Some houses tell their history less through archives than through the shapes they leave behind. Twentieth-century industrial Italy produced few objects able to cross eight decades without losing an ounce of their self-evidence: a silhouette, a sound, a particular shade of red can summon an entire country, its workshops, its circuits and its art of living. Ferrari belongs to that rare family of houses whose every creation settles immediately into the shared vocabulary of desire.
On 12 March 1947, between Maranello and nearby Formigine, a twelve-cylinder engine tore across the Emilian countryside: Enzo Ferrari had just fired up the 125 S, the first car to carry his name. Everything the house would become is already present in that morning — the devotion to the V12, racing as a laboratory, coachwork entrusted to Italy’s finest draughtsmen, and that very particular gift for making a mechanical part into something worth contemplating.
Nearly eighty years later, the Maranello house, chaired by John Elkann and led by Benedetto Vigna since September 2021, is still writing in that grammar. We have chosen seven models. Not the rarest, nor the fastest: the ones that each, in turn, moved Ferrari’s own definition of excellence, and whose DNA can still be read in the cars leaving Maranello today.
Ferrari 125 S, the first signature
It began with a commission. In mid-1945, Enzo Ferrari asked the engineer Gioacchino Colombo to draw an entirely new engine, with Giuseppe Busso and Luigi Bazzi alongside him. The car’s name states the method: 125 refers to the unitary displacement, multiplied by twelve to approach 1,500 cubic centimetres. At its first outing, on 11 May 1947 at the Piacenza circuit, Franco Cortese was leading when a fuel pump brought him to a halt; Enzo Ferrari read a promise in it straight away. That promise was kept a fortnight later: on 25 May 1947, Cortese won the Rome Grand Prix over forty laps of the circuit laid out around the Baths of Caracalla — 137.6 kilometres at an average of 88.5 km/h. Over the following four months the 125 S raced thirteen times and won six of them. The house had been born, and it had already won.
Ferrari 250 GTO, the homologated masterpiece
Fifteen years on, Maranello took the logic of the competition grand tourer to its summit. Developed by Giotto Bizzarrini from the 250 GT SWB, the 250 GTO introduced in 1962 owes its designation to homologation itself — Gran Turismo Omologato — which opened the World Manufacturers’ Championship to it. Its 2,953.21 cc twelve-cylinder engine, carried by a remarkably light tubular steel chassis, gave it a fluency behind the wheel that its rivals envied. The record followed: the International Championship for GT Manufacturers in 1962, 1963 and 1964, class wins at Le Mans in 1962 and 1963, at the Targa Florio three years running, and at the Tour de France in 1963 and 1964. Only thirty-six examples were built. That rarity, matched with the absolute rightness of its proportions, made it the benchmark against which every racing berlinetta has since been measured.
Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona, the sovereign berlinetta
In the autumn of 1968, the Paris Salon discovered a silhouette that broke cleanly with the curves of the preceding years. The 365 GTB/4 was drawn at Pininfarina by Leonardo Fioravanti, then built by Scaglietti: steel for the most part, aluminium for the doors, bonnet and boot lid. Beneath that long bonnet, the V12 grew to 4,390 cc, fed by six twin-choke Weber carburettors, with a claimed 352 hp and a top speed beyond 280 km/h. The Daytona nickname, given by the press of the day in memory of Ferrari’s one-two-three at the 1967 Daytona 24 Hours, was never official; it has proved inseparable from the car all the same. This is grand touring at its most sovereign: the power of a racing car, the manners of a road car, and a line that time has not touched.
Ferrari Testarossa, the silhouette of a decade
In October 1984, the Testarossa was unveiled at the Lido on the Champs-Élysées, on the eve of the Paris motor show. Pininfarina turned an engineering requirement into a signature: to feed the side-mounted radiators, the designer ran those horizontal strakes along the flanks, resolving them into the three-dimensional forms of the tail and creating one of the most instantly recognisable motifs in automotive design. The engineering matched the gesture: a flat-twelve derived directly from Formula 1, four valves per cylinder for the first time, 390 hp, more than 290 km/h. Conceived from the outset as a world-market car, it brought a twelve-cylinder Ferrari back to the United States after a decade, and became the emblem of an entire era.
Ferrari F40, Enzo Ferrari’s final wish
On 21 July 1987, at Maranello’s Centro Civico, Ferrari marked the fortieth anniversary of its first road-approved car. The F40 was the manifesto: a berlinetta drawn by Pininfarina, built in composite materials, powered by a 2.9-litre twin-turbocharged V8 that took it from 0 to 100 km/h in four seconds. It became the first road car to pass 200 mph, with no ABS and no electronic controls — driving it remained a matter of hands and perception. Nine hundred orders arrived in the days after the unveiling. It was also the last car presented to the public in the presence of Enzo Ferrari, who died in 1988: a form of testament, in which the house said precisely what it believed a sports car to be.
LaFerrari, the founding hybrid
Maranello has long treated each limited series as a laboratory, and LaFerrari, presented in Geneva in 2013, is where the ground shifted: the first production car from the house to draw on electrification. Its HY-KERS system, taken straight from Formula 1, paired an 800 hp V12 revving to 9,250 rpm with a 120 kW electric motor for a combined 963 hp. The figures tell part of it — 200 km/h from a standing start in 6.9 seconds, a top speed of 350 km/h — but the demonstration matters more: at Ferrari, electrification serves sensation before it serves efficiency. Four hundred and ninety-nine examples were built.
Ferrari F80, the contemporary heir
On 17 October 2024, Maranello revealed the F80, the contemporary summit of that limited-series lineage. Its three-litre 120° V6, designated F163CF, produces 900 hp — a specific output of 300 cv per litre — while the hybrid system’s electric front axle and rear MGU-K add a further 300, bringing the total to 1,200 hp: the most powerful road car ever to leave the factory. Electric turbo technology, with a motor sitting between the turbine and compressor of each turbocharger, makes its debut on a Ferrari road car here. The architecture — turbo V6 with an 800-volt hybrid system — is the one used by the 499P, the house’s endurance racer. Seven hundred and ninety-nine examples are planned.
The thread never breaks. On 9 September 2025, the house presented the 849 Testarossa, a plug-in hybrid berlinetta whose 830 hp twin-turbo V8, working with three electric motors, delivers a total of 1,050 hp and revives a name that entered the language four decades earlier. On track, the 499P gave Ferrari a third consecutive victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2025, a run Maranello had not achieved since the 1960s. Between that morning in March 1947 and machines such as these, the technical distance is vast; the conviction has not moved a millimetre. A Ferrari is built to be driven, and drawn to be looked at for a very long time.
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