14 November 2023
Ferrari piles on the downforce for its first road-legal, special-series XX model
It’s almost a decade since Ferrari’s last extra-special-series ‘XX’ car, the La Ferrari-based FXX-K, was introduced. Between that, the original FXX, FXX Evolutione, and the 599XX and -Evo, it’s reckoned that Maranello has so far either made (or, in some cases, remade) fewer than a hundred XX-branded cars in total, only for its wealthiest and most favoured customers.Lately, however, those favoured few have been distracted by other things. The firm’s ‘Icona’ models have been cars of more jewel-like, showcar-level design appeal than the more brutally purposeful XXs, as well as extra-special engineering. So why rekindle the old track-special lineage now? Isn’t it a backwards step?Well, it might be – if that was really what Maranello was up to. But, in some respects at least, the Ferrari SF90 XX Stradale looks a little like an XX model in name only. It’s got an XX badge, sure; and it’s got some very special design features and specification upgrades, to which we’ll come. But buying one won’t get you into the ultra-exclusive ‘XX’ trackdays that Ferrari lays on for its VVIP multi-millionaire collectors. The 1400 customers who will buy one of these cars would outnumber the existing ‘XX’ club members by about fifteen to one (and that’d be an awful lot more expensive catering).The very existence of this car, in fact, suggests that Maranello’s XX experiment may be drawing to a close (although I dare say Maranello will insist otherwise). This, Ferrari says, is more of a tribute to the idea of a Ferrari XX car than a fully paid up member of the track-only model set in itself. And yet it’s still a car with some incredible track potential.