What it had to solve
Ferrari's Special Projects program builds unique cars for single clients. The brief: a pure berlinetta that honors the F40's ethos without literally copying it, on 296 GTB architecture, for one collector.
The idea
Take 296 GTB running gear and answer an F40 commission with industrial-design geometry — squared volumes, long low nose, compact fixed wing — instead of retro pastiche.
How it works
The Ferrari Styling Centre under Flavio Manzoni drew an entirely new body: muscular squared shapes, a bespoke Bianco SC40 white, reimagined NACA ducts, Lexan engine-cover louvres. Inside, carbon-Kevlar trim in footwells, console and wheel — a first for a modern Ferrari — with red Jacquard fabric and Alcantara.
What it did
First One-Off Ferrari to win Red Dot: Best of the Best (Product Design 2026, gala 7 July 2026, Essen). Ferrari's 13th BoB since 2015 and 35th Red Dot in 12 years — no other carmaker matches that run. The styling buck is exhibited at the Museo Ferrari in Maranello.
Background
In October 2025 Ferrari revealed the SC40, a one-off commissioned by a single client through its Special Projects program. Mechanically it is a 296 GTB — mid-mounted V6 hybrid, 830 cv, 0-100 km/h in 2.9 seconds — but nothing about the body comes from the parts catalog. The Ferrari Styling Centre, led by chief design officer Flavio Manzoni, gave the car its own silhouette: squared, muscular volumes, a long low nose, a short rear overhang and a fixed rear wing in a bespoke shade called Bianco SC40.
The brief was memory without retro: the car had to evoke the F40, Ferrari's last car personally approved by Enzo Ferrari, without becoming a replica. The studio answered with cues drawn from industrial design — precise geometries instead of curves — and with material storytelling: carbon-Kevlar in the footwells, center console, dashboard inserts, paddles and steering wheel, a first for a modern Ferrari, paired with red Jacquard technical fabric and Alcantara.
In June 2026 the jury of the Red Dot Award: Product Design made the SC40 the first one-off Ferrari ever to receive Red Dot: Best of the Best, the competition's top tier. Five series cars — the Amalfi, 849 Testarossa, 849 Testarossa Spider, 296 Speciale and 296 Speciale A — took regular Red Dots in the same round, and the SC40's styling buck went on display at the Museo Ferrari in Maranello.
Why it lands
One-off status removed every constraint a series car carries — no tooling, no regulation, no volume logic — so the design idea could be judged in its purest form.
The F40 reference gave the studio a fixed emotional target; original geometry kept it from becoming nostalgia.
Carbon-Kevlar in structural-feeling places made the F40's raw, engineering-first ethos tangible inside the cabin, not just on the silhouette.
Ferrari has treated Red Dot as a scoreboard for a decade (13 Best of the Best since 2015), so entering a one-off was also a claim that bespoke work is design leadership, not a sideline.
What you can take
A bespoke commission can double as a design manifesto: freed from tooling and volume logic, the studio tests ideas that later bleed into series cars. Judges grade the idea, not the run.
Since then
The SC40 joined a Special Projects lineage that includes the P540 Superfast Aperta, F12 TRS and J50 — cars once treated as private curiosities. Winning Best of the Best turned this one into a public exhibit: its styling buck is on show at the Museo Ferrari, letting visitors study how the proportions were developed. The award also lands as Ferrari's 35th Red Dot in twelve years, a run no other automaker matches, which reinforces the Maranello studio's habit of feeding one-off ideas into series cars like the 849 Testarossa generation that won Red Dots in the same 2026 round.
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