You know that game: “Pick one car from the year you were born!” It’s fine for you older types, because it’s easy to select a cool car. In 1983 the pickings are pretty damn short. Sure, there are cars I’d like to own, but the mass majority of them have one caveat: there’s got to be a modification of some type. It’s difficult to pick what’s worse: the underpowered engines, the lackluster suspensions, or the build quality. Sure, I like 3rd gen F-bodies and Mustangs just fine, and I’m quite fond of every American pickup from that year…it was a nice balance between a useable workhorse and a simple, easy-to-maintain machine. But I would still want an engine swap, an overdrive transmission of some type regardless of whether or not it was an automatic or manual, et cetera…I couldn’t just take most 1983 vehicles on face value, no modifications whatsoever, and say that I’d be fine with it.

If I’m going to suffer through low power, questionable build quality, and enjoy what the 1980s had to offer, then, the only way would be to do it properly: the Italians. While the Countach may have been the poster child, I was more into the Ferraris of the era. My ultimate Ferrari, the 288 GTO, is one year too new to qualify, so what did Maranello make that would be a worthy option? The 512 Berlinetta Boxer with the fuel-injected V12 makes a great case for itself.

Enzo Ferrari didn’t like the idea of selling a mid-engined street car to his buying clientele. He felt that the driving characteristics would be too challenging for people who were already used to front-engined cars, but mid-engined racing cars where whipping up on Ferraris on the racetrack. If a customer with Ferrari money saw another competitor winning over the Prancing Horse, they left. Even his engineers were busy trying to get famously steadfast old man to come around to the idea of bringing a mid-engined road car out, but by 1970, with his mid-engined race cars winning, he finally caved. In 1973 the first of the Berlinetta Boxer series was unveiled, the 365 GT4 BB. Using the same 4.4L V12 as the Ferrari Daytona, the mid-engined BB was a quick piece. In 1975 Road and Track got one to hit 175 miles an hour in a vehicle test, which became their new top-speed record holder. In 1976 the car became the BB 512 with the introduction of a new 5.0L V12 engine, and in 1981 the BB 512i was introduced, with the V12 being fed with a Bosch k-Jetronic fuel injection system instead of the six Weber carburetors that had been doing the job.

These Ferraris were traditional Ferraris in many senses: the BBs are the last bodies Pininfarina made completely by hand, the carbureted cars tended to be bitchy if the tune wasn’t absolutely perfect, and each individual one would have it’s own temperament and performance capability. The rough expectation for a BB 512i is 350-ish horsepower and 330-ish ft/lbs of torque, with a 0-60 time in the low five-second range and a top speed somewhere in the mid-170s. If you’re asking fuel mileage when discussing Ferrari, you’re just wrong, but the BB was given improved cabin room, so long-distance trips weren’t automatically out of the question, and there’s no over-done interior: gauges are right in front of you, there’s two seats and one lovely gated shifter.

Now, the closest I’ll be allowed near a BB 512i is the velvet rope at a car show, but that doesn’t change my answer. If there’s one car I would take from 1983 that I wouldn’t have to change a ton of crap on to make right, the Ferrari is it. With that being said, for the money they trade for, I could buy a 1983 Trans Am, a NASCAR motor and transmission, all the suspension gear I could ever want, a cage, a new paint job and sill buy a house and have money left over. But if I had the money…well…see the video and listen to that noise.