Ferrari’s 400i is a mess of a car from a design standpoint. Its front-engine proportions are about as inelegant as cowboy boots in a ballroom. The gaping grille is too low and too wide, and the giant slab of a hood is bigger than my dining room table. Even the pop-up headlights— and we love pop-up headlights here—are laughably incongruous.
Forgetting the design for a moment, this car boasts a 4.8-liter V12 up front, and an exceedingly rare five-speed manual transmission behind. There’s something endearing about an ass-ugly car that still has the potential to be fun to drive and sound like a dream.
As a big four-seat Italian GT car, this is an incredibly complex car (twin injection systems, twin alternators, twin ignition systems, etc. You get the idea.) that could be the coolest and most esoteric car you could buy.
And you should, because this one is for sale at Bring A Trailer. Right now the current bid is at $20,000, far less than a new midsize sedan, and vastly more interesting.
It’s cheap because this particular example isn’t the best kept, either, with over 100,000 miles on the odometer. This car was originally Blu Scuro, which is far preferred to its current shade of red. It’s in need of tires, brake pads, suspension bushings, and engine mounts, not to mention the leaking differential seal.
Fix all of that, and you could have a decent occasional driver. In fact, all of that sounds perfectly DIY-able. Maybe I’ve talked myself into bidding on this bedraggled beast. After all, they only built 421 of these with a stick.
For more information and way more photographs, check out the full listing on Bring A Trailer. There’s still plenty of time to get signed up for Radwood 2, and being that this car is listed in San Diego, you could easily make the show.