Glickenhaus dropped an official explanation of why their one-off Ferrari 512S Modulo Concept caught fire earlier last month.

Earlier last month, we learned that a hot running exhaust caused a fire to erupt behind James Glickenhaus as he was piloting the famed 512S Modulo Concept. Now, we have a clearer explanation of what happened. As per Glickenhaus earlier yesterday (July 9, 2019) their first presumptions where right and the 512S Modulo Concept’s fire was caused by a poorly designed exhaust system that allowed unburned fuel to pool and, if ignited, eventually catch fire.

Here’s James’s official explanation below.

According to his description, Glickenhaus engineers are hard at work designing an exhaust system more in line with the race cars they’re based on. That means longer exhaust tubing that extends past the bodywork and those fancy looking sink strainers A.K.A. flame arrestors.

If you were wondering like I was before I wrote this post how exactly that flame arrestor works, the metal mesh acts as a heat absorber, literally absorbing the heat from flames that come it’s way thus lowering the gas and air mixture “below its auto-ignition temperature.”

Chain link fences, in a way, are a type of flame arrestor in that they can stop small brush fires from spreading.

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Could be worse

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Some commenters, well one commenter in particular, a one Manuel Bordini, decried on Glickenhaus’s own Instagram post above that driving a concept car and having it catch fire in this nature was “pointless.”

Glickenhaus’s response was too good not to share with y’all.

Oo each their own. To us, pointless is having cars that are never driven. Pointless is having pieces of history locked up and never shared with the world. We learn to make better race cars for the road by driving race cars on the road. We learned to install fire systems in the engine bays and cabins when factory wiring in a Fiat Dino spider shorted and the car burned to the ground.

Hate to break it to you Bordini, but this 512S Modulo Concept will probably be driven more, now that that race-ready V12 has some proper exhaust to keep it cool puttering around town.

Sure, concept cars aren’t driven around typically, but there are no rules to concept cars.

Drive on, Glickenhaus! Here’s to a more reliable 512S Modulo Concept.

Do you think it’s asinine to say it’s a pointless exercise to drive around a one-off concept? Do you think this concept should be behind a velvet rope now that it’s had such a fiery accident under its belt? Let me know either way in the comments below.

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