Hypothetical scenario just for fun... well, hypothetical for most of us anyway. Let's say you weren't enamoured with Ferrari's latest creations in the styling department, but you still wanted a modern supercar to drive. Jim Glickenhaus turned a regular Ferrari Enzo into The Ferrari P4/5 by Pininfarina - evolving and modernizing the styling from Ferrari's P3/4. Well, what would you create? What Ferrari would you base your mechanicals upon and what Ferrari would you give your designer as a reference to modernize? All the best, Andrew.
A modern day F50 based on the F70. Engine taken from a V10 F1 car, enlarged to 4.7 liters, manual gearbox. No idea what to do about the styling, Jim's pretty much sorted it, very difficult to improve upon that design. With 'modern day F50' I mean the idea behind it...a race car for the road. Sit down with your ass as close as possible to the road, an F1 engine bolted to your spine. None of this lighting fast F1 flappy paddle dual clutch stuff. I want to shift myself, and otherwise I love Lamborghini's ISR gearbox...have some feelings with the car and not the feeling you're driving an electric drill with some leather on the inside.
Sounds great Bas. You might want to make some sort of decision on styling though, as P4/5 is a one-of-one and you'll need to do something different. I quite like the idea of strapping modernized interior as well as exterior 348 (what else? ) aesthetics to the performance levels and ride refinement of current production Ferraris. Not a complete copy of a 348, but something that's more of a homage to and evolution of the original design, like P4/5 is to P3/4. I'd probably base it upon a 458, but would commission a manual gearbox - perhaps that might require the gear ratios to be lengthened due to the way the 458 revs. All the best, Andrew.
Engine taken from 3.0 liter V10, detuned to 500 HP at 10,000 RPMs, manual tranny. Car derived from F355, chassis done in carbon fiber with a (street) target weight of 2400 pounds complete with leather interrior, A/C,... Track-car target weight of 2100 pounds. Significant underbody aerodynamics so that turns at 100 MPH can be taken on street tires at 1.4 Gs; no wings on top; some adjustible underbody aerodyanmics to prevent excess drag at top speeds.
Carbon fiber replica of a Dino 246 GT, with a functioning air conditioner and a turbo 430 motor (or Maserati V8)
To me, the new Stratos/Ferrari is the better retro design -- except maybe the headlights Image Unavailable, Please Login
I think the interesting question is what would you do/have built? An Homage 250 GTO Spyder on a 599 GTO? An Homage to Modulo? It's not as easy as it sounds as some recent Special Projects have (IMO) shown... I do like the New Stratos.
Great idea for a thread! I am leaning towards creating a modern F40 experience with the Enzo successor. Modernized f40 looks and rawness with a manual gearbox with long gears.
Now that I think about it, I'd love to be able to bring into the present a 512BBLM to compete at Le Mans and in the ALMS. But it'd have to have a 12 cylinder boxer, so the engine would have to be started from scratch. The chassis could be based on a 458, but I'm not technically literate enough to do a correct assessment of that part.
Keep in mind to make it legal you have to start with a street legal car. Also the cost goes WAY up if you want to change the headlights/windscreen/doors. That's why the Ferrari designed/built Special Projects have kept those items. I had PF explore a Special Project on a Veyron but VW wasn't really interested in letting that happen. The design they came up with is breathtaking (Midengined Coupe) and could be adapted to any mid engined chassis but it's a HUGE undertaking today especially with the $/Euro. It will be interesting to see what people do. Here's Ferrari's latest Special Project following P 4/5 C. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Oh right, completely forgot about the homologation part. Is the minimum 1 road car in order to be legal to participate in an event as Le Mans?
No the only way a one off GT could run at Le Mans would be as a "Wild Card" entry and that would be very hard to get.