Ferrari LaFerrari - evolution of a hypercar

So does Manzoni feel that he needs to be an engineer as well as a designer nowadays to be able to create a car like LaFerrari? “No,” he says firmly. “But I’m an architect, and I’m very passionate about these things. And anyway, if you don’t understand the specific needs of every single part of the car technically and aerodynamically, it’s difficult to make a car like this very beautiful. You cannot do it, basically.”

As the project progressed, so did the desire from everyone at Ferrari – right up to and including company chairman Luca di Montezemolo – to produce a totally modern but beautiful and dramatic-looking car, and to do so entirely in-house, without the aid of Pininfarina. Any design details that were considered retro or pastiche were instantly cast asunder. 

“I didn’t want any kind of retro feeling to the design,” declares Manzoni. “Maybe the feeling from some of the more beautiful Ferraris, perhaps, such as the P3, but overall I didn’t want it to be retro. I’m a designer, so let me look forwards, and not always backwards to the past.”  

Eventually, two different design proposals were chosen to pursue from the many different themes that were originally put forward, full-size examples of which occupy pride of place in the museum, side by side with the real thing. The first of these is called Manta, the second Tensostruttura, and both feature all sorts of recognisable details that ended up on the final car. 

The distinctive nose of the Manta is all but unchanged for LaFerrari, for example, while the tensioned, tent-like side strakes and ‘lightweight feel’ of much of the Tensostruttura’s side and rear bodywork are also clearly identifiable.

The three of them together look quite magnificent and you can almost sense the evolution of the car as it happened. What’s more intriguing still is the series of design proposals that line the walls behind the full-scale models. These images, explains Manzoni, effectively tell the story of LaFerrari’s creation in a way that’s never been made public before, starting from day one in September 2010 and going right up to that memorable Geneva unveiling on 6 March this year.

Whether you love, like or loathe the end result – the sheer boldness of LaFerrari’s styling is unlikely to meet with universal approval – the fact that you can wander into the Ferrari museum, hand over €13 and bask in the story of its creation is proof of a tectonic shift in attitude at Ferrari. In the old days there were too many closed doors, too many secrets that had to be kept. At one time, the rest of the world simply wasn’t welcome behind the doors to that old factory gate.

But nowadays it’s a completely different story at Ferrari. The entire DNA of LaFerrari is there, writ large for all to see, and it’s something Ferrari is proud to talk about and have on display. There are no secrets any more at Maranello, it seems.

Even the trophies on show in the museum’s similarly beguiling F1 room are, I’m amazed to discover, the real thing. There isn’t even any glass protecting them from the clutches of the visitors that continually wander in and out, mouths more often than not wide open.

You could, if you were of the wrong persuasion, probably even slip F1 driver Fernando Alonso’s winner’s trophy from Malaysia last year into your rucksack and walk straight out; the accessibility to what’s on display is that good.

People don’t pinch stuff from the Ferrari museum, though, because there would appear to be a fundamental respect for what’s on show here from pretty much everyone who walks through the door. You get the distinct impression that you are being made welcome into a very special world.

It is a world in which the machinery on display – which includes just about every single Ferrari you’d care to think of since 1947 is on show, including a £25 million blue and white 250 GTO – is, in the end, what matters most of all.

“Ferrari is extremely proud of what it has achieved here and over the years, so why would they not want to show it off?” Manzoni says, before rushing away to make an appointment with his boss, ex-engineer Amedeo Felisa, to talk about something far important than we could imagine.