Ferrari Conciso Still Looks Like Nothing Else Built in Maranello

Ferrari built many unusual low-volume cars through outside design houses, yet the Conciso still sits apart from almost all of them. The one-off appeared in 1993 and never led toward production. Even among collectors who know rare Ferrari history well, many fail to identify the model at first glance.

Bernd Michalak shaped the project around reduction. The name itself comes from the Italian word for concise, brief, direct. His answer to that idea removed doors, removed a roof, and stripped away weather protection entirely. The donor platform underneath came from the Ferrari 328 GTS, though large sections no longer resembled the original car once work finished. Weight dropped by nearly 30 percent compared with the donor vehicle.

The body used hand-built lightweight aluminum. Entry required two small upper cutouts placed high along the sides, since regular doors never existed. Behind the seats, space remained for two helmets. A raised rear wing handled downforce duties, while the front stayed low and sharply tapered. Black exposed fender humps covered the front wheel areas and carried the headlamps, a layout many linked visually to the Lotus Seven.

People reacted strongly when the car first appeared. Some called the shape a smiling shoe. Others compared the profile with a platypus or even a handheld vacuum. Those nicknames came from the curved nose, the short proportions, and the side view, which broke away from the sharper Ferrari forms common in that period. Rounded surfaces replaced the slim and delicate direction associated with Maranello road cars from the same era.

Inside, the theme changed but stayed focused. Leather and Alcantara covered most visible surfaces. The instrument panel used original Veglia Borletti analog gauges taken from the Ferrari 328 GTS and fitted into a custom dashboard.

Mechanical parts also remained tied to the donor car. A mid-mounted 3.2-liter V8 from the Ferrari 328 Quattrovalvole produced 265 horsepower, equal to 270 metric horsepower, plus 244 pound-feet or 310 Newton meters of torque. A five-speed manual gated transmission sent output to the rear wheels. With 1,960 pounds, or 932 kilograms, to move, the car reached 60 miles per hour in roughly 5.0 seconds and continued to 173 miles per hour, which equals 278 kilometers per hour. Compared with a regular 328 GTS, mass fell by 800 pounds, or 362 kilograms.

The Conciso later entered private collections. A North American collector owned the car until 1998, after which a Belgian owner displayed the machine inside a living room. In 2014, servicing took place, new tires were fitted, and open-road homologation followed. One year later, Sotheby’s sold the car for 109,250 euros. Another sale came on September 10, 2017, when the price reached 117,333 euros, about $138,250.

1995 Ferrari Conciso – Photo Gallery