This Could Have Happened If Ford Bought Ferrari

Jan. 16, 2020 11:55 AM ET by Jay Traugott / 14 Comments

Say hello to the F40xbody.

It is said history is written by the victors, but in this case, we're kind of glad Ford didn't win. A few years before the Blue Oval beat Ferrari at its own game at the 1966 24 Hours of LeMans, Henry Ford II, aka "The Deuce", attempted to buy Ferrari from its own founder, Enzo Ferrari. Those who have seen the new movie "Ford v Ferrari" should know this story well. Basically, Enzo Ferrari decided at the last minute (or was it pre-planned) to back out of the deal that would have likely given Ford an immediate jump-start into the world of motorsport. Win on Sunday, sell on Monday. That was what the Deuce wanted.

Following his humiliation by Ferrari, Ford ordered what became the GT40 program, and the rest is history. But what if Ford did succeed in buying Ferrari? What could have some of its cars looked like?

Abimelec Design has attempted to answer that with this, shall we say, interesting rendering. What you're looking at is a fusion of a Fox Body Ford Mustang with a Ferrari F40. Its creator calls it the F40xbody. Though their proportions are quite different, they're very similar in size so combining these very different cars together actually worked.

The main challenge was to blend the stubby-looking Fox Body Mustang with the sleek and sexy F40. One of the first things the artist did was lowering the roofline and adding wider fenders to the old Mustang. Doing so mimicked the F40's body panels fairly well.

The addition of F40 wheels and a Rossa Red paint job also helps to make the fictional "what if" stand out. Another interesting modification is the headlights, which were taken straight from the 1993 Saleen SRR, a limited-run Fox Body Mustang built to show that generation's potential. And then there's the engine, a mid-mounted flat-plane 5.2-liter Voodoo V8 which, in today's Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 offers 526 horsepower and 429 lb-ft of torque. In the spirit of the F40, however, there's also a pair of turbines and a clear engine cover.

So, is this creation more Ford or more Ferrari? Perhaps the best indicator is the fact that the artist placed the Ferrari logo on the body side.