I was looking through some old Autosports I have in the attic a few days ago and came across this article, I imagine the mule shown is already in this thread somewhere, but the article made interesting reading. Dated Mid 1992.
Does anyone know the whereabouts of #103497. Been sorting out my office and found an original Maranello Concessionaires dating letter, from when the car was in the UK, which if the car were mine I would like to have in the file. Mark Shannon
Do you or Marcel know if this is 95592..... or would it be 98170 ( or is it correct the later had no bodywork fitted) , if it is one of these 2 cars...... any idea where they are now. ?
Once on the UK plate 6006 D , and then back on P910 SGH. That car was last owned by my Dad registered in UK still but was located in Spain, 20 years ago he sold it to LA (as it was car 32 and one of the eligible cars to be registered in the USA ) ......... sold in LA and never seen again, I am almost 99% sure I have now traced the car but just can’t get the confirmation. I would love to see a copy of the document though,
Neither 95592 nor 98170. 95592 had a "standard" MONDIAL Coupé bodywork (I photographed it 12 September 1995). 98170 is in South America and looks like a regular F50. Marcel Massini
Ah ok thanks..... , and does the car in the photos still exist and I assume it will be a vin less than 99999 like these 2 prototypes mentioned. And other than 95451 ( the black with gold wheels) which looked like a wide 355 , and these 2 vins above would the car in the photos make it 4 prototypes in total.
Set of 4 original equipment tyres for an F50 anyone? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/333832929072?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
It still has that magical maranello air. This is really for the owner who does not intend to drive his cars.
That magical air could always be recaptured in a bottle via a trip to Northern Italy and transplanted into the tyres once refitted I guess, I don't think carbon dating has yet to become part of a PPI so an owner could get away with it! Although I imagine Marcel may have such equipment to hand to prove its not the air Guido put in them back in 96
The black/gold wheels mule was one of the Enzo prototypes from memory not an F50, and used some 348 outer panels. Edit, this one? https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/312366924155532306/
Yes that’s the correct car, I thought that was the Enzo mule too, but as it’s on the barchetta database I assumed this must of been involved in some kind of development of the F50. As above that is the vin from that database.
The 348 would have been quite long in the tooth by the time the Enzo was being developed, could Ferrari have repurposed those mules for Enzo engine testing, having originally built them to test the F50 engine? My understanding was they were stretched 348 chassis so would never have had either F50 or Enzo build numbers
When I saw the car on that list, that’s exactly what I thought ......... they simply used an already developed chassis which had been used for the F50 (and hadn’t been seen ) and then used it for the Enzo.......... although after thinking about it , surely the engine being a structural part of the F50 would probably mean a lot ( too much in development) of changes to mount the engine.
Not really an issue, they were both v12s of similar size, with similar gearbox location, axle lines, ancillaries such as dry sump oil tanks, rads etc etc and in the stretched 348 chassis the Enzo engine would have simply been mounted non structurally for initial testing purposes. I have read that the red example (chassis m3) that was later sold was even used for testing the 599 version of the Enzo engine at some point. Those 348 based mules were only for engine testing, nothing more, they ran 355 suspension when they had the Enzo engines in them. Much like Mclaren and BMW used some Ultima's to initially test the drivelines for the F1 before the first true prototype F1 was ready
My database says Yates was the first owner of 106760 but next owner Mark Cale wrote it off and the chassis was cut up and destroyed. The connection is that the man in America who bought 103497 also bought all the salvageable bits from 106760.