The Resurrection and Evolution of F40 86878

86878 was a fairly unremarkable, 1990 California car with fewer than 6000 miles when in 2001 her second owner took on a Jeep Cherokee on Mulholland Drive and lost. Full gory details and pictures here; https://www.ferraris-online.com/pages/carintro.php?reqcardir=FE-F40-86878

In 2002 the damaged car sold to someone in Nevada who stored it and later sold it to J in Florida. J entrusted the car to V to ship to Simpson Motorsport in the UK. For those who aren't familiar with Simpson they are a race shop in the UK who have been running numerous cars in British GT and Ferrari Open for many years, including several F40's, 993 GT2's and lots of M3's; most recently they won the Silverstone 12Hr outright with a G57 they developed. It was a very good place to select to build an F40 track car!

There are 3 parts to this story and lots of photos so I'll split it over several posts so please bear with me. Some of the photos will be included for no other reason than someone might find seeing the guts interesting. I will answer any questions I can but as this happened before my ownership I suspect others will know more than me and I welcome their insight.

 

Simpsons remit was to create an 'LM-spec' car; ok I know how toxic such a phrase is round here so specifically it was to include full motorsport style chassis with large diameter roll cage, air jacks, fully adjustable rose jointed suspension; 60mm wider on the front, adjustable anti roll bars, alcon billet 6 pot brakes with 356mm disks on floating bells. LM style front radiator and cooling, exhaust and manifolds by XOST. Gearbox rebuilt with straight cut dropped gearing and finally new loom throughout incorporating Motec 880 ECU and Aim MXL dash and data acquisition.




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And so this is how she left Simpson. Everyone was very happy.
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Unfortunately, recall J was the owner in Fl, V sold the Car to JM in Sep 2010. For those unfamiliar JM is a well known and respected supercar dealer and Ferrari racer in London. The car lasted less than 24hrs before being bought by H.

Before H could take delivery J had tracked the car down to JM's and got a freezing order placed on the car. A lengthy and expensive court battle ensued which finally resulted in a court order in 2012, that JM sell the car and the proceeds be split between J and H. There is no suggestion that J, JM or H did anything wrong.

I subsequently bought the car and shipped it to Fearnsport at Silverstone who have looked after my road Porsche's and track cars for as long as I can remember and who people entrust with far more valuable machinery than an old F40...
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So what had we bought? It didn't take long to realise that Simpson hadn't ever been given the opportunity to give it a proper shakedown post build. There were other weird anomalies where a bent wheel had been noted as fixed by JM but was now the wrong offset. Oh and it smelt like a bomb! On closer inspection we decided to redo the entire fuel system from top to toe... and while we were in there might as well take the opportunity to check everything else. And so it began...
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Awww, my old GT2, should never have sold it!
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So there it is, hope some of the history and photos are of interest. I have many more so if there are parts of interest let me know and I'll see if there are better pictures. As for originality obviously it's rather a moot point at this time, suffice to say IMO there are more than enough perfectly original classiche examples tucked away safe and sound in collections for there to be any obligation to revert all cars to standard and that if Enzo is looking down on us he'd just be happy to see one of his cars lapping Silverstone 30 years on, even if it isn't exactly original.

I consider the car a work in progress, personally I'm not a fan of the wheels but the number of people who have commented that they love them is very surprising. Sadly the replacements from Michelloto aren't great but they will do so that's next...

See you on track!
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Awesome car! Congratulations! Great to see some photos and read the history. And kudos to you for telling the story like how it is/was, without any allusions of "it's an unofficial F40LM" etc.

Hope you enjoy the car as was intended, no matter what the purists say. Back in the 90's when Hamann was doing what Simpson has done here, no one was harping on about keeping it pure!

 

Superb, I had seen a handful of the pics but thanks for putting so many up. The car is stunning, and great to see it used in anger. Enzo would no doubt give you the thumbs up

 

Thanks for sharing with what appears to be a happy ending, and all the photos tell a story all their own too! Hope you enjoy the hell out of it.

 

bad ass machine.

 

Wow, 625 on the dyno! Was that wheel horsepower? If so, that would put flywheel horsepower at almost 720!

 

Thank you for going ahead with this thread when it would have been so easy not to.

I love the F40 but have no issue with the resurrection of this car after it was so badly messed up.

I had been looking forward to reading the history of this F40 as I hoped it would solve some mysteries regarding the Simpson F40s. I still have lots of questions.

A previous post in a different thread suggested that this car was the 550 V12 engined car that has now reverted to a V8. This is clearly not the case from the above history.

Does anyone know how many Simpson F40s there are/have been and what the chassis numbers are? I know that racing cars transform and that items like lights and wheels are easily changed but there seems to have been several cars that have raced with some more major differences (like an extra NACA duct in the side). Online information seems to suggest that the 550 engined car frequently swapped between a V8 and the V12 but this seems unlikely.

From the history above, the car in this thread is unlikely to have been seen in public so it cannot have been one of the Simpson cars that has a race history. Was the car that was raced by Stefano and Jacopo Sebastiani owned by them and just prepared by Simpson or was it owned by Simpsons too?

I know that other people have questions about these cars too and I really hope we can find out more about the Simpson F40s.

 

No that'll be adjusted flywheel, IIRC at a nice super gentle 1.2bar. I couldn't care less how much power we make at this point. It's alarmingly fast as it is and I'm no Jean Alesi. Once we have the chassis configuration nailed down (it's a bit too stiff right now) and a lot more laps under my belt we might see what power we can get out of her... seems like a really strong engine.

 

It was my pleasure. I'm afraid I can't help with the history of the other Simpson cars sorry. I'll say this though; they are developing an F40 racecar at the moment that is going to be very, very special indeed!

You're right. Mine has never raced. In fact it ran for the first time in anger since it's fateful day in 2001 just last month at Silverstone! My intention is definitely to race it going forward though, in what series or format I don't yet know but that's the plan.

 

Thanks Barry, Paul, bupilot and will for your kind comments

 

Awesome car!

Out of curiosity, can it be made road legal?

 

Bravo! Great to see that you are using it as the driving machine that the F40s were meant to be.

As an aside, you are probably aware that at the higher boost levels, the gearbox on the original LM/GTEs are a weak point. No doubt Simpson has upgraded it. I am on my 3rd main shaft in 1 year! But if you ever need spare parts or sources for these, feel free to PM, and I would be delighted to help.