As we saw last week the 1951 Ferrari 212 came in two flavours Export for sports car racing and Inter as daily driver. Today’s featured 212 Inter with body work by Vignale is one of the long wheel base road cars.

Of the 82 212 Inters built 37 of them had Vignale bodies while Touring and Ghia were amongst others to build bodies for this model.

The British magazine tested the first production 212 Inter in 1950 recording rest to 60 mph in 10.5 seconds reaching 100 mph in 22.5 seconds and a top speed of 116 mph. The magazine noted that they were asked to keep to a 6,500 rpm limit as the engine had not been fully run in.

Of course just because a Ferrari is designated primarily as a road car there is nothing to stop owners entering them for races, Centro Deportivo Italiano bought two 212 Inters, chassis #0161 EL and 0171 EL and entered them in to the fearsome 1951 Carrera Panamericana in Mexico for Alberto Ascari and Luigi Villoresi in the #9 and Pierro Taruffi and Luigi Chinetti in the #34 respectively. The Centro Deportivo Italiano scored a 1-2 finish with Taruffi/Chinetti leading home Ascari/Villoresi by over eight minuets.

My thanks to Geoffrey Horton for sharing his photo’s taken at Danville Concours d’Elegance.

Thanks for joining me on this “Running In At 116 mph” edition of “Gettin’ a li’ psycho on tyres” I hope you’ll join me again tomorrow when I’ll be looking at another innovative formula one car from Colin Chapman. Don’t forget to come back now !