A Coachbuilder Has Turned A 550 Into A Ferrari 'Breadvan Hommage'

If you’re going to build a modern take on Ferrari’s legendary 250GT ‘Breadvan’ racer, the 550 Maranello seems like an ideal starting point. It has a sonorous, naturally-aspirated V12 living under a long bonnet, an open-gate manual gearbox, and some gorgeous curves to work with.

As first promised a couple of years ago, Dutch design studio Niels van Roij has taken a 550 and built it into a one-off Breadvan homage, which is now finished to show the world. Do have a good ogle.

To create it, the team started with sketches, before progressing to computer renderings and then a full-size clay model. Bas van Roomen, who worked on the Vandenbrink Design 612 Scaglietti Shooting Brake plus Niels van Roij’s ‘Adventum Coupe’ two-door Range Rover, was tasked with beating the aluminium panels into shape.

All the key details from the original are there, from the van-like rear to the little glass dome protruding through the bonnet. Although it’s easy enough to tell this was based on a 550 when looking at the front, almost all of the donor car was binned, with the windscreen being the only carry-over part.

Inside, the 550 base car’s cabin has been spruced up with blue Alcantara-clad carbon fibre seats and new milled aluminium switchgear. The original centre console is gone, replaced with a raised block which the gated shifter sits on. One particularly neat detail is the clock, which is inscribed with ‘che importa’ - the Italian for ‘who cares!’

The chassis has been upgraded with bespoke dampers from Koni plus fresh Vredestein Ultrac Vorti+ tyres. The engine has been left alone, but a 480bhp Ferrari V12 unsullied by turbochargers is just fine as is, if you ask us.

If you like what you see, tough luck - even if you have the kind of money required to have something like this built, Niels van Roij says the Breadvan Hommage is “strictly limited to only one example.”