Car UK May 2019

s

elling dreams – not the cold, hard process of building

cars – is Ferrari’s real business. Most of the planet

dreams of driving Maranello’s sports cars, even if

only a monstrously privileged minority ever will.

And if banging down a deposit on a new F8 Tributo is pretty

dreamy, imagine the level of pinch-me-this-is-nuts associated

with commissioning, from scratch, your own one-off Ferrari.

Last year, with the SP1 and SP2 Monzas, Ferrari launched

its Icona programme: a series of big-money, tiny-volume

machines designed to boost revenue without seriously inflating

production volumes or damaging brand equity.

But the car you see here, the P80/C, is not an Icona car – it

goes beyond even that rarefied level of Ferrari ownership, to one

at which your car is unique and exactly as you want it.

While the P80/C’s owner will remain anonymous, clearly

this individual is one of pretty immaculate taste. The brief was

to create a modern sports prototype inspired by a couple of the

most beautiful Ferraris in the back catalogue: the P4 and the

Dino. (And, it seems, the De Tomaso Pantera, but that might

just be us.)

Track-only, and therefore freed of all sorts of painful homolo-

gation requirements, the P80/C is based on the 488 GT3 chassis.

Double whammy: a seriously talented track-going mechanical

package, straight out of the box, plus a modest increase in

wheelbase (+50mm) to help create a delectable set of propor-

tions for Ferrari’s design team, working under the talented

Flavio Manzoni.

A full four years in the making, the P80/C is a deftly balanced

alliance of the past and present. The visor-type windscreen

graphic, concave rear screen and louvred aluminium rear

engine cover are unashamedly retro, as are the 250 LM-style

flying buttresses where the roofline melds with the rear deck,

while the taut surfacing and brutally race-inspired, entirely

open rear end reference both Ferrari’s 21st century GT cars and

hypercars like the LaFerrari.

Performance promises to be startling, not least because – ⊲

Track-only,

and using

488 GT

hardware.

So not

shabby

MAY 2019 | CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK 11