Ferrari’s Next-Gen Hypercar Seen Testing With Hybrid Power, No V12 Sound
The camouflaged Ferrari was spotted driving around Maranello with its dramatic aero, but it was missing a certain sound.
A video has surfaced of a future Ferrari hypercar prowling the streets of Maranello, revealing a handful of details about what could be the Italian automaker's next halo car. Apart from the dramatic aero, we can't tell much about its looks under the camo. However, we can narrow down what powers it—likely a turbocharged, hybrid V6.
Captured by YouTube user Varryx, the video shows a heavily camouflaged Ferrari with a body assembled from a mishmash of multiple cars. There's some LaFerrari to its cockpit, 296 GTB in the headlights, and SF90 in the tails, plus a huge fixed rear wing not used in any of them. That tells us whatever's being tested has more performance than a Broadway play, while its high-voltage stickers tell us it's a hybrid.
While we can hear its engine too, it doesn't emit a distinct note, masking the number of cylinders. Even so, Ferrari's past statements suggest we aren't hearing a traditional V12.
During last year's Capital Markets Day presentation, Auto Express reports Ferrari confirmed its future hybrids will only use V6 and V8 engines, and that its V12s will be for pure-ICE models only. Furthermore, its presentation suggested that its next hypercar would utilize "technology transferred from Formula 1 and [Ferrari's] Le Mans Hypercar," both of which use turbocharged, hybrid V6 engines. The prototype in the video doesn't exactly sound like a V8 either, so that pretty much pegs it as a V6.
If a Ferrari hypercar is really coming without a V12, that'd make it Ferrari's first halo car not to feature one since the F40 exited production 31 years ago. In fact, it'd have no obvious precedent as a six-cylinder Ferrari flagship. It's uncharted territory for Ferrari, though it's hard to imagine this backfiring in a Jaguar XJ220-like snafu for Ferrari. After all, if its V6 is bred from not one, but two top-level racers, then it's got a better shot of rolling out smoothly than the deeply troubled, F1-engined Mercedes-AMG One.
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