DRAG RACING FERRARI 308

Well, it's actually quite the Ferrari hybrid, but whatever it is, it is bad to the bone!

Bob Norwood’s 1989 Ferrari 308 Pro-Stock Drag Racer


History:

This overpowered brute was originally designed by Bob Norwood for NHRA drag racing. The car ran under the national class record with 7.0’s at 170mph in the quarter mile until its gigantic Vortech-like centrifugal supercharger was outlawed by the NHRA. At this point the car ran a few exhibition drag races and then arrived at Bonneville in 1989 ready to take a massive ram at the world of top-speed racing.

Essentially, the car was a tube frame Ferrari 308 designed for Pro-Stock drag racing and fitted with funnycar-type composite body panels. The rear tires were massive slicks mounted on a narrowed Ford nine-inch rear axle—exactly like present-day Pro-stock drag machines. The transmission was a pressure-shifted Lenco unit with nine-inch gears. The front-mounted powerplant was an evil-looking thing surely smuggled into Texas directly from Hell you might guess ran on Plutonium waste or Di-lithium crystals or something much worse. Actually, the 308’s engine ran on 120-octane super-premium race gasoline and was based on a Flat-12 Ferrari Boxer block fitted with 4-valve Testarossa heads, topped with a beautifully sculpted and truly massive air-water intercooler mounted directly on top of the block. The intercooler featured 12 super-high-flow electronic injectors spraying furiously into velocity stacks integral to the intercooler. The massive intercooler unit bolted directly to the heads and functioned as a combination intake plenum/intercooler/fuel rail/manifold unit.

The centrifugal blower—salvaged from a gigantic British locomotive engine that apparently no longer Thought It Could—was driven by a 1.5-inch shaft that traversed the length of the engine and was driven off the flywheel via a reversed Allison turbine helicopter gear-reduction unit originally designed to step down turbine velocities to something the main rotor could handle. The FAA required this type of gear reduction to be replaced after even a single emergency auto-rotation power-off landing, guaranteeing availability at fire-sale prices. The blower, looking like a hugely-overgrown Vortech blower sent back in time by The Machines to destroy all human life in 1989, had a five-inch impeller that was capable of gobbling air at the rate of something like 500 pounds per minute, a rate that could probably suck the air out of double-wide in less than 60 seconds!

The supercharged 12-cylinder Boxer engine, featuring a lightened flywheel and knife-edged crank, and could rev from the engine’s 1200 RPM idle to the 9K redline in just over a tenth of a second, and had been certified on a Superflow 901 engine dyno to make 1400 horsepower on 120-octane gasoline at 60psi boost. The short-stroke 3.2-inch bore engine was upgraded with a billet Crower crankshaft, extra-long Crower rods, custom forged pistons, and was managed by a Haltech F3 EFI controller and a Firepower direct-fire 12-coil ignition. According to Norwood, each 24-valve head was carefully flowed and mildly ported for optimum forced breathing.

In 1989, the flat-12 308 arrived out west in time to make a few runs in Land Speed Record country with Greg Johnson at the wheel. However, before the car got a chance to break the 223 mph record for 5.0L and less blown modified sports cars (1400 horsepower should’ve made this look easy, assuming the car hadn’t already entered a low earth orbit) the event was rained out.

“This may have been a good thing,” allows Norwood.

So did it ever make a land speed record run? The article just says that event was rained out?

Cool car Bill... Thanks for sharing!

But is it a Ferrari 308, I would say no.

I agree Spanner. The car has a boxer 12 motor in it with a locomotive blower on it, a non 308 body, although resembles a 308, and a non 308 frame..... But, it is still cool as H E double hockey sticks

Anyone know why the radiators were mounted to one side? Too allow air into that huge turbo?

Good hypothesis on the radiators. Probably there is big ducting coming around the right side to the grill.

Here is more Norwood Salt Flats stuff:

http://www.bobnorwood.com/Norwood%20Accomplishments.htm


(text below is about their 308 with GTO body panels and a *gasp* twin turbo 511" BB Chevy)
...and power began pushing 1600 rear-wheel horses, which would eventually develop into 1829 horsepower measured at the crank. The car was equipped with a Sprint Car-type direct-drive sprag-clutch powertrain that necessitated that the 288 be launched by a tow vehicle pushing the Ferrari to 50-60 mph—overrunning the ratchet-type sprags—at which point the engine could be started and brought up to speed to engage the sprags. At this point the run would begin in earnest.

The “388” thus gradually evolved into a machine whose powertrain was fully capable of withstanding the torturous environment of big-power salt flats racing. As Norwood engineered out the weak links, tires, salt conditions, weather, luck, and driver skill and guts became increasingly critical.



At the car’s high water mark, Gordon drove the 511-inch Ferrari 288 to an official one-way speed of 267 mph and then placed the car in impound for the requisite return run—just in time to see the entire Speed Week event cancelled due to a flooding rain storm. The one-way 267 mph run was followed by several years of disappointing spin-mishaps and horrendous flooded-salt conditions.

The car’s bad-luck streak ended—sort of—in the summer of the new millennium when race driver Tom Stephens took over at the wheel and quickly set a new Land Speed Record run for the class at 245 mph and followed this up with an official return run at 250. Unfortunately, road-racer/drag racer Stephens was required to earn his high speed license on the fly as he raced by incrementally increasing his maximum permitted speed in increments of 50 mph from 150. And yet again, the event ended before Stephens got a chance to attempt 275 or 300 mph. At 250 mph, data logging from the on-board computer showed the car was loafing along at just 66-percent throttle opening and barely half the maximum 24 psi turbo boost.

Norwood and Stephens firmly believe the highly-modified Ferrari 308 is capable of breaking 300 mph—a supposition that may well be true considering the car’s demonstrated reserve throttle at 250mph and the fact that he car’s dyno-tested rear-wheel horsepower compares favorably with calculated maximum power required to attain 300 based on calculated aerodynamic drag and rolling resistance. At 250 mph, says Stephens, the Ferrari is rock solid, wants to be given her head.