The Ferrari F50 has 12 cylinders, arranged as a naturally aspirated V12 engine.
Its 4.7-litre Tipo F130B engine was derived from Ferrari’s 3.5-litre V12 used in the 1990 Ferrari 641 Formula One car. That racing connection helped give the F50 an unusually high-revving character for a road car. The engine was mounted longitudinally behind the two-seat cabin and drove the rear wheels through a six-speed manual gearbox.
The F50’s V12 used five valves per cylinder—three intake and two exhaust—for 60 valves in total. That detail sometimes causes confusion: 60 is the valve count, not the number of cylinders. Likewise, the F50 is not a V10 like several contemporary Formula One engines; its cylinder layout is explicitly V12.
Ferrari produced the F50 from 1995 to 1997, with only 349 examples built. It followed the F40 and preceded the Enzo Ferrari in the company’s limited-production halo-car line. Its open-roof targa design and carbon-fibre construction made the engine’s Formula One heritage central to the car’s identity.