Mauro Forghieri is dead. The legendary Ferrari engineer, creator of years of success for the Scuderia del Cavallino Rampante from 1962 to 1971 and from 1973 to 1984 died at the age of 87, leaving a void in the world of cars and especially motorsport. Beyond the innovations and the great successes achieved with the Maranello brand, Furia has also become the protagonist of some projects that have involved production cars, such as the Ferrari 408 4WD, a prototype built over the years at the Research Department. and advanced studies of Maranello.
This workshop on wheels, born with the intent to apply the best innovations available of the time to a road, it never came into production as the definitive car. Only two examples were made, which differed mainly in the materials with which they were made: the first in fact had a laser-welded stainless steel body while the second version was in glued aluminum. The 408 4RM was born from the suggestion of Vittorio Ghidella which saw a Porsche 959 at the 1986 Geneva Motor Show, prompting then Ferrari CEO Giovanni Sguazzini to bring something similar to life. Sguazzini will not even see the light of this project, abandoning Maranello a few months later but the work was also entrusted to Forghieri who started work on a prototype that should have represented the Ferrari manifesto of the future.
With this regard, what today we could call concept car, introduced various technical solutions never seen before on a road Red, such as four-wheel drive (from which the name 4WD also derives) made possible through the use of planetary differential and double hydraulic coupling to distribute the drive torque between the front and rear axles. The Ferrari 408 4WD it was also equipped with a technology capable of varying the height from the ground and the angle of attack, adjusting them thanks to a pneumatic system that worked to improve aerodynamics and stability. The development was carried out between 1987 and 1988, following the diktats of Mauro Forghieri. The berlinetta prototype was then equipped with a 4.0-liter V8 90 ° rear and longitudinal engine, with a compression ratio of 9.8: 1 and a maximum power of 300 hp at 6,250 rpm, combined with a five-speed manual gearbox plus reverse. . The two specimens, one painted in red and the first to be made and the other in yellow, therefore represent two authentic examples of what could have been and was not.
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