Enzo Ferrari once said, “I don’t sell cars; I sell engines. The cars I throw in for free since something has to hold the engines in.” There’s no doubt Ferrari put his heart and soul into making beautiful cars to hold those engines—but then again, he did need something worthy to frame the masterpiece under the hood.
Generally, if a car’s engine — as well as the bay it sits in — is beautiful, the rest of the car’s design follows suit. And since most of a car’s moving parts are under the hood, there are nigh-infinite possibilities for masterful design work. That’s why it’s a shame to see most modern manufacturers cover up the engine with cheap plastics and crowd the engine bay with machine-stamped, mass-produced parts; it conceals the magic beneath. As you’ll see below, many of our favorite engine bays mechanical works of art of all time date back to before that trend was common — but we still found a few newer cars with gorgeous guts beneath their hoods.
1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa
The Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa is one of the most beautiful, exotic cars in the history of the automobile. Each curve can steal your gaze for longer than you ever though sheet metal could — and that’s just the outside. However, the true masterpiece, as Enzo Ferrari would say, is under the hood. The deep black compartment frames the bright red cam covers that give the car its name — “Testa Rossa” translates to “redhead.”
1991 Bugatti EB110
The Veyron did a magnificent job of bringing the Bugatti name back into the headlines — but where that car is an engineering marvel, its EB110 predecessor was impressive in its own right. It’s not very often you get to see exposed throttle bodies on top of a V-12.
