If asked to close your eyes and conjure the image of an 1980s Maranello model, your mind is likely to produce a visage of side-straked majesty in the form of a Ferrari Testarossa.

It is a model intrinsically wedded to the decade of its introduction.

Everyone from teenagers lusting over bedroom-wall posters, to captains of industry catching a glimpse of their reflection in glass-fronted offices—none could help fawning over this most Ferrari of Ferraris.

Arguably Ferrari’s hit car of the 1980s, the Testarossa was approaching its sixth year of production in 1990, and Maranello’s design team sought to update the iconic model for the coming decade.

Returning to numeric nomenclature, its successor was dubbed the Ferrari 512 TR, with “5” representing the cubic capacity of the engine, “12” the number of cylinders, and “TR” standing for Testarossa.

The 512 TR shared many similarities with its predecessor, but it was expertly tweaked by Ferrari both in terms of styling and engineering.

The...