- Ferrari’s latest hypercar was almost designed as a single-seater, aiming for extreme proportions.
- The F80’s unique “+1” cabin separates driver and passenger, giving it the feel of a single-seater.
- With production capped at 799 units, the flagship model has already sold out completely.
With a price tag of around $4 million and a complex hybrid powertrain delivering a staggering 1,184 hp, the Ferrari F80 represents the pinnacle of road-legal motoring for the Italian brand. Yet, as Ferrari’s head of marketing recently disclosed, this hypercar could have pushed the envelope even further.
In a recent interview with Top Gear, Ferrari’s marketing chief, Enrico Galliera, let slip that early designs for the LaFerrari’s successor initially called for a single-seater setup—a radical departure from tradition that could have turned heads even in the avant-garde world of hypercars. In the end, Ferrari opted for a two-seat configuration, but it’s not your average two-seater by any stretch.
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“When we started the project, the idea had come out initially that this car should be a single seater,” Galliera revealed. “Why? Because we wanted to make it have really extreme proportions, so a very narrow cabin, shoulders as wide as possible, a wide track and so on. Clearly this was a provocation, but by working together we managed to achieve the effect of a real single-seater, while not giving up the passenger space.”
Ferrari’s designers ultimately settlend on giving the F80 two seats, but with a twist. The Italian company describes the new F80 as a ‘+1’ and has created a cabin that distinctively separates the driver from the passenger. Whereas the driver gets a special racing bucket seat that can be trimmed in a variety of different colors, the passenger doesn’t even get a real seat but rather sits in a padded area of the tub trimmed in the same muted color as the rest of the cabin. This passenger ‘seat’ is also set slightly further back than the driver’s seat.
Further separating the driver and passenger is a center spine and console heavily angled towards the driver. This should make the F80 feel a little like a single-seater, while still providing owners with the option to bring along a passenger.
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This unique interior design has allowed Ferrari to engineer a cockpit that’s not only narrower for aerodynamic purposes but also imbued with the character you’d expect from a flagship hypercar. It’s aggressive, uncompromising, and unmistakably Ferrari.
Production of the F80 will be limited to just 799 units, and unsurprisingly, every single one has already been spoken for.
