Posted 03.05.24 in News
One of a kind build turned into a one of a kind opportunity.
Back in September our good friend Shawn Marsh, owner of NTX Audio Innovations, reached out to us about a SEMA project that he was in charge of doing the lighting on. He was wondering if we could send a guy down to help look at the lighting set up on this project, which may seem normal, but Shawn and his guys know our products inside and out. It was an unusual ask for them but he said this one was "unique". Of course every SEMA build is unique, but this one was different. How different could it be? Well... a one-off EV Ferrari Testarossa built by Gas Monkey Garage different.
2 days after that phone call I packed my bags and a box full of products, then started the trip down to the big state of Texas. Once I got down there I met up with Shawn and Chris, NTX's interior guy, and we headed into Dallas to the Gas Monkey Garage. Pulling into that yard, after watching it for so many years on TV was a pretty surreal moment. After getting into the shop and meeting all of the guys, it was time to get to work.
At this point, Josh with GMG was fabbing up the headlights with our 10 inch razor light bars in them, and we were there to figure out accent lighting and the tail lights. The biggest challenge in this build was that, even with our huge line up of products, we don't have too many products sitting on the shelf for a 1985 Ferrari Testarossa. Especially one that is getting cut into pieces.
They knew they were wanting to put some accent lighting in the "fins" of the Testarossa doors and rear quarter panel, so that was where we got started. They were wanting to do a single color (which was red at the time) so we were looking at our single color strips and tubes. What made this difficult was the lip of the fin, which is what we were hoping would hide the lights, was only 1/8" thick. Our single color tubes are made to be super compact so they were perfect for the application. However, we did have to modify the connectors as they are thicker than the tube themselves.
The guys over at NTX did an awesome job modifying our single color tubes where you couldn't see them at all come show time. And yes... those are real bullet holes! This car was built out of the 5 Ferrari Testarossas that were used on set in the movie "Infinite" starring Mark Wahlberg.
To give the car a truly futuristic look, the front of the car was going to need some more lighting. Someone threw out the idea of removing the grill in the front bumper and flush mounting an acrylic piece that would light up. After some research and testing, we actually found a black acrylic that reacted well with LED lights so that is what ended up going there. With the space available, we were able to fit 4 of our running board lights behind the piece of acrylic. This is what provided the extremely bright white behind the black acrylic, and they even used the amber mode to wire up left and right turn signals.
The Testarossa came from the factory with a black grill-style grid accross the tail lights and the width of the vehicle. This made for the perfect spot to integrate some LED lighting. The black acrylic worked so well for the front of the car, we decided to use it on the rear. The width of the back of the car was just too wide for our 60 inch truck tailgate lights, but we knew they would do exactly what we were looking for. Of course, on a build like this you don't settle with 6 inches of dead space. We ended up doubling the amount of truck tailgate bars making 10 total bars behind the acrylic.
Unfortunately, it wasn't as easy as sticking the bars back there. Arturo, NTX's wiring genious, had to open up each tail gate bar to get to the circuit board. We found out what modifications were needed and cut the bars down to length. We had to do this to program the sequential turn signal to start from one end of the bar, and go all the way across, versus split from the middle like they do out of the package. When looking at the back of the Testarossa, you will a bright red box going across the back. If you see it driving, you will see a running light, brakes, and sequential turn signals coming from that bright red box!
Check out the full video below!
