Some people wait for spring to take out their Ferrari. And starting this year, that Ferrari might well be the new Amalfi Spider, Maranello’s latest interpretation of the open-air gran turismo, where the metal folding roof of the coupé gives way to a fully redesigned fabric soft top, built from scratch to give the car an unmistakable identity even with the sky as its ceiling.
The structure is five-layer, with an integrated rear window and six finish options: two in technical fabric and four customizable colors, with the possibility of extending the same finish to the trunk cover and surrounding surfaces.
Under the hood, no surprises. The 3.9-liter twin-turbo V8 from the F154e family, an engine that has collected awards the way some people collect parking tickets, delivers 631 horsepower and has absolutely nothing left to prove. The Amalfi Spider also features an integrated active rear spoiler and has benefited from serious aerodynamic development work, including an interior windstop deflector. With the top down, trunk capacity drops from 255 to 173 liters. For a full-blooded GT, that’s a number you can live with.
Apparently, not everyone can. Luca Serafini, a virtual automotive designer based in Modena, find him on social media as lsdesignsrl, put together an unsolicited CGI proposal with a clear agenda: sharper proportions, a look that’s simultaneously more elegant and more aggressive.
The result is a completely redesigned front end, featuring ultra-slim LED headlights, a double-lip grille with the Prancing Horse on the central element, and new lateral air intakes in the bumper. Star-spoke wheels borrowed from the same designer’s recent Ferrari Testarossa concept tie the whole thing together with a stylistic consistency that’s hard to dismiss.
The real Amalfi Spider doesn’t need corrections. But the speed and quality with which the digital design community moves says something genuinely interesting about the relationship between the public and luxury brands. Maranello sets the rules. Someone else, in the meantime, takes the liberty of rewriting them.
