640 Hp Ferrari 550 GTP

[Roadster2]

The uniqueness of any Ferrari is undoubtable and you will agree with me that Prodrive, the British Tuner/Engineer that is responsible for many racing successes including Subaru's multi-championship-winning Impreza rally car, is a force to be reckoned with.

What do you get, then, when you have Prodrive taking care of the Ferrari 550's assault to the European and American Le Mans Series (ALMS) and the whole project is supervised by Peter Stevens (yes - McLaren F1's designer)? Something really really hot: the all-new Ferrari 550 GTP.

The car is a stripped out version of the original 550. We are talking about a special engine upgrade that sees the Ferrari V12 up to 640 hp (from the standard car's 485 hp). We are talking about reconstructing the biggest part of the 550's body with carbonfibre in a weight-saving effort that sees the weight reduced to 1100 kg from the standard car's 1690 kg). What this gives us is a power to weight ratio that is twice that of the original car's.

As a result, the 550 GTP will not have the slightest problem to go past 200 mph (320 km/h).

And...the really interesting detail is that Prodrive and Ferrari have confirmed that a limited number of Ferrari 550 GTPs will be made available to the "public" for an undisclosed price. So you too can get behind the wheel and challenge for the ALMS title! The undisclosed price part does sound a bit tricky though - we would expect it to be at least $500,000 (which is just a rough-FantasyCars.com staff guess given that the standard 550 costs around $250,000).

[YellowMaranello]

Put me down for a couple...

[Chris]

I think it now looks a little like a Marcos, which is a good thing. I never much liked the the 550 (front engine???? Thats so 1960's!) But this looks really neat.