a harmonic vibration. If you stay at that rpm, the gears simply shatter. Appropriate destruction both up and down the system results. It is no problem to pass through that rpm-just don’t stay there. Maserati, incidentally, used the same architecture but chose helical-cut gears with no problems. Mike Dopudja, a restorer in Denver who has built several of these Ferrari motors, puts a standard redline at about 6,300 but places a big dollar sign on the tachometer right at 5,300 to make the consequences very clear to his clients.

Like any inline four-cylinder engine, the big Ferrari four shakes. This inherent vertical vibration increases with displacement, which is why you seldom see any straight-four engines over 2 liters. An 860 engine doesn’t rattle your teeth nearly as badly as a 2.5-liter BRM Formula One engine, but still, unless you’ve got a very tolerant wife, the big fours are much better as track cars than for long-distance touring. (The 2-liter fours are a joy anywhere.)

Much has been said about the relative handling characteristics of the various Ferrari sports racers. Though this is certainly heretical, if you want a car that handles, I’m telling you to go buy a D-type Jaguar or a Maserati 300S. You own ’50s Ferraris for the power and the glory, not the handling. That having been said, there are a number of suspension setups among the Ferrari sports racers. All Ferrari frames from the mid- through late ’50s are essentially the same, though stiffness was improved as the years progressed.

The early factory-racing sports cars (Mondials, Monzas, Sports) used transaxles and de Dion rear suspension with transverse leaf springs front and rear. Sometime in 1954, the factory switched to using coil springs in front, but the suspension geometry-indeed, the A-arms themselves-remained identical. The coils do provide better travel at consistent rates. All the de Dion cars retained the transverse rear spring until the very late ’50s.

The Testa Rossa series of cars (500 TR, 500 TRC, ’57 and ’58 250 TR) were designed as production-based customer cars and used engine-mounted transmissions and live rear axles. The TR 59 and TR 60 were built as “factory team” racers. They kept the normal transmission but went back to de Dion rear suspension on coil springs. People who have had the joy of extensive experience racing all of the variants (a small and exclusive group, to be sure) say that the transaxle cars are better balanced and more neutral at the limit, and easier to steer with the throttle. The Testa Rossas are a bit nose heavy and inclined to understeer. Of the drum-brake Ferraris, consensus is that that the best handling cars have the coil-spring front suspension with transaxle, like the subject car here.

The catalog waxes poetic about the “subtle reduction in frontal area and more gentle air penetration.” I find this particularly amusing in view of one of my favorite Enzo Ferrari quotes: “Aerodynamics are for people who can’t build engines!” This 860 needs aerodynamics like a freight train does. It’s a lot prettier than a locomotive though, and in the end that counts for a lot.

This 860 Monza is an excellent car, and though it sold for absolute top money, I’d still call it well bought. If it had a V12 installed at the factory it would be worth three times as much. By that comparison, the new owner is getting a bargain provided he doesn’t come down with a case of cylinder envy every time a 290 MM is parked in the next paddock space. I’m told the car went to Europe, where it will undoubtedly give its new owner many wonderful laps.-Thor Thorson