Ferrari's 296 GTB: Back To The Future

Ferrari's new plug-in hybrid Berlinetta is inspired by the brand's storied past while laying the roadmap for its electric future

- Sharan Sanil

Two factors are a constant in legacy Ferrari stories - Formula 1, and the founder Enzo Ferrari himself from the sport until his Inseparable death in 1988, il Grande Vecchio (the Great Old Man) was a pastiche of many personas - mysterious, political, autocratic, visionary, even a bit insane- and wore these markers proudly on his sleeves, along with his trademark dark glasses. Wielding prestige and power came naturally to the native of Modena, the town in northern Italy that he made famous with his cars especially when combined with his famous and obsessive fascination with an old Ferrari cornerstone, the V12 engine.

Enzo fought for the V12 like few other manufacturers did, using his considerable influence with the FIA to wrangle them back into Formula 1 after the latter's brief flirtation with V8s. Across the years, this led to Ferrari releasing around 10 iterations of these glorious monsters, alongside a host of smaller tributes to Enzo's eldest son, Alfredo 'Dino' Ferrari. The heir to Ferrari's throne died tragically in 1956 at just 24 from muscular dystrophy, surrounded by blueprints of an engine he would never get to test himself. His prodigiously conceptualised V6 engines would go on to power a host of Ferraris across five decades, all the way up to the mid 2000s.

Today, Enzo's V12s have become a dying breed, with just the 812 Superfast, limited-edition SP1/SP2 Monza, and new SP3 Daytona carrying Ferrari's last F140, 6.5-litre V12s. With over half of Ferrari's current stable offering less than 12 cylinders, the brand has pushed itself past the point of no return, following fellow super-carmakers into an uncertain future of emissions regulations, away from dependence on fossil fuel - a stark departure from Enzo's original idea of a Ferrari - to which Dino was somewhat opposed.