Ferrari Daytona SP3 review

You probably remember Le Mans '66, the 2019 Matt Damon film in which Ford and Carroll Shelby come across the Atlantic to duff up Ferrari on its home turf.

- Andrew Frankel

What you won't remember is the film Daytona '67, because it hasn't been made yet. Because what Ford tends not to crow about quite so much is that Ferrari returned the compliment the very next time the two teams met to race twice around the clock, at the aforementioned race track the following year.

Two works 4.0-litre Ferrari P4s (well, one was actually technically a P3 modified to P4 specification) faced six factory Ford GT40 MkIIs with 7.0-litre engines and trounced the lot of them.

In Ferrari folklore, if not public consciousness, the event was so fabled that the next road car was never called by its 365 GTB/4 title but instead and simply Daytona.

Ferrari itself never called a car a Daytona —not, at least, until now, the car you're looking at being the Daytona SP3.

WHAT'S IT LIKE?

It's the third of the Icona-series cars, after the Ferrari 812 Superfast-based, barchetta-bodied Monza SP1 and Monza SP2, but the first that you can use properly, on account of it having refinements such as a windscreen and roof.

Like its name, its styling is designed to evoke memories of that great day more than 50 years ago. Those curvaceous front wings and rear haunches are pure P4 and all the better for it. I've always considered the P4 the most beautiful car of any kind ever created by anyone anywhere in the world.

Whereas the SP1 and SP2 looked almost cartoonish in the extremity and impracticality of their design, the SP3 is nothing more or less than simply very beautiful, Ferrari's best design work since at least the LaFerrari of 2013, despite no shortage of other candidates.