Man Finds Half a Ferrari in a Garage in Los Angeles, What Happened to This Car?

This used to be a Ferrari Mondial that rolled off the production line in Maranello, northern Italy, in 1981. It is not a mockup, it is not a toy. It is just half of what used to be a real car.

The one who decided to hacksaw it also installed various gaming features in it. There is a tablet-like screen with an adjustable position on the side, while a plastic box at the rear hosts a PlayStation 2. That gaming console was released a gazillion years ago. PlayStation 2 came out on October 26, 2000, which is still 19 years younger than the car itself.

This piece was once listed for $8,000 on Craiglist, then discounted at $7,500, and eventually sold. The listing also indicated the presence of a DVD player, operated, just like all the entertainment features, by the key in the ignition. A real Ferrari key, that is! Long gone are the days when that key started a V8 engine! No PlayStation can replicate the sound of that powerplant.

Various stories gravitate around this strange site and all of them are to-tell-grandchildren kind of tales. One of them goes like this: the original owner, a dealer, reportedly chopped the Mondial in his own showroom and displayed it there to entertain the children of those who came to order a Ferrari. The chopped Ferrari was, in fact, an attraction for adults just as much as it was for children.

The half supercar also showed up in one of the Cannonball Run movies, starring Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore, and Jackie Chan. A different side of the story claims that the Ferrari was cut for a stunt in the classic car movie. The director, Hal Needham, reportedly chose to do this to a real Ferrari instead of getting a mockup car.

There is also a funny story sparked by this sliced Ferrari. The car belonged to a man who got a divorce. And the wife received half of everything.

The Ferrari still retains the original driver's seat, plus one seat in the rear, so the players will not sit side by side but one in the front and the other one in the rear. It looks like the steering wheel is the one that the car rolled off the production line with.

The Mondial was offered as a coupe or convertible with a 2+2 seating layout. The rear seating area, however, was for children or pin-sized adults. The model remains the only four-seat, mid-engined car with a full convertible top ever built. However, it was never loved much.

It wasn't exactly the car that would win a beauty pageant. Besides, sporting four seats, it went against everything that Ferrari stood for. Furthermore, it just did not have the power and was too heavy due to the additional seats at the rear to be labeled as a thoroughbred Ferrari.

Those are the factors that make it the most affordable classic Ferrari on the used car market, with examples selling for as cheap as $38,000, as reported by classic.com. The most expensive Mondial sold recently was $62,000. The Italian supercar manufacturer built 703 Mondial examples between 1980 and 1982, with several variants hitting the market after the actual production was halted.

The model was powered by a V8, which derived from the 180-cubic-inch (2.9-liter) engine, the one that debuted with the Ferrari Dino 308 GT4 in 1974. The V8 generated 210 horsepower (214 metric horsepower) and 179 pound-feet (243 Newton meters) of torque for a run from 0 to 60 mph (0 to 97 kph) in 8.2 seconds. It doesn't sound like much by Ferrari standards. But hey, it was the early 1980s.

There is no information about where the other half of this Ferrari Mondial ended up. But one thing is for sure. Even if it were found and glued back to this half, the Ferrari would never get back on the road. Hopefully. We have seen Ferraris cut in half in crashes, sold for a fortune, and returned to the road.

An Enzo crashed while doing 190 mph on a highway in Malibu ten years ago. It hit a lighting pole and split in two. Later on, it was puzzled back into the car that it once was. After the rebuild, the vehicle was auctioned off. Someone paid $1.76 million to drive it home. When it came out in 2002, the Enzo started at around $650,000.

So, it seems that the accident in California only made its value skyrocket. Ferrari only built 400 Enzo units. You can't just throw one of the 400 into the crusher, no matter how much the insurance company is willing to offer.

Besides, this Ferrari Mondial is a 1981 version with a clean, accident-free Carfax report.