FERRARI 340 AMERICAN

Ferrari 340 America


By 1951 the Turin based coachbuilder, Carrozzeria Vignale had earned brilliant success the world over with their innovative open and closed designs. In the early 1950’s, Ferrari’s most beautiful coachbuilt cars were emerging from Vignale’s workshops.

Ferrari's earliest designs ran with 2.0, 2.3 and 2.5-liter Columbo designed V12 motors. These initially produced a rather lackluster 110bhp. With subsequent upgrades and improvements, they eventually produced 180bhp at peak rpm. By 1950 such engine output was insufficient to remain competitive. Ferrari quickly enlisted the talents of Ing. Lampredi to develop a new engine for both F1 and Sports Racing vehicles. In developing his engine for the 4.5 liter Grand Prix cars, Lampredi had been forced to enlarge the cylinder block. On the original Columbo designed V12s, the so called "short-block" engines, the distance between the center lines of adjacent cylinder bores had been set at 90mm, however this was insufficient for the bore size that Lampredi wanted. The dimension was in creased to 108mm, thereby giving rise to the "Long-Block" or “Big-Block” engines associated with his name. Concerned primarily with competition, Lampredi introduced a number of features that he considered essential for relatively trouble free running. Instead of wet cylinder liners pressed into the block, the new engines had wet liners that screwed into the cylinder head to eliminate the possibility of a blown head gasket. External oil and water pipes were used where it was possible instead of cast-in passages. Roller cam followers replaced the finger type. There were twelve intake ports and the connecting rods were split perpendicularly at the "big" end.

With the realization of the 4.5 liter, Tipo 375 F1 racers, there had been developed an engine which in the manner of Ferrari quickly became available (in the slightly smaller capacity of 4.1 liters) to power a range of Sports and GT cars. The first of these was the 340 America shown to the general public at the Paris Salon in October of 1950, just about a month after the Tipo 375 F1 car first run at Monza in the Italian Grand Prix.

No one seems quite certain why it was called the "America" unless, with it's much larger engine, it was aimed at a potential market in that country. Carrozzeria Vignale's drawings from 1951 all refer to these cars as "su telio Ferrari M.M. 51" indicating that this was obviously the new 340 Mille Miglia Barchetta and Berlinettas. Ferrari however did not adopt the name 340MM formally until the Spring of 1953, shortly before the running of the 1953 Mille Miglia. Of the approximately 25 340 America's built, the accent was on pure competition. This purpose was further underlined by the allocation of even chassis numbers throughout the series. Vignale bodied 11 different examples of which six were completed with open coachwork. The other five were Berlinettas.