Want to know what it’s like to be David Beckham? Or Lewis Hamilton? Turn up at the Le Mans Classic in a Ferrari Daytona SP3 and you’ll get a glimpse. There is never any shortage of lip-dribbling metal in France at this time of year but pitch up in an SP3 and they all disappear. The crowd, it seems, only has eyes for you. Here endeth this review.
Or it should. Because when I drive any new car, my job is to tell you whether it is fit for the purpose for which it was designed. And in this important regard, the SP3 is staggeringly, preternaturally fit for purpose. Which is why all 599 units have already been sold despite a price tag of €2 million (just over £1.7 million as I write) before extras. At Le Mans it hoovered up the stares like no other car I’ve driven in any other place. And I’ve driven and been to a few. To say it makes you feel like a millionaire is to criminally undersell its talent in this area. Billionaire is more like it and, I would surmise, more accurate too.
As the name implies, the SP3 is the third in Ferrari’s ‘Icona’ series of cars, started in 2018 with the Barchetta-bodied SP1 and SP2 Monzas which were intended to evoke memories of Ferrari’s stripped back sports racing roadsters of the 1950s. As the other half of its name suggests, the SP3 has another era in its sights, specifically Ferrari’s historic podium lock-out at the 1967 Daytona 24 Hours. It has nothing to do with the 365 GTB/4 front-engined supercar whose ‘Daytona’ nickname was never officially recognised by the factory.
So it’s not surprising to see in the SP3 elements of the P3/4, P4 and 412P racers which came respectively first, second and third that famous day. As an aside and if it’s of interest, these three cars all look alike because the P3/4 was a factory P3 upgraded to P4 spec, the 412P was a customer specification P3/4 and the P4 was, well, a P4. But I digress. The SP3’s voluptuous wheelarches are all P4, its slatted rear clearly based on a concept for the P4’s one time intended successor, Pininfarina’s startlingly styled, little known Project 222. And I’m still wondering why Ferrari didn’t jump a number and just call it the SP4…
