This Not-a-Ferrari Is Getting a Bespoke V-12 Engine
The GTO Engineering Squalo is taking inspiration from Modena—but not an engine.
Plenty of Ferrari fanatics want a real 250 GTO. Few, if any, will get one of these iconic and rare sports cars. That's why folks have been building their dream cars out of less desirable cars, or even whole-cloth from kits or replicas, for decades. Who has $48 million laying around, anyways? That's where an outfit like GTO Engineering plays a role. It can build something awesome out of a used-up period Ferrari, known as a "revival"—essentially, a recreation with a few modifications. Or, the company hopes, you might want something entirely original.
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Original in the sense that it's inspired by, but not based on, a legendary Ferrari. The Squalo won't even utilize a Ferrari engine; instead, the company will engineer and build a 4.0-liter V-12 specifically for the retro coupe. That engine is what you see here.
It's a quad-cam unit and the company is putting a great emphasis on reducing weight. GTO Engineering is hoping to reduce the weight of its dressed engine by roughly 25 lbs compared to an original 250 GTO's V-12. And whereas the original's produced about 296 hp in 1962, according to Ferrari's official specs, GTO Engineering is targeting 460 hp and 10,000 rpm.
GTO Engineering has been working on the Squalo in its home base of the U.K. since late 2020 and hopes to have cars on the road in 2023. There's no price tag, of yet, but we have to imagine it'll be a six-figure sum. The company is accepting reservations now.
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Like a lot of the other staffers here, Alex Kierstein took the hard way to get to car writing. Although he always loved cars, he wasn’t sure a career in automotive media could possibly pan out. So, after an undergraduate degree in English at the University of Washington, he headed to law school. To be clear, it sucked. After a lot of false starts, and with little else to lose, he got a job at Turn 10 Studios supporting the Forza 4 and Forza Horizon 1 launches. The friendships made there led to a job at a major automotive publication in Michigan, and after a few years to MotorTrend. He lives in the Seattle area with a small but scruffy fleet of great vehicles, including a V-8 4Runner and a C5 Corvette, and he also dabbles in scruffy vintage watches and film cameras.
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