How do you create an icon? Or, more accurately, how do you recreate an icon? It’s a serious question, especially if you just happen to be the lead designer for a division of Ferrari whose very name — “Icona” — implies that it will be, well, iconic.
If you’re Stefano De Simone, design lead for the latest Icona project — the Daytona SP3 — you want to “reimagine, not recreate” said icon, there being more than enough so-called “continuation” models — we’re looking at you, Bentley and Jaguar — that remain completely faithful to the days of yore. You are, to put it simply, inspired by greatness, not enslaved by it.
Even so, emulating icons can get pretty confusing. When Ferrari first announced the SP3, I, like so many, assumed that it was being patterned after the famed ’68 to ’73 365 GTB/4, the hugely potent roadster of the swinging ’70s. But pictures failed to reveal any of that imagined inspiration. In fact, there was no resemblance at all, the original 365 a sloped-roof front-engine fastback, the new Daytona SP3 a long-tailed mid-engined supercar.
Author David Booth and Ferrari Icona design lead Stefano De Simone with the 2022 Ferrari SP3 Daytona Icona Photo by Ferrari
David Booth in the 2022 Ferrari SP3 Daytona Icona Photo by Ferrari
David Booth in the 2022 Ferrari SP3 Daytona Icona Photo by Ferrari
That, as it turns out, is because the two really don’t share any heritage other than a name, both celebrating the SP3’s real lineage, the 1967 Daytona 24 Hours endurance race. (And, by the way, while the SP3 is officially named Daytona, Ferrari insists that the original GTB’s labelling as such was the result of the media’s fascination with its win in that glorious race.)
So, why pattern an Icona after a long-forgotten — and seemingly obscure — endurance race nobody cares about anymore?
Well, if you remember anything about Ford v Ferrari — and, if you’re enough of a car person to be reading this column, surely you watched the Oscar-winning tribute to the late, great Carroll Shelby — you’ll remember that Ford fairly trounced Ferrari at the ’66 24 Hours of Le Mans. Actually, Ford kicked Ferrari’s butt.
And while the specific humiliations might have been exaggerated for dramatic effect — the scene with the lost bolt was a little too stereotypical, don’t you think? — Dearborn absolutely did humiliate Maranello. Enzo himself had rebuffed Ford’s attempt to buy the then-small — and, compared with today, insignificant — sports-car manufacturer, and Henry II’s revenge was, as the film’s denouement perfectly captures, to have all three of his GT40s cross the line ensemble, Ferrari’s disgrace made all the more complete as not a single one of its vaunted 330 P3s even finished the race.
What the movie doesn’t portray — the real story behind all that celluloid make-believe — was Ferrari’s revenge.
Ferrari’s 330 P3/4 and 330 P4 race cars of 1967 Photo by Ferrari
Ferrari’s 330 P3/4 and 330 P4 race cars of 1967 Photo by Ferrari
The V12 from the Ferrari 330/P4 of 1967 Photo by Ferrari
If you know anything at all about Ferrari lore, it’s that Enzo Ferrari did not take especially well to losing. So, come 1967 — the date of the inspiration, at least, finally starting to become clear — the entirety of Maranello was focused on retribution. Ferrari’s 4.0-litre V12 got an extra valve — 1966 versions made do with one intake; the ’67 update boasted two — and was mated to an all-new built-in-house five-speed transmission (the ZF version on the P3 was a major source of reliability headaches) in a chassis that got lower, shorter, and wider.
It even produced a few “customer” versions of the P4 — the 412 P — that were all but identical, save for the factory car’s then-ground-breaking Lucas fuel injection. Such was Il Commendatore’s resolve for vengeance.
And when he was sure — absolutely sure, as lore has it, because Ferrari conducted no fewer than 560 test laps on the high banks just months before the race — that he had a Ford-beating combination, he took the entire team to the ’67 24 Hours of Daytona, where Enzo had his turn at humiliating Henry. Reinforcing that comeuppance — and the part of the whole story that Ford v Ferrari most pointedly doesn’t talk about — is that, in a faithful recreation of Ford’s ’66 abasement, he had the winning 330 P3/4 flanked by the second-place 330 P4 and the final podium-finisher, number 26 412 P, all cross the finish line in unison.
How important was this victory to Ferrari? According to legend, Enzo kept a picture of the trio on their final lap at that ’67 Daytona race by his side until the day he died. That was his revenge. That is why the Daytona SP3 Icona exists.
Keyword: Motor Mouth: What Matt Damon didn’t tell you about ‘Ford v Ferrari’