One-off Ferrari 599 shooting brake is the dream supercar estate
If a Ferrari FF isn’t quite to your taste, or a bit too common, why not commission a coachbuilder for a one-off 599 shooting brake?
It still feels weird to say it over 15 years on from its introduction but if you want a V12-engined Ferrari estate car, you’re surprisingly well-served, by the FF four-seat GT of 2011. If you want your Ferrari estate car to ride a little higher, the Purosangue is there to meet your needs. Want something a bit more specialist? Well, Niels van Roij Design has your back. Well, it has one owner’s back, as this coachbuilt Ferrari 599 Shooting Brake is a one-off. Just don’t call it a Ferrari. For legal reasons, this is the Daytona Shooting Brake Hommage that takes ‘an Italian front-engined V12 platform’ (an evo Car of the Year-winning one, no less) as its base.
Indeed as well as being a delightful object all of its own, it is a direct tribute to Luigi Chinetti Jr.’s 1972 365 GTB/4 ‘Daytona’ Shooting Brake, by Panther Westwinds. That car was itself inspired by Giotto Bizzarrini’s Ferrari 250GT SWB ‘Breadvan’.
Not much of the donor car remains, with only the doors carrying over from the production 599. The rest has been ‘reimagined’ in aluminium. At the front there’s an entirely new light treatment with 3D-printed carbonfibre casings and a width-spanning orange design element as a direct nod to the 1972 car. There’s a new grille too with integrated fog lights.
The body, across the existing car and the new elements, is all aluminium, streaking rearwards without dropping in a complete ‘breadvan’ shape. The estate form replaces the famous flying buttresses of the 599 and the convex rear window glass, as well as the boot. In fact, everything rear of the back wheels and B-pillar is all one-piece, with no shut lines to the rear bumper or a boot lid. Instead of a liftable glass hatch, the Daytona Shooting Brake Hommage has electronically operated butterfly glass hatches, lifting almost like a GMA T.50’s luggage bins. Within, six CNC-machined aluminium runners for your cases, set within a carbonfibre load floor.
The rear glass inset into the bodywork, with lighting recessed behind it, is one of the most obvious callbacks to the 1972 classic. Not so classic is the enormous carbonfibre rear diffuser set below it, with four large exhaust tips protruding forth. These are more centrally mounted, where the standard 599’s bumper sets them outside the standard diffuser, freeing up space for airflow.
Inside things get really weird. In another nod to the 1972 Breadvan, they appear to have taken a crowbar to the instrument binnacle and superglued it to the centre of the dash, entirely replacing the middle air vents. Uncharitably, you could say it bears a resemblance to Toyota Yaris interiors of the early 2000s. Questioning the ergonomics is however entirely fair but then, this car is a four-wheeled piece of art and art is not often logical, or in any way sensical. Though not specifically confirmed, the coachbuild appears to retain Ferrari's F1 single-clutch transmission, rather than being converted to a manual as is becoming popular with 599s.
The rest of the cabin is happily trimmed in beautiful Cognac tan leather, with diamond stitching on the carbon-backed buckets and the Cavallino conspicuous in its absence from the centre of the steering wheel. More legal stuff. With these sorts of one-offs, price is often a question of whether you can write a blank cheque.
