It’s the third of the Icona-series cars, after the Ferrari 812 Superfast-based, barchetta-bodied Monza SP1 and Monza SP2, but the first that you can use properly, on account of it having refinements such as a windscreen and roof.
Like its name, its styling is designed to evoke memories of that great day more than fifty years ago. Those curvaceous front wings and rear haunches are pure P4 and all the better for it. I’ve always considered the P4 the most beautiful car of any kind ever created by anyone anywhere in the world.
Whereas the SP1 and SP2 looked almost cartoonish in the extremity and impracticality of their design, the SP3 is nothing more or less than simply very beautiful, Ferrari’s best design work since at least the LaFerrari of 2013, despite no shortage of other candidates.
This is a surprisingly important point. Pretty though the cars are, I don’t think people tend to spend hours lingering over the looks of the Portofino, Roma, F8 Tributo or 812 Superfast.
But you would if you owned an SP3 Daytona. You would probably never see another one, and the novelty of a shape this striking would likely never wear off. So here’s a Ferrari from which a great deal of pleasure can be derived from several yards away.
Before we examine the car, however, we do need to understand what we have here, which is a kind of Ferrari’s greatest hits of the 21st century packed into one car.
Its greatest chassis, the carbonfibre monocoque of the LaFerrari, housing its greatest engine, the V12 from the 812 Competizione, squeezed into a body of dazzling beauty. Turn up at the right place in it and you will create a stir.
