1l7CcRC

Today, with the restored and running car – reunited with its originallysold-off V12-cylinder engine - accompanied at this Sale by an extensiveand immensely significant back-up collection of since-replacedoriginal body paneling, tankage, wheels, brake parts and even periodtyres - plus a spare entirely re-made power unit, together with thecasting patterns originated for its manufacture - Ferrari 375-Plus‘0384’ is offered here, “on the button” and ready to run.This most important Ferrari’s background story begins in the winter of1953-54. Through that winter Mr Ferrari had recognized that his teamwould be looking down the gun barrel after two totally dominant seasonsof Drivers’ World Championship single-seater Grand Prix racing.Ferrari could not match the sophisticated new 8-cylinder Formula 1designs from Mercedes-Benz and Lancia, nor even the 6-cylinder250Fs from Maserati – all of which were poised for introduction thatnew season of ’54.Instead Mr Ferrari concentrated his engineers’ attention uponperfecting a line of large capacity sports-racing cars for customersale, backed by a secondary line of smaller variants, while having hiscompany’s single-seater Formula 2 designs from 1952-53 merelyupdated with larger 4-cylinder engines for the new season. And topromote and publicise the new sports cars, he approved developmentof a muscle-bound outsized ‘big bazooka’ for his works teamto wield.The series-production 4.5-litre Ferrari 375 Mille Miglia was to usea V12 engine derived from the 4.1-litre 340 America model series.It retained the 340-type stroke of 68mm was retained, but its boregrew to 84mm to displace 4,522cc. Power output was claimed tobe 340bhp at 7,000rpm. The engine was mounted in unit with a4-speed gearbox which left the completed car with pronouncedforward weight bias, and only the variable mass of live axle plus fueltank out the back. Pinin Farina won Ferrari’s commission to bodythese cars.Meanwhile, Mr Ferrari also authorized construction of a handful ofvery special even larger-capacity works team competition spiderswhich were intended as his main defence of the Sports Car WorldChampionship title. In the design office Ing, Aurelio Lampredi and hisassistants modified the highly-successful old 4.5-litre Formula 1 V12to accept screwed-in wet cylinder liners, enabling the bore dimensionto be increased to the same 84mm as the 375MM. This was thenmatched with the old F1 stroke of 74.5mm to achieve 4,954cc.The result would become known by the French racing community as‘Le Monstre’ and by the British as ‘The Fearsome Four-Nine’. Theworks car chassis to accept this outsized V12 featured two crucialdifferences from the 375MM ‘production’ model - an F1-style rearmountedgearbox in unit with the final-drive, plus de Dion rear suspensionin place of a live axle. Strangely, Ferrari claimed only 330bhp,though at 6,000rpm, for this new 375-Plus against the 340 at 7,000for the off-the-shelf 375MM.It appears that five of the cars were manufactured for works teamuse, taking even chassis numbers 0384, 0386, 0392, 0396 and 0398– all with the familiar ‘AM’ (America) suffix.Motor Cars | 119