The Story of the V12 that started everything for Ferrari “Colombo”

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The original 'Colombo' V12 engine is extremely important to the company. You see It was the first Ferrari engine that they them selves build, and it powered the 125 S, the first Ferrari-branded race car. And the engine would later be used in in there first road going car as well.

Now the builder of this important piece of Ferrari’s history was an Italian engineer by the name of Gioacchino Colombo. Now back when this engine was designed and build Enzo Ferrari was unsure how competitive it would be against the likes of Maserati and Jaguar. Well Enzo would soon enough get his answer. On the 125s’s second time ever being raced it took its first victory at the grand prix of Rome. The 125 S won six of its fourteen races in 1947, but unfortunately they weren’t able to take home the first position overall in the racing series.
But lets take a closer look at the engine that started it all. This engine is rather interesting, you see the V12 found in the 125s is a 1.5l V12 yes, it’s a 1500 V12. The 125 designates the capacity of each cylinder. Multiplying by 12 results in 1,500 cubic centimeters. Which is really small when you compare it to the V12’s we see in Ferrari’s of today. Now before we go on, I just want you to realise how small those cylinder are. Each piston was only 55mm in diameter. That’s 2.1 inches.

Now Enzo Ferrari loved building race cars, but he understood that he has to sell cars to the public to keep the business afloat. And this is how the brand started to sell race bred cars to the public. And in 1952 Ferrari released the Ferrari 250. Now for the 250 Ferrari enlarged the displacement of the engine to 3.0 but the original Colombo design was still involved in the making of this new larger motor. Now this increase in displacement meant that Ferrari could drop the problematic supercharger system. The new 3.0 liter engine could make up to 300HP in the racing versions. Interestingly this engine is the engine that powered the 250GTO which is the most expensive Ferrari ever to sell at auction, going for a cool 70 million at auction.

Then Ferrari levelled up the engine once again in the Ferrari 275, which featured a front engined 3.3l version of the motor. Which had a claimed power output of 280hp. Then in 1967 the Colombo V12 was substantially reworked for 1967's 275 GTB/4. It still used two valves per cylinder, but dual overhead cams were now used as well. These dual overhead cam motors also had a lot of work done in the heads, the Valve agle was changed and underneath the engines you could find a dry-sump design with a huge 16 L capacity. Now these changes bumped the power up even more and the four cam models produced up to 330hp.
Now on the racing side of things they where also busy modifying and changing stuff on the Colombo. The 330 series entered the scene in 1963 with 4.0 liter engine. They also used a wider bore spacing in this engine, paving the way for future displacement increases. and The spark plugs were moved, another change was an alternator instead of the dynamo generator that was used on prior models. The result? Well these changes translated to outputs as high as 450 horsepower in the 330 P. The 330 LMB. Which was crazy power for the time.

Now at this point the colombo V12 has been used by Ferrari for 16 years and Ferrari had no intention of swoping it out. In 1967 ferrari released the 365 California, or as the press nicknamed it the 365 Daytona and this 4.4 liter colombo V12 could carry this front engined Ferrari all the way to 170 mph.

So far all of the cars where great, and the front engined Ferrari V12 was super successful, but then in 1976 Ferrari started getting lazy. The 400 and 412 series were nothing more than improvements from the 365 GT4 2+2, but worse still, you could opt for a three-speed automatic transmission. And here is the weird thing, more autos where sold than manuals, even though these never officially made it into the us. Further more, the 400 was not exactly a poster child, and its known by many as the ugliest car ever to come from the Maranello based manufacturer.

#Ferrari #ColomboV12 #V12 #Engine

[THESocialJusticeWarrior]

More engine sound would have been good

[kevmagill]

I'm really loving these videos. You're picking the best cars. Is that an SA accent I'm hearing?

[vv]

Its a great history and well explained, great job.

[alexjenner]

0:58 This isn't the engine from the 125 S, it's a later Colombo engine, probably a 3.0 L from something like an early 1960s Testa Rossa or 250 GTO. The engine shown at 1:30 isn't from a 125 S either, as those early engines had the spark plugs located inside the V and it remained that way from several years. There is a 125 S engine on display at the Ferrari Museum, and pictures of that engine can be found on wikipedia and other sites. Also at 3:00 This car is certainly not a Ferrari 250 from 1952 which is implied here, it's a much later car, probably early 1960s.

[mohammadalfattal]

the top 5 best V12 engines imo are (with no specific order):

Ferrari Colombo - Ferrari F140 - M120 - BMW S70/2 V12 - Lamborghini Bizzarrini