And there will be more than one version to choose from.
Thanks to several trademarks uncovered at the Italian trademark office, CarBuzz can exclusively reveal that Ferrari's Le Mans-winning 499P racing prototype will be entering production as a roadgoing hypercar. Not only that, but there will be several variants to choose from.
Ferrari will introduce a GTB model first, which will almost certainly be followed by a GTS. How do we know that there will be a droptop? Because Ferrari also trademarked the 499 Speciale Spider name alongside that of the closed-roof 499 Speciale. The Speciale nomenclature tells us that the roadgoing hypercar will also be a getting higher-performance iteration, just in case a street-legal version of a Le Mans-winning prototype wasn't enough.
Not impressed? Ferrari will unleash an extreme track-only version for gentlemen racers, too, in the same vein as the XX program.
Ferrari Ferrari Ferrari
We know this because we also found a trademark for the name 499P Modificata. The P at the end of the Le Mans contender's name indicates 'prototype,' in reference to the World Endurance Championship class that Le Mans Hypercars replaces. Modificata calls to mind the Ferrari 488 GT Modificata, which Maranello describes as “a limited-edition car that incorporates the skills and technologies developed for the 488 GT3 and 488 GTE.” Similar to cars in the XX program (excluding the new SF90 XX twins), this circuit-only special was restricted to use at private track days and Ferrari Club Competizioni GT events.
All of this tells us that the 499P Modificata will be closely related to the WEC single-seater but could be even more extreme, as it won't have to adhere to any technical regulations.
Ferrari Ferrari
We suspect that the 499 versions that do not have the 'P' suffix will be altered somewhat to make them suitable for road use. By suitable, we mean that we expect the roadgoing 499s to be capacious enough to bring a passenger along for the ride. We're not aerodynamicists, but the narrow cockpit of the WEC racer looks like it could be widened without too much compromise.
Unfortunately, all of this is just speculation for the time being, and it's unlikely that Ferrari will have anything official to announce for some time to come. If we had to guess, we'd say this will arrive as an Icona Series model, following the Daytona SP3.
We've likely got a long wait ahead of us, but thankfully, there are other cars to look forward to, and we've got the scoop on what those will be called too. Stay tuned.
Ferrari Ferrari
Keyword: EXCLUSIVE: Ferrari 499P Will Go Into Production As Roadgoing Hypercar