Abandoned Ferrari Testarossa Rescued to Build the Worlds ONLY Rat Rod Ferrari - CHEAP !!

[Music] hey guys a warm welcome back to the channel when hunting for that special car it doesn't always have to be a million dollar ferrari f40 the car's value is not the limiting factor to the level of excitement you can achieve often discovering that hidden gem that something special gives you that same warm buzz inside this Testarossa was exactly that it's the cheapest Ferrari I bought by far yet has been the most rewarding today I'm going to tell you all about the story of how this car came to be in my possession this eighties icon the challenges we had building this one but before I do that I need to just sort something out here there's something not quite right so give me a second [Music] [Music] that's better you see when you're in the presence of an 80s icon one must dress appropriately and the Testarossa was the car icon of the 80s it was on every school boy's bedroom wall alongside the Lamborghini contact this car uses ATS from its rear wide end to these very 80s side slits you look at this car and you think 80's it sits there along other 80s legends such as Madonna Prince and even Michael Jackson a little known fact about Michael Jackson is he drove a Testarossa spider in a very famous eighties Pepsi advert [Music] [Applause] [Music] but before I tell you the story on this car I want to rewind a little and tell you how the Testarossa sparked something that gave me a lifelong passion for Ferrari cars two things happen back in the 80s firstly an arcade game came out called outrun like many others I was obsessed with outrun and then to top it off a TV show came out that would alter my universe forever 40 horsepower 180 miles an hour absolutely essential when it happens serious police we're done right [Music] so there you have it that is the backstory on how my obsession for Ferrari cars all began let me tell you about the story on this one let's get it out the garage and have a little look around it [Music] and this is it the 1987 Ferrari Testarossa it's now a Spyder affectionately known as rata rasa let's give you a tour Dakar and tell you how it came to be the world's only rat-look Ferrari now Ferrari only ever made one very very special Testarossa Spyder that was for Gianni AG Nelly who was the boss of Fiat at the time so they built that as a special car for him all other testarossa's were a coupe a a hardtop car so let's talk about how this car came to be in its current state five years ago I bought a stunning red Testarossa I picked the car up from Holland and had a fantastic drive all the way through Europe back to the UK the car didn't miss a beat not long after I was cleaning the car and noticed I had a bit missing in the engine I jumped on the internet and to try and find a replacement but instead my search brought up this the rat Arase it was an advert on a kit car forum at first I dismissed it is just another pontiac fiero with a kit however on close inspection I noticed it was a genuine Ferrari Testarossa and not only that it was also complete with its factory 4.9 liter flat 12 engine and gearbox it looked in a very sorry state someone had clearly taken a hacksaw and chopped off the roof he had no flaws at the front and it was just a pile of bits but the more I thought about it the more the project excited me had I found that diamond in the rough the other appealing thing about this car was the price it was cheap very cheap the advert was three years old and in that timeframe testarossa's had rocketed in price eventually I managed to get hold of the owner in California and unsurprisingly he still had this very unfinished project sat at the back of his garage we spoke at length when I got him to lay out all of the parts we had and semi picks I then detailed each of those and became a Testarossa guru on parts overnight I explained to him that anyone else he bought his tester or would simply break it for parts like that if I purchased it I promised him that I would do my very best to put that car back on the road where it belonged and where hadn't been for over 20 years we struck a deal sight unseen I bought the car on pictures alone and had it shipped all the way over across the pond to the UK upon arrival we stumbled upon our first problem the shipping company had lost the test to Ross's keys not a cheap or easy issue to fix the key set cost a ridiculous amount of money and instead of replacing the keys the shipping company did a deal and said that instead they would ship a free car over from the states well not only did I have to replace this key set but I also ended up buying another Ferrari a 308 and that got shipped free of charge but it still cost me a lot of money anyway that's a story for another day I kept the red 1990 testa Rossa for a while and used it as a blueprint to help build rata rosa i used it for the wiring to trace parts find locations the car when it arrived in the UK came with two massive crates of parts so it took me a while to figure out where everything went I estimate about 90% of the parts were required to finish the project it came with it the rest needed to be sourced from around the world fir parts and superformance will be great again those missing items and helping with the kit required to refurbish some of the older stuff with the help of Ferrari forum members we managed to get the test fired up relatively quickly and outfits first right in over two decades [Music] I faced many problems on the project and documented them all online during the bill at the car featured in many magazines and numerous websites Matt Farah from the smoking tire flew over to the UK to film a one-take and write an article for the drive I had just finished fitting a set of coil over adjustable suspension shocks to the car and I'll explain why I needed to do that in a little bit but during that first drive out with Matt we had a funny moment that you simply couldn't have timed any better probably right as you can see I haven't played on it right I am what was all those things that just happened that was so many wrong things at once oh that's awesome well there's your there's you yeehaw movin they they look fresh new tires I've had a lot of fun filming with the car and on those photo shoots it's been a great fantastic build and a lot of fun the project though is not actually finished let's have a quick look around the car and I'll show you some of the things that still need to be done now there are two questions that everyone asked me about the rat Arase the first one is when are you going to finish it and the second one is what color are you going to paint it now my answer to that is externally the car is finished we're going to be changing some stuff in the engine I'll explain interior is staying the same and color wise again this is it this is the final version as far as i concerned but let me give you a tour around the car show you some of the reasons why I answer in that way and you tell me should I finish this car should I put some more into the bodywork and should I paint it and if so what color do you think I should be painting this one rat Arase is a 1987 model testa Rossa you can tell that because throughout the years Ferrari changed the design of the car very slightly the original cars from 84 came with a high level single mounted mirror upon the post here there's a few cars that came with jewel but majority always had the single mirror up here that was combined with center lock hub wheels then in 87 they changed the design they no longer needed the high level mirror and they change it to a dual normal level mirror like this and again combined with the center lock ups this happens to be my favorite combo I like the aesthetics of this car with the jewel mirrors and the set as central lock hubs I love those I think they are brilliant again they changed the design in 88 kept the mirrors but they changed the wheels to a five stud pattern they lost the the that beautiful center lock and they went to a design pattern like most normal cars a five stud just noticed I've got a bit of a flat tire there on the Holley but like I say this happens to be my personal favorite so let's lift up the lid and give you a tour of the money shot on this testa Rossa so we've got these race style latches here and that is because there we go the engine lid hinges in the opposite way that it did when it came from factory now we have this very expensive brace here to hold it in place would normally be carbon fiber so let's talk about the engine so we have a 4.9 liter flat 12 380 brake horsepower engine that was capable taking this car up to a hundred and eighty mile an hour 35 years ago in the mid 80s this car was no slouch even the supercars of today don't go that much quicker and trust me this compared to something like this relaly it still can hold its own [Music] [Applause] the engine on rat Arase is pretty much the same standard former that this car came out of the marinara factory in Italy back in the 80s with there's a few subtle differences with this number one the frame here would normally extend up and that would house our roof structure that was chopped to create the convertible look we have no aircon still on the car again that's something I've really struggled with with this because pipes were cut and getting hold of those pipes are extremely expensive but it would be something nice not that I really need it with no roof system on this car but it would be nice just to get it back to standard format we got a couple of little panels missing little hatch over here over the the transmission the bell housing we've obviously got the lid little bits here that we explained we've got over here a lovely style door hinge latching this hood here the other thing that needed to be changed and rehoused on rat Arase was the fuel filler cap here normally it would sit somewhere around there in the engine lid but we had to change that obviously so this is it actually false at the moment we have all the box behind it but I still have to lift the lid each time and fill it down here which is not great so I normally put a bit of a cloth underneath because we've got all our exhaust system down there and also I've labelled it fuel because this is oil and this is fuel but that needs to be changed and tucked in under here and connected up to that some point and and then we've got a couple of other changes that I have made to this engine because it really needed a little bit of an upgrade the major change engine wise on rat Arase is all to do with the exhaust system now testarossa's in standard form sound a little bit disappointing there is no real grunt to them and that was one of the things I really wanted to change on this car now it happened that I had a spare sports exhaust muffler the back box for a Testarossa sitting in the garage from my old Testarossa which was a eurocar now this one being a u.s. car i soon figured out that the exhaust system is completely different so nothing is easy we had to fabricate we use the sports box from the euro car and then we fabricate some straight through pipes and mated everything together and the result well the result is pretty spectacular noise wise the stradale is one of the best sounding cars to ever come out of Maranello Factory but I will say that this is not far off let's jump inside and take a look at the interior of rata rasa I forgot that doesn't work so there we go kind of we've still got that patina I guess it's beyond patina this car really but we've got you know we're on the seats we've got tears on the seats down there as well we've got the embossed headrests but I love it I want to keep it in the state look at the steering wheel the wear on that just shows how old this is really I love this kind of feature on this car there are a couple of little things that I still need to finish on this but it definitely is not going to get all fixed up the one thing I did change on this car was the dashboard the dashboard was really wrecked and I managed to find a brand new off-the-shelf 1980s dashboard for the Testarossa in the correct color this came from from factory and I paid a hundred and fifty pound for that delivered the retail price of it was over five thousand pound it was brand new the whole thing while I was building this one of the upgrades that I did actually put on this car has give us some power was underneath this hidden flap which I wasn't too worried about but we used a genuine Ferrari head unit from a 430 scuderia and this is the only testa Rossa with built in sat-nav that works we have our very 80s looking interior all of this is totally standard Testarossa it's open the glove box to move ratty out the way he stay up there ratty look at this we've even got a vanity mirror in there how cool is that ashtrays in the door handles here lighter everything works on here apart from the air-conditioning there's some very 80s style air vents in the tester also along with these pop-up ones that were all used in Ferraris of that era the bit I need to get hold of is this pocket here and the cover for the ashtray which is missing and very hard to get hold off they don't make things like that anymore so as you can see on this side cover and our pocket that holds look at that we've got some driving gloves to match the car a couple of other details on the interior of the car is we reused all the old headlining to create some of these bits here the roofs obviously missing so we had to I did a really bad job of creating all of this on here we used the luggage straps a game that we had to reposition those because we've missed the old parcel shelf up here and then again the final thing is we changed seat belts to red to match some of the red flares around the car let's take a look up front on the car so on the test wall so you actually get quite a decent bit of storage what do we got here so we've got our special tool to get the sentiment wheels off the car which are extremely tight on there so we have to carry that just in case we have any problems we have the obligatory Ferrari fire extinguisher but you trust me you need to carry we have a test or Setauket with look at this Ferrari labeled screwdrivers we have a jacket and a spare bulb kit there and then the cool thing with this one is under here we have an original Testarossa spare wheel never been used how cool is that one of the other design upgrades that needed to happen to rat errata was all to do with the fact that we lost the original roof now in coop a form that gave the Testarossa all of its structural rigidity and without it the middle of the car would just simply flex around so in order to combat that on this car it's had some strengthening bars welded in place we've got these big scaffolding style bars here that world from the front over here all the way through up into the back section and it's done a pretty good job of keeping this car quite rigid it's not as rigid as a coupe a but it's not bad at all now the only downside of that is when I got the car that had all been done already but what happened because of it we added extra weight into that midsection the car and it meant the front of this car rose up so it looked like it was pointing skyward the front of this car I look ridiculous so the only way we can combat that because the car and its suspension system were all kind of preset at a certain height from factory we had to upgrade the shocks on this and put coil overs on it so we could get it slightly down which as you saw at the beginning the video hasn't quite got it's perfect setting at the moment it bounces around a little bit and it kind of be a joyous on the odd bump in the road every now and again one of the issues is it would cost so much money to put this car perfect the car would never be worth that kind of value that would have to be invested and I quite like it as it is you know if you look at some of these problems nothing fits right this hasn't been done perfectly we've got marks everywhere on the car you know things such as the door gaps you know if there's a big big difference there the pins look how bad all of that it would all have to be we reworked all of the interior would have to be redone things like this we've got gaps everywhere we've got paint work needs to be done to the whole car would have to be painted even things like you know gaps at the front all of this would have to be redone we've got cracking where it's being bonded and filled over the time but you get the general idea it would cost so much to make this car look perfect and the fact that it didn't come as a convertible from the factory is always gonna devalue a Ferrari so for me I'm really happy to have fun with this car and enjoy it as it is and there you go guys that is a story on rattle so how I acquired it why I built it and all of that fun was just 16,000 pounds that was the price of the car the shipping over from the states plus all of the taxes you can't even buy a second-hand gear box for the price of that on a Testarossa the only issue in this car being in the UK is we have no roof on here and we can never guarantee the weather here so at some point what I'm going to be trying to do is put maybe a convertible system and hide it under here or have a removable roof we could cast up maybe out of the original shape of the test roster and build it out of carbon fiber anyway guys if you've got any better suggestions write them in the comments below hope you enjoyed the video if you did give it a good old thumbs up it really does help with the YouTube algorithm in the meantime if you want to check my Instagram channel where I post a lot of stuff on a daily basis but what goes on in rata Ross's garage go and check that one out anyway guys until the next time thank you very much for watching I will see you again very shortly ciao for now [Music] [Music]

Channel: Ratarossa

Views: 263,165

Keywords: ratarossa, testarossa, ferrari, diy, build, ratrod, thesmokingtire, abandoned, rescued, spider, Salvage, Breakers, BarnFind

Id: 9_frTtLj9hQ

Length: 24min 18sec (1458 seconds)

Published: Sat May 09 2020

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