Ferrari's Purosangue SUV has reached the next level of its development, will it rival a Lamborghini Urus, or go bigger?
Ferrari’s Purosangue SUV is confirmed for production in 2022, with cars reaching customers in early 2023. Ferrari’s first and highly controversial SUV (or whatever Ferrari deem to call its high-riding four-door) has until recently been spied with chopped up bodywork derived from a Maserati Levante, but with the fitment of its own bespoke body, albeit under some very heavy cladding, we can now get an initial sense of what is to come.
The Purosangue’s proportions immediately signal its duality of purpose, its four-door cab slung far behind the front axle, but retaining a substantial rear seating area. The windscreen is heavily raked, glasshouse especially shallow and windows frameless, while the sloping rear screen finishes in a distinctive fastback tail above a very short rear overhang. In contrast to the slim glazing, there’s lots of bodywork above the wheel arches, suggesting it’ll need a very big wheel and tyre package to compensate proportionally.
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Which begs the question of why this first body-on prototype is sat on a familiar, and some might say undersized set of 20-inch wheels and tyres borrowed from the old GTC4 Lusso. These wheels look to only just cover the carbon ceramic brakes underneath, and are quite significantly smaller than the 23-inch package older development mules have been seen running.
We’ll have to wait to see the car to know for sure, but the Purosangue’s underlying proportions reveal it’ll have a compact, fastback-like rear end design that will channel the brand’s current GT and sports cars; its streamlined silhouette is more rakish and coupe-like than the GTC4 Lusso this high-riding four-door effectively replaces.
Video of the Purosangue testing at the Fiorano test track has also emerged with the unmistakable sound of Ferrari’s Tipo V12 engine bellowing from its exhausts, giving us yet more insight into the fact it will definitely feature the 6.5-litre V12 engine, and in all likelihood a dual-clutch transmission. Official information of a possible hybrid system, or the option of the smaller twin-turbo V8 remains thin, however.
Ferrari has so far confirmed that the Purosangue’s chassis will be built from Ferrari’s highly flexible aluminium matrix platform. Despite sharing elements from the new Roma, though, it’s proportions otherwise look relatively normal, lacking the exaggerated dash-to-axle ratio that usually typifies Ferrari’s front-engine model range. This would lead us to believe that the engine’s placement will be further forward than in Ferrari’s existing GT models, suggesting the Purosangue will have a more traditional powertrain configuration than something like the more technically complicated dual-transmission layout of that GTC4 Lusso.
Ferrari has been typically coy about other specifics, too, not confirming anything other than a forecasted 2022 launch. The name, Purosangue, is also a working title for the project, meaning it’ll likely pick up a new moniker. With a seemingly boundless appetite for large expensive SUVs at the top of the marketplace, Ferrari’s decision to join this lucrative marketplace was an inevitable one. What form of SUV it actually reveals in 2022 remains the more pertinent question, but one we’re now starting to get a picture of.
Keyword: 2022 Ferrari Purosangue spied – body-on prototypes are now live