You may have heard the story about how a lucky guy named Tom Shaughnessy purchased a Devin on eBay only to discover that a 1952 Ferrari 340 America Spider chassis was hiding under the fiberglass body. Well, that may never happen again, but here is your chance to buy a Ferrari chassis of your very own. It is from a 1977 Ferrari 400 GT though so it’s not nearly as valuable as the one that Tom picked up. The seller is only asking $9k for it here on eBay and also has a 365 GT4 2+2 body listed for $950. Perhaps a really ambitious person could piece the two together? It looks like fun, but it also looks like a project for someone else. It is fun to dream about what you could do with all these Prancing Pony parts laying about though. So, what would you create?
These 400 GTs are so unloved and cheap that I don’t think it makes financial sense to try to make a whole car out of this. It’s pretty much certain that making a whole car would cost a lot more than buying a decent driver. And if you pay up for a good running 400 GT….who knows? You might end up liking it. OTOH, you would probably hate yourself for buying this 400 GT chassis once you spend years and lots of ca$h chasing the thousands of parts you’d need to make it into a whole Ferrari.
The only sensible thing is what the seller says: make a custom bodied Ferrari special. But unless you spend the time & money sourcing a Ferrari engine / gearbox / driveshaft / rear end / steering there isn’t going to much Ferrari in it. And at $9K for this bare rolling frame there are cheaper alternatives for getting a rolling frame for a project like that.
The 365 GT/4 body from this same seller is gone. At least it looked unrusty in the photos, with useable panels, some glass, and the headlight motors. Since this rolling frame is still available, the body was probably bought by a high-end shop that fixes Ferraris and not someone trying to mate the 365 body to the 400 frame.
Ferrari 365 gt4, some assembly required.
I bought this rolling chassis with clear titles and matching this chassis with a Ferrari 250 Gt SWB body that I found in a barnfind in Italy.
Quite a job in matching it all up ,instead of sacrificing a real 250 gte etc. this method is a compromise between both worlds, making it reasonable,without cutting up real Ferraris .
Engine and gearbox I found also , the hollow tube drive shaft system can be shortened with the chassis length to suit.