This Ferrari Testarossa Shooting Brake Concept Is The Thoroughbred The Purosangue Wants To Be
Purosangue is Italian for “thoroughbred,” which is a bold name for a Ferrari that rides high and has four doors. Ferrari won’t even call it an SUV, yet it’s still the car Ferrari purists argue about most.
Ferrari has built family-friendly cars before, and the coolest ones were long-roof GTs that stayed low and kept a V12 under the hood. That bloodline went quiet once the Purosangue showed up and took over the job.
A new HotCars Exclusive concept takes one of Ferrari’s most famous ’80s faces and shows what a true thoroughbred family Ferrari could look like.
Ferrari Has Been Building Practical Thoroughbreds For Decades
Ferrari’s long-roof story starts with the 1962 Breadvan, a 250 GT SWB rebuilt for Count Giovanni Volpi after Enzo Ferrari refused to sell him a 250 GTO. Engineer Giotto Bizzarrini designed it, and coachbuilder Piero Drogo shaped its chopped Kamm tail. At Le Mans that year, it passed every GTO it faced before a broken driveshaft ended its race.
Ferrari made the idea official in 2011 with the FF, a three-door, four-seat shooting brake that was also its first production four-wheel-drive car. Its 6.3-liter V12 made 651 hp, which made it one of the quickest ways to haul a family and its luggage. The GTC4Lusso replaced it in 2016 with 681 hp, and Ferrari ended its production in 2020.
The Purosangue then took over in 2022 as the family-car role with a 6.5-liter V12 making 715 hp and 528 lb-ft. It hits 60 mph in 3.3 seconds, tops out at 193 mph, and starts at around $400,000. It also rides taller and adds rear-hinged back doors, so the low-slung Ferrari wagon effectively died with the GTC4Lusso.
This Testarossa Concept Gives Ferrari Its Shooting Brake Back
This HotCars Exclusive concept reimagines the iconic Ferrari Testarossa from the 1980s as a modern two-door shooting brake. It’s a digital creation rather than a real car, but it neatly fills the gap the GTC4Lusso left behind.
The original Testarossa ran from 1984 to 1991, with a Pininfarina design led by Leonardo Fioravanti. Its 4.9-liter flat-12 made 385 hp, and nearly 10,000 cars were built, including the later 512 TR and F512 M. The famous side strakes fed the twin radiators mounted at the back.
Up front, the concept keeps the quad pop-up headlights in their raised position and pairs them with a full-width grille housing slim driving lights. A deeper lip spoiler sits underneath, giving the nose a lower and meaner look than the original’s.
The strakes still run along the doors and rear flanks, but the roof now stretches flat all the way to the tail. A body-colored panel splits the extended side glass, and a roof spoiler caps the new glasshouse.
The rear keeps the full-width louvered taillight panel, now tucked below a glass hatch that opens up room for luggage. Quad exhaust tips and a diffuser add modern muscle, while polished deep-dish wheels with yellow center caps and a slammed ride height finish the look.
In 1986, Ferrari built a one-off Testarossa Spider for Fiat chairman Gianni Agnelli, so the badge has worn an unusual body before.
Why This Concept Wears The Thoroughbred Title Better
The concept stays low and keeps just two doors, which already makes it look more thoroughbred than the taller, four-door Purosangue. Its wide hips and side strakes also let it read as a mid-engine supercar from most angles.
Ferrari revived the Testarossa name in 2025 with the 849, the first new Testarossa since the F512 M of the mid-1990s. It uses an updated twin-turbo V8 hybrid making 1,036 hp and costs about $540,000 in Europe, but it barely resembles the original. This concept does the opposite by putting the classic face and strakes front and center.
If we got to pick the engine, a naturally aspirated flat-12 would be the perfect tribute to the 434-hp F512 M, the last flat-12 Ferrari ever built. The Purosangue’s 6.5-liter V12 would be the more realistic option, with just as good a soundtrack.
Ferrari has no plans to build anything like this, which lets the concept skip every compromise a real production car would need. That purity is exactly what makes it the thoroughbred the Purosangue wants to be.
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