The 2023 Purosangue 4-door sedan is the first Ferrari of that body type (Wikipedia entry
here). Apparently the name is that of the Purosangue Orientale, an Italian horse breed, a kind of gesture to Ferrari's prancing horse symbolism.. The term "purosangue" can be translated as "pure blood" or even "purebred." Not to mention the ancient Bugatti marketing slogan
Le pur-sang des automobiles and the recent use of Pur Sang as the name of a Bugatti Veyron model.
I see from the link that it was styled in-house under the direction of
Flavio Manzoni, a man of considerable experience. And I controversially assert that this design from the Centro Stile Ferrari is better than much of the Ferrari work by Pininfarina, formerly its major design source.
Below are some publicity photos of the Purosangue.
Gallery
The face is fairly clean by today's Rococo standards. However, the curve linking the headlight housings falls into cliché territory.
The car has an aggressive stance, but that is reasonable, considering its motor cranks out 715 horsepower. Note the continuation of the above-the-grille sweep onto the body side -- justification for the cliché.
The hot-air outlets by the after edges of the hood are functional, without ornamentation, and blend with body sculpting. The bold rear fender bulge implies the power focused there. Rear end shaping is suggestive of SUVs by Maserati, Jaguar, and Alfa Romeo, though the Purosangue is essentially a sedan.
Note the hood, long by today's standards. I like long hoods, and this one is justified because the motor is a V-12.
An interesting feature is the door hinging, the after door attached to the C-pillar. That arrangement was common in America for many years, but phased out at the end of the 1940s. Given the "suicide door" label applied to aft-hinged car doors, I wonder if there was a strong engineering reason for that feature here.
There is one late American example of such door hinging -- on the classic 1961 Lincoln Continental. It probably didn't diminish it sales potential much, given how attractive the design was.
Besides the cool factor the suicide rear doors are actually necessary for both cars. The backrest of the back seat is visible on both of these so you can see how far behind the door opening (including the window part) it is. You need the forward part of the door opening that would be blocked by a normal door to get in and out - moving well forward as you exit. (I owned one of those Lincolns for about ten years.)
ReplyDeleteWith the Lincoln the designers (stylists, then) wanted a roof and side window design that would suggest the two door Mark II, so the rear door windows are very short and the sail panel is very wide. Sitting in the back seat and looking directly to the side will get you a view of the it, not the scenery.
The Ferrari is just squeezing the back seat in between the rear wheel wells.
Just don't let everyone get out at the same time in a tight parking lot space with either car or everyone will be stuck in between the doors. Take turns, kids.
No editing here. A "the" slipped in - should be "view of it", obviously.
ReplyDeleteThe position of the back seat on the Ferrari harks back to pre-WW cars with the back seat over the rear axle. The rear armrests would be on the body, not the door - a feature continued on some new postwar body Chrysler products, the most conservative of the postwar Big Three.
Without looking up any stats other than seeing the 7"+ ground clearance I'm pretty sure the Ferrari looks about twice as big in reality than it does in photos. It's very much a sports car shape blown up to a larger size.