The hardcore new Ferrari – and what’s next
Ferrari’s head may be busy perfecting hybrid and SUV newcomers, but its heart has been obsessing over this: the track-only P80/C, a gorgeous one-o based on the 488 GT3 racer
Selling 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 homologation 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 proportions 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 – ⊲
freed of the cloyingly strict rulebook that shapes modern GT3 racers – the P80/C can run entirely unrestricted. Its race-bred twin-turbo V8 goes without air restrictors of any kind, while its aerodynamics have been sculpted without compromise; hence the vast front splitter on the catamaran-style nose, and the monstrous rear diffuser and full-width rear wing in carbonfibre. Painstakingly optimised by the project’s aero engineers, the body’s downforce works with the full, track-hugging under-body aero of the 488 GT3 base car. The end result is reckoned to be five per cent more efficient than the racer – handy should the P80/C ever find itself battling a 488 GT3 on the most outlandishly exotic of trackdays…
Irrelevant? Of course. Meaningless? Far from it. As it recovers from Sergio Marchionne’s sudden passing and a fresh onslaught from rivals new (and predominantly EV) and old (Aston Martin, McLaren and a resurgent Lamborghini), the P80/C is proof that Maranello’s magic touch is alive, well and uniquely powerful.
Who else could turn out a poster-ready instant classic inspired by a peerless back catalogue, built upon the foundations of a cutting-edge racer and realised by an engineering team blooded at the sharp end of Formula 1?
Freed of the cloyingly strict GT3 rulebook, the P80/C can run entirely unrestricted