I Bought an Abandoned Ferrari 512 BBi Sat Outside Rotting for 12 Years

hey guys a warm welcome back to the channel actually it's a little bit of a cold one it's one degree out there it's rather chilly and it's quite foggy too but that does not dampen my spirits in the slightest what i am about to tell you i actually cannot believe is happening to me right now this is like my dreams come true all my christmases rolled into one because i am on route to go and buy the ferrari boxer the 512 bbi that i bought you the story on earlier in the year and i cannot believe this is happening to me [Music] so back in may i brought you the story of this car and i'll let you into a little secret i was completely outside my comfort zone filming that it was something that i wouldn't normally do i jumped in my car and i'd gone to find this 512 simply because i couldn't believe a car so rare was being left to rot on a driveway and i had to save it and i cannot believe right now i have managed to do that six months later i am gonna save this ferrari from rotting away now this ferrari is so unique and so red just 42 of them were made in right-hand drive versions 37 of which came here to the uk total production number was 1007 models that means 960 of them had the steering wheel on that side of the car now you've got a question 40 years almost after they were built how many of those original models still exist on the road today definitely not all of them and this one was a hundred percent on its way to ferrari heaven but not anymore we are going to save this one now not only this the car being right hand drive it's the only one produced in right hand drive in white making it extremely unique and to top it off it's still only got 6420 miles on it it's not even been run in now to recap that ferrari was bought in 2006 by its current owner and since 2008 it sat on his driveway unmoved in the uk weather uncovered now sadly those weather elements have all taking their toll on this car but the real sad shocking fact of this one is that back when he bought it there was a big history file on this car and i've gone through that and a very very well renowned and respected ferrari dealer back at the time of him purchasing it stated that this ferrari was the best example bbi in the uk at the time if not the world and sadly just by sitting on a driveway it now is definitely not that example anymore now if you remember the owner has point blank stated he would never sell that boxer despite many people trying over the years dealers trying to buy it and flip it quickly for a profit people have literally turned up at his house with bags full of cash and he's always said no he will never sell it and sadly that is how we closed off the last video a rather demoralizing end to the story but i promised you that i would try my very best to somehow do something to save that boxer and right now i am so happy i have stuck to my end of the bargain i have bought the car and i am now gonna save it and you guys are gonna get to watch every step of it the main man vinnie always overseeing the car protector of the boxer still looking you know i was looking at the first video the other day i i looked at the second one i'm sure it's cleaner have they cleaned it it's definitely not it's dirt yeah yeah it is and they reckon they kept it indoors there's no way mate there's no way good it's looking all right here good here the problem when you got there yeah maybe the end of the lane what do you mean it go where yeah they going like in the top there good good cool cool cool one day vinnie it will be a beauty again mate it's just little bits like that rust isn't it you know just little bits like that it's like you just gotta hope that they can be prepared yeah because there's just so many bits on here that was quite surprising just yeah i was quite surprised the amount of things that are available on this is the silly things like tool kits and stuff that aren't you gotta get a new badge for it yeah and a new rear one because you know that's probably one of the things no it's not it's not the horse because it hasn't got a horse on it at the back but up here if you look there's a hole there and a hole there oh yeah you should say ferrari oh yeah yeah yeah but that is not a bad thing because they're not too expensive and that might again might save the car if someone yeah someone hasn't gone oh it's a ferrari they all think oh yeah it's a mrt [Music] so the car is all loaded my main man eddie here is gonna transport this i think it's 81 miles back to my place yeah 81 and uh yeah done a great job we've got no keys on this car so the steering lock is on but yet this man is perfectionist and it's on here nicely so uh fingers crossed we make it all the way back now the million dollar question i'm sure on many of your minds right now is how if he wasn't going to sell it to anybody else did you mr rata rossa manage to do a deal and buy this boxer well i am going to cover that full story in a later video now there's a reason i'm having to hold back on that information right now you see over the last six months since i released the last video some very naughty bad things happened to that car and i have the powers that be investigating those problems right now and hopefully they can rectify it but i will cover all of the story all of the facts all of the evidence surrounding that in a later video and i'll be probably asking you guys for some help some advice without some legal advice if isn't it a top-notch lawyer out there who wants to uh help then uh we'll cover that in the later video for now hopefully that uh situation will get rectified you got a steering lock on this car no keys at the moment and so we're trying to judge it so we'll go through the door good this side this is going to be its home for quite some time well guys i did it i actually did it it's here uh wow this is like a dream come true for me i am literally pinching myself right now to make sure this is real but i can touch it it's in the garage we have this car i own this car and uh it just goes to show that if you put your mind to something you know six months ago there was no way this was ever gonna happen this was not on the cards but look six months later and i own this boxer and you guys are gonna share the journey with me restoring this car right here in this garage it's uh a little bit overwhelming at the moment but uh anyway anyway let's uh let's have a look at the car so we've got its successor here the uh the tesla rossa the trustee rata rossa let's take a look at this car and um see what we're up against now buying this boxer was far from easy i am literally risking it all on this car big time i'm sure there's going to be a few unknown costs associated with this build now i sold the 355 spider fortunately it was a mint car and i sold it quickly but i sold it quite a lot less than market value in order to raise some money for this and there was a reason because the owner had a change of heart i'm going to get into that in a future video as i said but uh it meant he wanted rid of this car very quickly so it meant i needed to raise some quick capital the 355 sale uh part funded this it didn't fund the whole lot so the rest of it uh we've taken a loan out on but it means there is zero budget to do the work on this car which is where you guys can help make sure you uh watch all the videos give them a good old thumbs up subscribe to the channel share the videos and if you want to go the extra mile i'm going to do some t-shirts buy a t-shirt i'll put the link in the description below the video have a look at that all the money if we raise anything we'll definitely get put into doing this hopefully speeding up that restoration on the car and buying a few bits that we desperately need to uh fix on this one and there it is guys in all of its dirty glory sat in my garage the 512 bbi and 1983 car 12 cylinder we have its successor the 1987 tesla roster sat there and also at the same time we have another 1983 ferrari this is the 308 so this is the baby the v8 version that was being sold at the same time as the boxer this is the daddy car this is the 12 cylinder so we have both variants of that era really quite cool let's have a little look around the car so i've gone around it a little bit and this is by far the worst area i've discovered at the moment with this panel here which is the rust that you saw on the previous video completely gone here don't worry i've not cleaned it it's all filthy still here we've got moss growing all kinds of stuff same up the back here still all the moss i guess like me you guys can't wait to see this one being cleaned up now one of the major problems i had with this car is the owner has lost the keys now you saw me trying to load it on unload it from the trailer and get it into this garage now that was a feat in itself fortunately the steering lock is on the car as you can see but the wheels are straight so it did enable us to get it on and off here all the tires amazingly hold pressure still as well even though they're cracked uh so it enabled us with pinpoint this precision to get it off the trailer and into this garage now talking about that look how close that is there before i can actually shut the door so uh i'm gonna probably be bolting something to the floor there just in case i can't risk hitting that on the toolbox everything on this car costs an absolute fortune so keys have been lost he's still looking for those but it doesn't look like he's going to be able to find them i'm going to tell you about the keys in a second they happen to be the same type of key as the 308 so a quick look on the inside so again really clean in here just needs you know a vacuum a good old clean up a little bit of work but otherwise it's complete it looks good i can't wait to start you know feeding this lever start cleaning everything up here loads of dog hair around the car so we're going to be doing that let's come to the front open up this front clam this is quite difficult you have to get the catch down here here we go again just being really careful when we open this one up okay so what do we got front clamp i love love the way this opens up like this and the back one does the same it just looks so cool from the side profile pop-up lights iconic pop-up lights a uh creepy crawly been living in here he's got style this one for some time building his nests and things uh okay so we have the padded bit at the front here look at this still all nice and springy that is just going to clean up perfectly we have the spare wheel this was not in the first video we found this in the garden exposed in the shed and uh look at this it's new it's never been on the car new tyres it's just covered in muck like the rest of this car but watch a good old clean up i wiped a bit of this earlier but check this out it's going to come up like new this again not cleaned any of the front up saving this for you guys cobwebs all kinds of stuff paint sticker there so hopefully this is all going to come up nicely we've got the radiator at the front there correct fan in the middle has the yellow the actual fan there the blade uh and so yeah we'll check this one out the other thing is going to be the back let's have a quick look in the back for you again really difficult with one hand to lift this one up let's grab a torch quickly so as you saw that's the rusty panel down there but the nice thing about that is it's uh just a panel so you can actually get that panel from ferrari which is amazing and that just gets riveted in place look at this from all those years if it's sat outside all the sponge there it's all just gone these air kind of boxes that one over there looks rather rusty i think that's going to need to be replaced all of the rubbers here completely perished exhaust system hopefully that can be cleaned up because that's super expensive and then we've got all of this here just all the debris that's just sat everywhere on here over here as well our ac that really has taken a lot of uh hammering from the elements again over here as well look this uh you can see here look this is just that just disintegrates in my hand terrible so that is the engine right let's talk about the uh the keys so we're missing a set of keys on this ferrari unfortunately this is not the set these are actually from my 308 which happens to be if you remember a 1983 car exactly the same year as this one now both cars shared the same kind of keys and locks uh but to give you an idea of costs associated with uh doing a project like this so ferrari in their wisdom back in the early 80s didn't just have one key for the car so we had a separate key here for the door locks and we had a separate key for the ignition locks and potentially the optional extra which is a locking fuel cap over there now these uh keys to keep originality the ignition key has to be made by a company called nyman and the door lock is something by a company called safe and now to get an ignition lock with a key a genuine key you're talking probably around about 3 000 pounds it's just ridiculous fortunately though i have another solution to get us out of a little bit of a jam here in the original paperwork i luckily have the key numbers for this car so i have found this company online i can put in the key numbers and hopefully they have been extremely helpful and they are going to try and cut those keys and send them to me and see if we can actually use them on this car so fingers crossed on that one now talking about keys i'm going to use these ones i'm going to get into the 308 i've got a little plan now even though we're missing keys on the boxer we should hopefully be able to still test a few of the electrical items on here so what i'm going to do uh the battery on that is obviously just dead as a dodo so i'm going to borrow the battery out of the 308 here and uh just fish all that out switch it over put it in the boxer and just see if we've got any life with anything so i put the 308 battery in the boxer let's jump in the car let's see if there's any life to this at all now i'm hoping we'll get things like the side indicators the repeaters here uh maybe the front ones as well in fact let's put this clam down i don't know what we are going to be able to do without any keys but uh let's give it a shot i just want to get back a bit oh the car is heavy okay so we're in the car let's uh let me just open this door again there's something i've just noticed which is absolutely phenomenal the clock is working that is a great sign let's try some other obvious things let's try the horn okay so it's not fully working it's trying to do something you can hear the relay it's trying to do it it's like it's got a really sore throat over there uh and watch this watch this amp display when i press it oh oh this is good uh okay let's try hazard lights no freaking way they're flashing this is too good this is a ferrari this does not happen let's try the lights oh i don't believe it we've got lights we've got pop-up lights we've got dashboard lights here let me turn out this torch let's get rid of this torch i can't believe it guys you can see we've got dashboard lights this is unbelievable this just doesn't happen on a normal ferrari let alone look everything works lights indicators front lights same again on this side oh my gosh this does this is just not real i actually find this quite hard to believe but look everything works side indicators tail light rear fog lights the only thing we haven't tried is the uh reverse lights but if the rest of it works we've got a good chance of that happening let's try our luck in here ah this is crazy look even the engine bay lights are working with pop-up lights i i have problems with those on ferrari 355s have a look in here so this is a really good sign it means that we've got things such as the fuse board over there in the glove box we've got the kind of all the relay board down there in the passenger footwell it means we've got a real good chance of all of that being good uh wow i um i'm quite amazed that all of this is working look at these things they are so so cool pop-up lights i can't believe these work well guys i think that's a great place to end this video while we're on a high who would have thought having something simple like lights working on a car would bring a man so much pleasure no doubt though there is going to be a few hurdles along the way on this build hopefully though you guys will be there to share this incredible journey with me and we will see this one through to the end now i would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below how you think i should progress this build what are the steps i should be taking in which order how far do you think i should be going with this one should i do a full nut and bolt restoration on this car make it pristine or should i do something rather bizarre again and create another rata rossa perhaps i could create the ratta boxer anyway let me know what you think below now over the past couple of weeks if you've been following me over on my instagram you would have probably realized that i bought this car i left enough little sneak peeks a little few photos from around this car that i got it i also put something in a previous youtube video i put another plate from this car in the background now before we go there are a few people i would really like to thank for making this dream possible first of all drummo forgive me the heads up on this car back in may benny for being there over the last six months really putting this deal together for me paul for letting me be the new custodian of this amazing ferrari my mate stu for always helping me push these cars in and out the garage rescuing me when they break down and of course my girlfriend lexi for being there and putting up with all of these crazy ideas i have buying things such as this and there's a few others out there you all know who you are that i rely on day in day out now there's a couple of facebook groups i would love you guys to check out and they post amazing things such as this on a uh day-to-day basis they are sitting there rotting away on a driveway and of course uh uk farm fires i'll put the links to those below you can also check out my facebook page as well now of course finally i want to say a massive thank you to all of you guys for watching the videos and uh enjoying these journeys together with me hopefully you enjoy it i will see you very shortly in the next one ciao for now [Music]

Channel: Ratarossa

Views: 840,061

Rating: 4.899581 out of 5

Keywords: Ferrari, ratarossa, 512bbi, boxer, 512, bbi, bb, barn find, abandoned, rare, i bought, rescued, restoration, diy, rebuild, rotting, driveway, barn, find, gas monkey garage, monkey garage, gas monkey, rattarosa, goonzquad, SamCrac, legit streetcars, sam crac, ammo, chrisfix, chris fix, tavarish

Id: bow2NbNeLgU

Length: 25min 42sec (1542 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/iambrian101]

If only I could find a project car like this one...

[u/Paublo57]

Thank god it's being saved, this is easily the best 70s ferrari!

[u/thorn115]

And you'll spend $400,000 to restore it.