Ancient Web: Red-Headed Turned the Ferrari Testarossa Into a Chassis Notebook

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

For many children of the 1980s, the Ferrari Testarossa existed as a poster or a Miami Vice prop. Brothers Edvar and Arvid van Daalen wanted to know what distinguished one actual car from another, down to the chassis number and minor production changes.

Visit Red-Headed.com.

The site focuses on the Testarossa, its successor 512 TR, and the F512 M. Its makers explain on their About page that they attended Ferrari events from the early 1990s, collected thousands of photographs and wrote down chassis numbers before assembling the material into a dedicated website.

The Testarossa development essay goes beyond the car's familiar side strakes. It describes design work at Ferrari and Pininfarina, the move to rear-mounted radiators, the flat-twelve engine and the transition from prototypes to production in 1984.

Details that vanish from glossy brochures

A production-history page collects serial-number ranges, year-by-year estimates, different markets and period prices. The authors describe production starting in July 1984 and ending in 1991; some figures are explicitly labeled non-official, an important distinction when reconstructing manufacturers' records.

The deeper lists catalog obscure changes between model years. A 512 TR variations page notes the introduction of anti-lock brakes in the early 1990s, changes in body production and differences in lettering fitted to various examples.

Another branch covers prototypes, coachbuilders, race-car conversions and unusual specials, including the Pininfarina Mythos, Koenig Specials and spider conversions. This is not a single-car appreciation page. It is a field guide for collectors attempting to identify the cars they have seen.

The brothers' writing reflects their own collecting work and cited books; disputed numbers should not be treated as official factory certification. The website's founding date could not be verified. Its value is the painstaking preservation of older automotive production history and personally accumulated photo research, not an unsupported claim that the site itself began in the 1990s.

The Testarossa is usually remembered for its shape. Red-Headed remembers which shape belonged to which year.

Explore the development history and version-by-version catalogue.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.