Ferrari’s Le Mans Winning Hypercar Might Inspire Three New Road Cars
We’re always told that one of the benefits of top-tier racing is that the tech they use on track could one day trickle down into the cars you and I might drive. This worked for Mercedes, which put its F1 engine in the AMG One and Jaguar has taken its Formula E tech into its EVs. But now, Ferrari looks to be taking that thinking one step further with three road cars inspired by its Le Mans-winning racer.
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The famed Italian team made a triumphant return to endurance racing at Le Mans last month after 50 years away from the 24-hour race. With its 499P hypercar, the Scuderia came out on top with drivers Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, and Antonio Giovinazzi taking the win.
Now, a new report from Car Buzz has found that Ferrari might be planning a trio of road cars based on the monster 499P. According to the site, the Italian automaker has filed trademark applications for three variations on the 499 name, including the 499 GTB, 499 GTS, and a 499 Speciale. The site reports:
Ferrari will introduce a GTB model first, which will be joined by a 499 GTS (Gran Turismo Spider), or drop-top. The 499 Speciale trademarked 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. This will also be available as a Speciale Spider.
The road cars will, of course, need a few modifications that differentiate them from the 499P that Ferrari raced in Le Mans. Namely, the Prancing Horse might want to find room for a passenger in that cabin and that wing might want trimming down a bit.
I see no problems running this on the road. Photo: Hasan Bratic/DeFodi Images (Getty Images)
But for anyone not prepared to accept those kinds of changes, there could be a fourth edition of the 499 on the horizon as well. Car Buzz uncovered a fourth and final trademark application for a 499P Modificata.
If that name sounds familiar, it’s because it’s in a similar vein to Ferrari’s 488 GT Modificata, which is a track-focused model that Ferrari poured all its racing tech into. The 488 was restricted to track time and private meets, so we can expect that to be the case for the proposed 499P Modificata as well.
However, all of this is mere speculation, and we won’t know what Ferrari has up its sleeves until the news is shared by Maranello. Sure, we all like to hope that this means four new Ferraris are on the way, but it could equally just be a case of Ferrari trademarking the 499 name to stop anyone else from strapping that badge to one of their cars.
After all, carmakers around the world have a habit of trademarking and patenting ideas that never make it into the real world. Still, we can all keep our fingers crossed that this could be one of the rare trademarks that makes it into reality.
