By the time the F50 hit the drawing board, the modern supercar had been defined and for the most part perfected. Supercars are showcases of a manufacturer's technological ability in design and in performance. They are cost-no-object exercises, built in editions often limited to the marketing department's ability to sell them.
Prestigious manufacturers build supercars for a game where racking up magazine covers and feature articles may be as important as making money off the cars. The Ferrari 288 GTO set the stage in 1984, followed by the Porsche 959, the Jaguar XJ220 and the Bugatti EB110. Ferrari upped the bar with its F40, then McLaren blew away the field with the F1, a car so dominating in all respects that until the Bugatti Veyron was introduced more than a decade later, nothing else was in the same league (and some would maintain that even the Veyron isn't in the same league as the F1, but that's a different conversation). With such formidable competition, Ferrari needed a gimmick to make its F50 stand out, and by focusing on Formula One technology, it found one.
Ferrari has a reputation for passing its racing technology down to its street cars. Sometimes it was well after other manufacturers had adopted the technology, as with disc brakes or mid-engines. Other times, Ferrari was ahead of the pack, as with the paddle shift transmission. Ferrari recognized that the F50 could only be incrementally better than previous supercars, so rather than producing a car whose existence would be judged by comparisons to the F40, the company chose a different path. It decided to build a Formula One car for the street. The concept started with two staples of an F1 car-a composite tub and an engine that serves both as a power plant and a part of the chassis. It is doubtful that you'll ever see an F50 stripped of its bodywork, but if you did, you'd find a carbon composite monocoque of just 225 lb. Fasteners are bonded to the tub with aerospace adhesive, and the car is built around the structure. The engine is rigidly attached to the monocoque, and the rear suspension, rear bumper, and rear bodywork are actually attached to the engine. In the front, a sub-frame is attached to the monocoque and it serves as an attachment point for both the racing-derived pushrod suspension and for the front bodywork.
The engine is a close derivative of the F1 V12
The engine is a departure from the 288 GTO's and F40's turbocharged V8s. It is instead a close derivative of a Formula One V12, cast in steel rather than alloy to meet the structural needs of a street car. The 4.7-liter unit is tuned to 513 hp at 8,500 rpm, some 35 horses more than an F40 but 2 hp per liter less than the earlier car. The 8,500 rpm redline is about half the revs an F1 version turns but far more practical for a street car.
The design loosely follows the theme of Pininfarina's Mythos: the nose profile of an F1 car is sculpted in the front of the F50, while with the rear resembles the winged profile of the race car. The aerodynamics are highly developed, again using lessons learned in F1.