RML replicates the ’60s looks with a ’90s powertrain—and a very 21st century price—in its Short Wheelbase.
product, and you will look in vain for any prancing horse logos on it. But it is clearly inspired by the Italian company’s gorgeous sports cars from the early 1960s, most obviously the famous 250 GTO which has long since ascended into the classic car stratosphere. The Short Wheelbase’s carbon-fiber bodywork pays reverential homage, but it doesn’t become a pastiche, and the proportions are clearly different from those of an actual ’60s Ferrari.
The Short Wheelbase was born from the idea of a portfolio piece to show the company’s capabilities. The original intention was to make a hypercar, something RML has plentiful experience of having produced the Nio EP9 EV that set a Nürburgring Nordschleife record in 2017, plus a street-legal version of the otherwise track-only Aston Martin Vulcan.
The Short Wheelbase’s carbon-fiber bodywork pays reverential homage, but it doesn’t become a pastiche. The 550 was chosen to serve as the basis both because it would give a modern-ish Ferrari V12, but also because of a relative abundance; Ferrari produced more than 3000 globally between 1996 and 2001. RML plans to build a run of 30 of the Short Wheelbase, each of which will require a donor car. The transformation is more complex than just changing bodywork; the 550 is stripped to its component parts and its chassis blasted clean, repaired if necessary and repainted.
That breadth of the power band means that gear changing is largely optional on twisty roads, experimentation proving that third gear remains a viable choice all the way from 20 mph to over 100 mph. But there is so much tactile joy in negotiating the planes of the open-gate shifter that it encourages purely gratuitous use, even if the prototype’s felt stiffer than I remember the 550’s being.
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