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Ferrari patent suggests one-off SP FFX

You remember that batch of patent drawings we brought you a couple of weeks ago showing an unspecified Ferrari coupe? The interwebs were ablaze in speculation over what the car depicted could be, and we've been watching them all until we landed on the one that seems to make the most sense.
While some speculated that this could be a new California, updated to look more like the F12 and FF, our friends over at Jalopnik suggest, with sound reason, that what we're actually looking at is what we figured in the first place: that this is a one-off FF-based coupe being built for a private customer.
Perhaps the single biggest indicator doesn't lie in the drawings themselves, but the detail that everyone else seemed to have missed: at the same time as these drawings were submitted, Ferrari filed for another patent with the Italian government for the name SP FFX and the logo pictured above.

Drive like a prince: Join us for a walk through Monaco's car collection

Small, crowded, and a royal pain in the trunk lid to drive into during rush hour, Monaco sounds like an improbable location for a huge car museum. And yet, this tiny city-state has been closely linked to car culture for over a century. It hosts two major racing events every year, many of its residents would qualify for a frequent shopper card if Rolls-Royce issued one, and Prince Rainier III began assembling a collection of cars in the late 1950s. He opened his collection to the public in 1993 and the museum quickly turned into a popular tourist attraction. The collection continued to grow after his death in April 2005; it moved to a new facility located right on Hercules Port in July 2022. Monaco being Monaco, you'd expect to walk into a room full of the latest, shiniest, and most powerful supercars ever to shred a tire. That's not the case: while there is no shortage of high-horsepower machines, the first cars you see after paying ˆ10 (approximately $11) to get in are pre-war models. In that era, the template for the car as we know it in 2023 hadn't been created, so an eclectic assortment of expensive and dauntingly experimental machines roamed whatever roads were available to them. One is the Leyat Helica, which was built in France in 1921 with a 1.2-liter air-cooled flat-twin sourced from the world of aviation. Fittingly, the two-cylinder spun a massive, plane-like propeller. Government vehicles get a special spot in the museum. They range from a Cadillac Series 6700 with an amusing blend of period-correct French-market yellow headlights and massive fins to a 2011 Lexus LS 600h with a custom-made transparent roof panel that was built by Belgian coachbuilder Carat Duchatelet for Prince Albert II's wedding. Here's where it all gets a little weird: you've got a 1952 Austin FX3, a Ghia-bodied 1959 Fiat 500 Jolly, a 1960 BMW Isetta, and a 1971 Lotus Seven. That has to be someone's idea of a perfect four-car garage.  One of the most significant cars in the collection lurks in the far corner of the main hall, which is located a level below the entrance. At first glance, it's a kitted-out Renault 4CV with auxiliary lights, a racing number on the front end, and a period-correct registration number issued in the Bouches-du-Rhone department of France. It doesn't look all that different than the later, unmodified 4CV parked right next to it. Here's what's special about it: this is one of the small handful of Type 1063 models built by Renault for competition.

Ferrari 812 Superfast roadster on the way next year?

We'll lay this rumor here as a marker and compare it to future events. In a thread on the Ferrari Chat forum anticipating the reveal of the Monza SP1 and SP2, Ferrari expert Marcel Massini stopped by a few weeks ago to write, "Just wait till the 812 S Spider comes out (with a folding roof similar to the Portofino)." We don't know where Massini got his information, but he comes with credentials. The Swiss resident has been called "the world's leading Ferrari historian," documenting the Italian carmaker in books and articles for more than 35 years, and in 2014 he debunked the story of a 250 GTO for sale for $63 million because he knows where each of the 39 remaining GTO's are parked. If there's an 812 Superfast convertible on the way, the question is whether it will be another severely limited edition. Ferrari has lately been at its most restrained with V12 series production convertible models. The most recent was the F60 America, based on the F12 Berlinetta. That model was for the U.S. only, and Ferrari built 10. Before that, Ferrari made 80 examples of the 599 SA Aperta; this is the company that built 209 of the LaFerrari Aperta. The Ferrari 575M Superamerica, the first Ferrari with an electric hardtop, got 559 examples, and the brand made 448 models of the 550 Barchetta Pininfarina in 2001. You need to go back to the 1973 365 GTS/4 for the next-most-recent droptop V12. As for the roof mechanism, another forum member said he'd seen the car and the roof opens in the style of the mid-engined 488 Spider. On the Portofino, the entire rear decklid raises, the roof and backlight split in two, and a folding truss lays them upright in the trunk. The 488 roof also breaks in two, but it flips around hinges atop the B-pillar, resting upside down in a space above the engine. Mimicking the 488 for a front-engined GT would evoke the 575 Superamerica. That glass roof and backlight on that car were one piece that rotated around the B-pillar axis; when the roof was open, the underside of the roof was exposed. A bit of trivia: Leonardo Fioravanti designed the droptop 365 GTS and the roof mechanism for the 575 Superamerica. Yet another forum member said he attempted to place a deposit on a convertible 812S, but his dealer didn't know anything about the car, which isn't surprising. Related Video: Forum user gt_lusso wrote that the 812S Spider will come within 12 months.