The Life project grew from the ambitions of Franco Rocchi, a former Ferrari engineer who had worked on the company's 3-litre V8 powering the 308 GTB and GTS road cars. Rocchi's interest in a W12 layout dated back to 1967, when he sketched a prototype W3 module as the building block for a planned W18 Ferrari unit. After leaving Ferrari in 1980, he continued developing the concept privately. His design used three banks of four DOHC cylinders, making the engine roughly as short as a V8 but taller than a conventional V-banked unit.
Ernesto Vita persuaded Rocchi to finalise the engine for the newly regulated naturally aspirated Formula One era. The W12 was completed in the first half of 1989, at precisely the moment turbocharged engines had been banned and new manufacturers such as Ilmor, Judd, and Yamaha were entering the sport. Vita's original intention was to sell the engine to an established team. When no partner materialised, he resolved to run his own outfit.
The Life team split its operations between technical offices in Reggio Emilia and a factory in Formigine, near Modena. The facility was modest but included a Borghi e Severi dyno bench with AVL datalogging equipment used to develop the W12. Unable to build a chassis from scratch, Vita acquired a stillborn Formula One design from First Racing, originally drawn by Richard Divila for Lamberto Leoni's aborted team. Chief engineer Gianni Marelli, another former Ferrari man, oversaw the integration of the W12 into the chassis. By February 1990, the resulting car — designated the Life L190 — was ready for brief tests at Vallelunga and Monza.
The team entered the 1990 Formula One season with a single chassis, four engines, and a skeleton crew that rarely exceeded nine people, including team manager Sergio Barbasio, test driver Franco Scapini, and three mechanics.
The car's performance deficit was severe. The W12's widely reported output was approximately 470 bhp, while rival engines produced 600 to 700 bhp; one account from driver Bruno Giacomelli suggested the true figure was closer to 300 bhp. The ex-First chassis added to the misery by being among the heaviest in the field at 530 kg, with poor handling and chronic reliability problems. The Life was no faster than a competitive Formula 3 car and would have been outclassed even in Formula 3000.
Gary Brabham, son of triple world champion Jack Brabham, was the team's first driver. He failed to pre-qualify at two consecutive rounds, reporting that the car had no functioning tachometer in either session and that the team lacked even a tyre pressure gauge, borrowing one from the EuroBrun team. Brabham lobbied unsuccessfully for a switch to the Judd CV V8 and then departed. Italian veteran Bruno Giacomelli, who had last raced in Formula One in 1983 and had since served as a test driver for Leyton House Racing, was recruited as replacement. His Leyton House connection gave him useful links to Engine Developments, the Judd engine manufacturer.
The most laps completed by the car in a single pre-qualifying session was twenty-two at Silverstone. At the San Marino Grand Prix, Giacomelli admitted he feared being struck from behind because the car was so slow. A particularly stark illustration of the team's situation came at that event when the car broke down at the end of the pit lane on its out lap, its transponder remained active while being towed, and the resulting timed lap showed a gap of nearly six minutes to the next slowest car.
For the Portuguese Grand Prix, the team undertook the enormous task of replacing the W12 with a more conventional Judd CV V8 engine, completing the conversion in under three weeks. The engine cover detached on the car's first lap at Estoril. The final appearance of the Life L190 came at Jerez for the Spanish Grand Prix. The team then withdrew before the final two rounds of the season. Life had attempted to qualify for all 14 races it entered and failed to make the grid at every one.
The Life programme stands as one of the most dramatic examples of ambition outpacing resources in Formula One history. The W12 architecture was genuinely novel — echoing the Napier-Lion aero engine in layout — but the project lacked the funding, personnel, and time to develop it into a competitive unit.
The L190 chassis was fully restored in 2009 by former mechanic Oliver Piazzi and ran at that year's Goodwood Festival of Speed with its original W12 engine reinstalled. Driven by Arturo Merzario and Lorenzo Prandina (then the car's owner), it completed two successful runs up the Goodwood hill climb, providing a rare and celebratory second chapter for one of the most ill-fated cars in grand prix racing.