After taking the veils off the 812 Competizione in April, the best name in the business prepares for the reveal of a wildly different car. Codenamed F171, the “Baby Ferrari” will premiere on June 24th with a force-fed V6.
The spiritual heir of the Dino series from the 1960s and 1970s features a brand-new powerplant for the Prancing Horse, expected to displace 3.0 liters and produce 590 horsepower. Those numbers are unmistakably similar to McLaren’s brand-new Artura, and the similarities won’t end here.
Hearsay suggests a 120-degree angle between the cylinder banks, which is bizarre at first glance. But it does make sense because an even-firing V6 detonates a cylinder for every 120-degree rotation of the crankshaft. The geeky stuff continues with the shorter - and therefore stronger - crankshaft resulted from each pair of connecting rods sharing the same crank journal.
The wide-angled valley further allows Ferrari to stick a couple of spinny contraptions between the cylinder banks, which results in less piping, reduced pressure losses, better packaging for the already limited engine bay, and a more responsive powerplant across the rev range. In the Artura’s case, maximum torque is delivered from 2,250 to 7,000 revolutions per minute.
But internal combustion alone doesn’t make the F171 competitive because Maserati has a more potent V6 in the MC20 supercar (621 horsepower and 538 pound-feet or 730 Nm of torque). The icing on the cake of the yet-unnamed Ferrari comes in the guise of an electric motor, which is most likely connected to a plug-in system rather than a traditional hybrid setup.
Estimated to develop in the ballpark of 700 horsepower with PHEV assistance, the F171 should be good for anything between 25 to 30 kilometers (16 to 19 miles) of driving range in all-electric mode. As for the starting price, it wouldn't come as a surprise to see the Maranello-based automaker charging McLaren Artura money for the more affordable sibling of the SF90 Stradale.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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