| Like errant cousins never mentioned at family reunions, discarded car designs were once left to rot in their parents' basements. We might see sketches of what wasn't to be, but rarely the actual rejected shapes. So it came as a pleasant surprise at the opening of a new wing of the Ferrari museum in Maranello, Italy, to see the finalists of the LaFerrari design competition.
The project had been code-named F150 and the factory has three full-size models on display: the production-spec LaFerrari design and two rejected versions, all designed in-house with no mention of Pininfarina. The two designed that were passed over carry the names Tensostruttura and Manta, and both were finished in May of 2011. Ferrari says that the final design was finished in August of last year—some seven months prior to its debut at the 2013 Geneva auto show. Also on display is an interior buck for LaFerrari, one of the design clays, and a cobbled-together hybrid-powertrain development mule. The mule is based on a stretched 458 platform but featured the production-spec powertrain consisting of a 789-hp V-12 and 161-hp electric motor, and it was tested with the help of Ferrari's Formula 1 driver Fernando Alonso.
Ferrari's "Dual Frame" prototypes also highlight the Italian marque's taste for experimentation. Suspending an F50 passenger compartment on elastic blocks within a very rigid chassis, the aim was to isolate occupants from all noise and vibration. Two prototypes were tested between 2000 and 2005—one with a V-8, the other with a V-12—and after mediocre results, Ferrari abandoned the project.  from Car and Driver Blog http://blog.caranddriver.com | |||
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