The Gentleman Magazine Issue 14 | April 2019 | Page 22

FERRARI P80/C:
THE MOST EXTREME ONE-OFF DESIGN EVER
Creating an entirely new and modern take on the Ferrari
sports prototype concept is both an ambitious and complex
undertaking. But it was in this spirit, and with very specific
input from the client, that the new Ferrari one-off, the P80/C,
was conceived. The Ferrari Styling Centre, under the direction
of Flavio Manzoni, and the engineering and aerodynamics
team worked hand-in-glove with the client, sharing principles
and visions in order to create a new “Hero Car” with an
absolutely unique and authentic soul.
The client, a great connoisseur of the Ferrari world, comes
from a family of long-time Prancing Horse enthusiasts and
admirers, and is himself a highly knowledgeable, discerning
Ferrari collector. He was thus the perfect partner with whom
to craft such a demanding project which required the highest
level of interaction as well as emotional involvement.
The client’s basic brief was to create a modern sports prototype
inspired by iconic models from Ferrari’s history: the 330 P3/P4
on the one hand and the 1966 Dino 206 S on the other. 
The P80/C thus set the Ferrari Styling Centre an ambitious
target: to develop a new kind of product that simply did not
exist in the current Ferrari range: a sports prototype inspired by
the cars that essentially wrote their own styling rules becoming,
in the process, famous icons that, although conceived as track
cars, also went on to influence a whole series of elegant road
cars. A case in point is the very close relationship between, for
instance, the Dino 206 S racing car and the production Dino
206/246 GT. Both versions share a common DNA despite
having a different styling lexicon: Ferrari racing elements
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appear in the case of the former while the latter have the more
sober, refined lines of the road cars.
The Ferrari Styling Centre’s goal was to create a resolutely
modern car that made no major concessions to the past,
apart from attempting to recreate the sensual shape of those
iconic models through more muscular wings formed by the
intersection of concave and convex surfaces.
Kicked off in 2015, the P80/C project had the longest
development time of any Ferrari one-off made to date. This
highly intense gestation period was the result of in-depth
styling research and lengthy engineering development, with
meticulous analysis of performance parameters as well as
scrupulous aerodynamic testing, all with a different approach
than taken by Ferrari with its one-off cars in the past.
Normally speaking, this kind of car tends to be a stylistic
reinterpretation of models in the current range - a new concept
or basic idea that marks a departure from the donor car is
built on existing running gear. The glorious history of Italian
coachbuilding is just that: a wealth of exceptional cars based on
the same chassis, but bodied by different coachworks.
The P80/C, however, is radically different. It is a track car,
which means that performance is a major factor so this not
only pointed the design team in the direction of a design that
was absolutely unique, but also forced them to make radical
changes to the running gear of the donor car. This involved
introducing specific features required to guarantee a captivating
marriage of style, technical prowess and aerodynamics.
, Security in Motion”