Description

The Ferrari P6 Berlinetta Speciale was a striking concept car unveiled by Pininfarina in 1968, created as a design study to showcase what the next generation of Ferrari mid-engined road cars might look like. At the time, Ferrari was still finding its footing with mid-engine configurations for customer cars, having only recently introduced the Dino line. The P6 Berlinetta Speciale was never intended for production, but it became an influential design exercise that helped shape Ferrari’s styling direction in the 1970s.

The P6 was designed under the guidance of Leonardo Fioravanti at Pininfarina, who would later be responsible for some of Ferrari’s most iconic road cars. The Berlinetta Speciale was imagined around a mid-mounted V12 engine, although it was never fitted with a working drivetrain. Its proportions emphasized the low, wide, and aggressive stance that defined late-1960s sports cars. The long rear deck, sharply tapered nose, and fastback roofline gave the car a purposeful look, clearly inspired by Ferrari’s prototype racers such as the 330 P4, but reimagined for road use.

The design of the P6 Berlinetta Speciale carried many features that would later find their way into production Ferraris. The large side air intakes, wedge-inspired silhouette, and angular body lines foreshadowed models such as the Ferrari 365 GT4 BB and the later Berlinetta Boxer series of the 1970s. Its clean surfaces and taut lines also reflected the shift in design language from the organic curves of the 1960s to the sharper, more aggressive forms that became popular in the 1970s.

Though the P6 Berlinetta Speciale never went beyond the concept stage, it was an important car in Ferrari’s evolution. It represented Ferrari and Pininfarina’s vision of how a road-going berlinetta could be adapted to a mid-engine layout, something that would become a defining trait of Ferrari’s high-performance road cars in the decades that followed. It also reinforced the collaborative relationship between Ferrari and Pininfarina, with Fioravanti’s bold concepts serving as the foundation for production models.

Today, the Ferrari P6 Berlinetta Speciale is remembered as a fascinating glimpse into Ferrari’s future thinking during the late 1960s. While it was never meant to be driven, its influence is visible in some of Ferrari’s most important models of the 1970s, and it stands as one of Pininfarina’s most visionary design studies. Its role as a bridge between Ferrari’s racing prototypes and its future mid-engined road cars makes it a significant part of Ferrari’s design heritage.