Haul your horses with this Ferrari 412 pickup conversion
Alright, hauling entire horses might be a bit much, but you can certainly haul some feed for your horses with this thing. As far as pickup conversions go, we certainly didn’t have a 1985 Ferrari 412 on our bingo board of possible candidates. Then again, we also didn’t have a Mercedes-Benz E320 on said board, and look how well that turned out.
The convert-in-question is slated to cross the block without reserve at Bonhams MPH March auction on March 20, 2021.
We’ve reached out to Bonhams to confirm many of the details surrounding the truck, but there’s a fair amount of evidence out there to paint a picture of this car’s wild life.
The car was the star of an episode of Ultimate Wheels, a show on the History Channel that follows hosts Will and Elo in their pursuits to make wild and crazy custom vehicles. A trailer for the show is posted below, but to watch the full episodes, you’ll have to go through Amazon Prime.
This old fella started life as a normal 412—a relatively unloved cruiser penned by Leonardo Fioravanti at Pininfarina. The 4.9-liter Columbo V-12 is long-gone, replaced instead by a good old 5.7-liter small-block Chevy V-8 fitted with a gnarly double-barrel air cleaner that pokes menacingly out of the hood. Fun fact: the Ferrari 400—the car on which the 412 is based—was the first Ferrari to offer an automatic transmission. The gearbox of choice? A GM Turbo-Hydramatic three-speed, hence the choice to go small-block—it was quite literally plug-and-play.
To truckify this 2+2 cruiser, Elo and Will lopped 11.8-inches of roofline off this ‘rari and set to work sliding the C-pillars forward. The trunk and rear seats were ditched in favor of a four-and-a-half-foot bed, replete with teak wood paneling (picked for its rot-resistant properties) and a parcel shelf just behind the occupants’ heads. The rear suspension was bolstered to help cope with potential payloads but there’s no tailgate because this bed is already a heckuva lot lower than modern pickups.
Aside from being devoid of the rear two seats, the interior remains largely unchanged. There are the same creamy white seats—which look quite supple, especially for a Ferrari—and the same center console, albeit with a new stereo deck. The steering wheel has been replaced with something that looks a bit more modern.
Bonhams’ pre-sale estimate is between $20,000–$27,000 for this trucklet. If that feels low for a Ferrari, you’re correct; here’s Hagerty valuation editor Andrew Newton:
“The 412 is already one of the cheapest ways to get into a vintage Ferrari, but this one that has been cut up so heavily just might be the cheapest. You’d have to be pretty eccentric to drive it, though, and probably a savvy mechanic, too.”
We get the feeling that it’s going to take just the right buyer to fall hard for this one. Then again, if you’ve been hankering for a slightly more Italian take on a Chevy El Camino, we’ve got just the car for you.
