Ferrari 296 GTB

The Story

For more than half a century, ‘six cylinders’ was a phrase Ferrari said quietly, if at all — the marque built its myth on V12s and screaming V8s, and the only V6 road cars it ever sold wore a different name entirely (Dino, after Enzo’s late son). So when the covers came off the 296 GTB on 24 June 2021, the headline wasn’t just a new berlinetta — it was the return of the six, and the first time Maranello dared put the Prancing Horse on a V6 road car. The 2,992cc 120° twin-turbo unit (F163 BC) uses a ‘hot-vee’ layout with both turbos inside the wide vee; combined with a plug-in hybrid system, total output is 830 cv (819 hp). 0–100 km/h in 2.9 s, over 330 km/h, and ~25 km of near-silent electric running.

The controversy wrote itself: a turbocharged, hybridised V6 in Ferrari’s junior supercar read, to purists, like downsizing dressed as progress. Maranello’s answer was numbers and noise. The V6 delivers 221 cv per litre, which Ferrari claims as a specific-output record for any production engine; and the sound — via a 120° firing order and a ‘hot-tube’ resonator piped into the cabin — earned the engine an in-house nickname during development: piccolo V12, the little V12. Designed at the Ferrari Styling Centre under Flavio Manzoni with a nod to the 1963 250 LM, the 296 was conceived to celebrate its cylinder count, not apologise for it.

Whether it succeeds is the most interesting argument in modern Ferrari. The 296 matters because it’s the proving ground for the hybrid-V6 era — the architecture that now underpins the F80 hypercar — and the moment Ferrari asked enthusiasts to fall in love with six cylinders for the first time since the Dino. The verdicts are not unanimous; that’s exactly why it’s a landmark.