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 been originated by Ing. Chiti for a ‘248 GT’ program which had been shelved after his abrupt departure from the company at the end of 1961.

This 90-degree V8 engine, with four Weber carburetors, was rated at 250 bhp at 7,400 rpm, and it drove via a standard 5-speed and reverse transaxle gearbox. Both these new V8 cars, in common with their 1962 series V6 sisters, wore low rear deck bodywork, still nostril-nosed but much cut down from the 1961 form. With this new V8 engine installed, 0806 had been entered for its debut race, the Sebring 12-Hours in Florida, USA, on March 24, 1962. While works prepared, it was to compete as one of US importer Luigi Chinetti’s North American Racing Team entries, and was initially allocated to none other than the contemporary standard-setting driver of his era, Stirling Moss, co-driving with Innes Ireland, winner of the last preceding Formula 1 Grand Prix.

From one legendary Ferrari collection the car passed to another in 1984, and has thus spent the past 27 years pampered in the company of some of the Maranello marquee’s most revered old battlehorses.