unknown Ferrari from the past

I originally posted this on CarLounge, and someone re-posted for me on F Chat in the Vintage section, so this is a (yet another) re-post. It's really just a curiosity of mine (and a real long shot):

One day when I was about 14 (1966), in mid-town Mobile, Alabama, I was cruising around on my bicycle when I spotted a fellow working on a small red convertible sports car in a very small, dilapidated wooden garage behind a house on Emogene St. Out of curiosity I stopped to chat and met a guy that seemed to be in his early twenties. He claimed the car was an early Ferrari, and showed me several prancing horse badges on the car. I distinctly recall the badges. The car was in rough shape, and the original engine had been replaced with a non-Ferrari engine (type?). He said he was going to return the car to Ferrari power and restore it. That’s about all I recall of the incident. Since few Ferraris were made before the late 1950s, and with the passage of time and the dimness of my memory, the car may have been something else. But I’ll always believe it was a Ferrari I saw that day. I never saw the guy again, or even the garage open. I would be interested if anyone knows anything about this car was and what became of it.