We Review “The Ferrari Under The Bed”

Review by Pete Vack
All photos courtesy Darrell Westfaul

Darrell Westfaul’s telling of his time with his 166 MM Ferrari (0046M) is truly special; mark our words…one of the best books we have ever read on any automotive topic. He describes a life with cars similar to our own experiences, and meets all of the characters along the way, guys that we knew as well, or at least hoped to know. Like many of us, he struggled to keep his treasure, realizing that the cost of admittance is just the tip of the iceberg. To keep it running, he learns to fix and paint and repair and be a mother of invention. Even more, he commits himself to finding out as much as possible about his rare car during his ownership and well beyond. His research goes far beyond the typical chassis histories and becomes as much about the owners as the car itself. It is a wonderful, fulfilling journey that so many of us can relate to.

A single chassis number book…but so much more

What makes Westfaul’s book different from most other single-chassis histories?

*He bought not just a Ferrari, but a very special one-off 1950 166 MM in 1966. Just how special he would find out as years went by.

*He began researching its history immediately and never quit. In the 1970s and 80s, he was able to contact and obtain information and photos from almost all of the owners both in Italy and the US before they died, solving many mysteries about the car along the way. Westfaul didn’t nail down Maurice Bivens, who had installed the Chevy engine into the Ferrari, until 2017, ten years after the car was sold. Bivens was gone but his ex-wife recalled the details.

*Westfaul kept 0046M for 40 years, and when he did sell in 2006 for $1.2 million, he had no regrets when nine years later it turned hands again, still untouched, this time for $5,445,000.

According to the author, “The odd thing about my book is that it is hard to categorize. It’s my story, it’s the car’s story, and it’s our story. I’m not sure what it is, maybe a Canterbury Tales about a car.” For us, there is a story on every page.

Relatively, used Ferraris were expensive, even in the 1960s

Buying a Ferrari 166M for $1500 seems like a dream. But judgements are skewed by inflation, and to give the reader a better idea of relative prices, footnotes are added to reflect the figure in today’s money. In today’s terms $1500 was the equivalent to $14,500 in 2024. And says Westfaul via email “That was half of what a new car cost in 1966. When I went to the University of Alabama in 1963 for my freshman year, I budgeted $1600 for the entire year—tuition, books, dorm, food and a little expense money. People were buying old Ferraris and Maseratis back then cheaply relative to their cost new, and you did not have to be rich, but it did take a bite out of your ’60s income.”

Under the bed

So convinced he would finally end up with a strange red Chevy Powered Ferrari coupe he spotted near the University of Alabama, a year before he finally was able to convince the owner to sell, the 20-year-old Westfaul went on a search for the original engine, found it and bought it, sans transmission, packed away under the bed of the current owner, hence the title of the book. The story of the various engine rebuilds, the special 225 heads that were used, and the agony of finding the correct transmission have chapters of their own.

Who sells their cat or dog?

It was also very unusual to keep a car for so many years. Most of us, to a degree, bought a rare or unusual car, had our fun with it, and sold it to purchase another car from the foreign car candy shop that was America in the 1970s. But Darrell thought differently, “ After that [first purchase], you were using your original investment to wheel and deal for the next one, so once you were in the game you had the chips to play. I had a friend who did that with motorcycles and he had a different one every month. That mentality persists today with people who regularly trade in their cars for the next great thing. I’m not like that. I identified with the Ferrari as something that had a character I could relate to, so we settled into a relationship. Who sells off their cat or dog? It is the same with my E-Type, and I have several other cars in that pattern.”

0046M Revealed

In 1966, aside from it being a Ferrari 166 MM, Westfaul was not sure what he had. No chassis number, no history. His research into the car began a month after he took possession in the form of a letter to Ferrari, sending only the Touring body numbers he found on the firewall. He was overjoyed when the answer came back, complete with a factory spec sheet and a chassis number, 0046M. But it wasn’t until 20 years later, when the Anselmi/Boscarelli Tipo 166: The Original Sports Ferrari was published in 1986, that he finally knew why his car looked like a Touring barchetta but had a roof. With the now-known serial number 0046M, he found that his Touring-bodied barchetta had been converted into a berlinetta by Zagato in 1953.

Click on image to order.

An amazing history

Westfaul was now earnestly tracing its history, finding that the strange coupe had a significant track record and was owned, or at least raced, by none other than Nuccio Bertone. After Bertone was through with it, it went to Scuderia Guastalla, was raced with passion and success as 2 liter Champion of Itay, then was transformed into a Zagato coupe, one of the only ten times Zagato ever laid a hammer to a Ferrari. All of the Italian history, from 1950 to 1955, is superbly well documented with period photos and reminisces from the various owners.

Then on to America, and a typical old Ferrari race car scenario unfolded: via Chinetti to a series of owners who raced it, broke it, garaged it, installed a Chevy engine into it, and by 1965, attracted the attention of Westfaul as it drove by in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. This part of the history was perhaps even more difficult to assemble than the Italian episode. But with great tenacity, Westfaul put together photos of the car as it was raced in the north, used as the daily driver of an SCCA-racing woman in the south, bought by a guy with “a wooden leg,” and once the engine had blown for the last time, how it was eventually equipped with a Chevy V8 (and featured in Randy Cook’s Bowtie Ferrari book).

Westfaul has not only tracked the history of 0046M, but in doing so has recorded with detail and passion via the owners how it was to have owned a rare Ferrari in those heady years from 1950 to 1972. And furthermore, how it was sold, what he did with the money, and how the market has changed in so many ways, from Hemmings to Gooding. Best book of the year, indeed!

The book has a complete and helpful index, copious footnotes, a chronology of 0046M, appendices with all documents and paperwork, bibliography and a special in Memoriam, listing the birth and death dates of the car’s owners. The cover image, says Wesfaul, “…is my design and mostly my graphics work with help from Jodi Ellis in inserting the modern image of the car. The idea is that the race course and changing color represent the flow of time with 0046M changing from barchetta to berlinetta form with me onboard at the end.”

The Ferrari Under the Bed
A Memoir and History of 0046M
by Darrell Westfaul
Foreword by Andrea Zagato.

Page Size 230mm x 280mm
Hard cover with dust jacket
328 images
288 pages
Published September 2025
ISBN: 9781956309232
Our Price: $125.00
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