From Dream to Drive: Brad Smith’s Hand Built Ferrari 312 PB GoKart

Brad Smith’s Ferrari 312 PB GoKart build might just be one of the best things we have seen online!

On a quiet street in southwest Florida, the sound you hear slipping through the open garage door is not the usual hum of a homeowner wrestling with yard tools. It is something far more interesting. Inside stands Brad Smith, a building contractor, lifelong tinkerer, and the rare kind of dreamer who looks at a vintage Ferrari prototype and wonders how hard it would be to build one small enough to park next to the lawnmower.

Brad is forty-seven, practical by trade, creative by instinct, and happily wrestling with a self-described midlife crisis that runs on race fuel. Long before he ever picked up a welder, he fell for Ferrari. The spark came in the mid-to-late nineties when Speedvision beamed racing into American living rooms. That is where he first saw the Ferrari 312 PB on Victory by Design, a sleek red wedge that seemed to slip through history, its soundtrack you could feel in your chest. Around the same time, he came across Pierre Scerri’s famous scale model of the same car. Seeing it built by hand from scratch sealed the idea that someday he would try something similar.

Life took Brad down a few unexpected roads before he ever touched tubing. His first car in high school was a Pontiac Fiero, a choice that says as much about optimism as it does about youthful ambition. After graduation, he worked as a test rider for a company that evaluated Harleys and Buells, which sounds like the kind of job you take when your guardian angel calls in sick. Later, he studied fine arts at the University of Florida, a degree that might not sound like the prelude to a garage-built race car. Still, nothing teaches patience and stubborn devotion quite like studio work.

Through the years, he built several vintage-inspired motorcycles, selling each one to fund the next. When motorcycles stopped feeling fresh, he dove into restoring two fifties-era aluminum boats. Then the family grew, the economy surged, and construction in Florida went into overdrive. For a while, he put the tools away and focused on work.

Building a Ferrari 312 PB GoKart

When that boom finally slowed, Brad made a decision. He could use the downtime to worry, or he could use it to finally build the car he had carried in his head for decades. A full-scale replica Ferrari 312 PB was unrealistic, but his inner kid came to the rescue: a go-kart. Of course. Why not build the Ferrari 312 PB GoKart the way a ten-year-old would think about it, only with grown-up skill and a builder’s eye?

At first, he assumed there would be dozens of people out there doing faithful small-scale replicas. But no. Most were basic frames with decorative bodies and tiny engines. That was never going to cut it. He wanted authenticity or at least the closest thing he could get with hand tools, a budget, and a garage that still needed to store everyday human things.

He scaled the original car to eighty percent and laid out the frame on plywood. The front wheels needed to be 10 inches, the smallest diameter that would fit real front brakes, so Austin Mini 7.5-inch discs became the perfect solution. He cut tubing with an angle grinder, brought pieces to a friend for welding lessons, and eventually bought his own welder so he could push the project forward on his schedule.

The engine was a stroke of brilliance. A Honda Goldwing 1500 flat six, exactly half the cylinder count and layout of the real Ferrari V12, but far easier to service when you live in a place where your nearest Ferrari specialist is not exactly around the corner.

Due to space constraints, he could not include the original offset seat layout, but he preserved the spirit. He shaped the body from one-off plugs. He did not use molds. He did not build jigs for reproduction. It was pure hand-built craft, the kind of work you do because it matters to you, not because a catalog is waiting for the final price.

Ferrari 312 PB GoKart: Learning as you go

It was frustrating. It was complicated. It was rewarding in the way only a long and slightly unreasonable project can be. Brad originally planned to sell the kart to fund his next idea, a Tyrrell P34 mini, because, of course, his next leap is the six-wheeled Formula One legend. Then a friend convinced him to build a website to see if anyone wanted to commission a build. So far, there are no takers, but Brad knows himself well enough to admit he will probably build the Tyrrell anyway, and the Porsche 908 three after that, even if he has to live on instant noodles. He is having fun. That seems to be the real currency.

Part of Brad’s love for this era comes from what the sixties and seventies represent. Back then, racing machines were shaped by hand. Parts were sand cast, bodies were hammered into shape, and nothing lined up perfectly. The appeal was to the irregularities, the evidence of human hands. Today’s CNC precision and carbon fiber perfection, while impressive, can feel cold. Brad has chosen the heat of the old way. The waviness of panels. The giant door gaps. The beauty in honest imperfection.

Even at an eighty percent scale, his little Ferrari 312 PB GoKart stands as a reminder that passion does not always need a factory. Sometimes it just needs a welder, an angle grinder, and a man in Florida who still believes that cars are better when you build them the long way.

If anything, Brad is living proof that creativity does not fade. It just waits for the right project. And if the neighbors ever wonder why a perfect miniature prototype racer is idling in the driveway, the answer is simple. He finally had the time to chase the dream he first saw on a glowing Speedvision screen.

And the kid in him never left.

You can follow Brad’s Ferrari 312 PB GoKart Build on his website bradwsm.com or on Instagram and YouTube. Check out one of his videos and more build photos below:

Photos Courtesy of Brand Smith