BABY DRIVER

Ferrari’s newest model isn’t built by Ferrari. And it’s made in Oxfordshire, not Italy. And it’s an EV. Andrew Frankel explains all

- Andrew Frankel

The Porsche Boxster is not, I grant you, perhaps the most obvious way into a story about a three-quarter-scale recreated Ferrari, but bear with me, because if you understand where the Boxster came from, you’ll understand the Ferrari Testa Rossa J too.

Most Boxsters of a certain age came not from Porsche in Stuttgart but Finland, where they were built for Porsche by Valmet. And the Ferrari Testa Rossa J comes from Bicester, where they are built for Ferrari by The Little Car Company. And what is important about this is that if the Porsche is a Porsche, which it very clearly is, then this is a Ferrari. As with any other Ferrari, Maranello led its design and development. Like any other Ferrari, you can buy one from a Ferrari dealer and like any other Ferrari you can go through the entire atelier process until you end up with a car with a specification that is, in all likelihood, unique to you. Perhaps most telling, particularly for those who still insist this isn’t really a Ferrari, it has a Ferrari chassis plate, too.

All of which confers certain claims to fame on the Ferrari Testa Rossa J. For instance, there is no need to wait years to see what Ferrari’s first full EV might look like, because you’re looking at it right now. With a top speed of less than 60mph, it is certainly the slowest Ferrari there has ever been. And while British blue bloods such as Jaguar, Aston Martin and Bentley have been happy to plunder their pasts, Ferrari has resisted the urge to make modern versions of its older classics, until now. At ¤93,000 (£78,000) before shipping and taxes, it is in real terms almost certainly the cheapest Ferrari ever sold, until you price it on a bang-for-buck basis, at which point it becomes by a distance the most expensive.