In the early 2020s, the automotive world briefly lost its collective mind over open-top, windshield-less supercars. McLaren’s Elva, Aston Martin’s V12 Speedster, and Ferrari’s Monza SP1/SP2 sparked a short-lived but thrilling niche segment of radically impractical, eye-wateringly expensive speedsters. But nearly 30 years before these topless titans captivated collectors, one bold Ferrari owner—and an even bolder Swiss designer—did it first.
Meet the Ferrari Alcador, a wildly reimagined version of Maranello’s iconic 1980s wedge, stripped of convention, logic, and most notably, its windshield.
A Radical Reinvention of an ’80s Icon
The Ferrari Testarossa, with its wide hips, straked flanks, and quintessentially ’80s attitude, was a bedroom wall poster car for a generation. But by the mid-1990s, automotive tastes had shifted. The Testarossa’s brutalist lines were fading from favor, and one owner decided to give his example a radical new lease on life.
Enter Franco Sbarro, a Swiss designer renowned for his unhinged one-offs and prototype work. With his team, Sbarro took the Testarossa and tore up the rulebook. The chassis was shortened, a curved underbody was grafted on, and most controversially, the windshield was deleted entirely. Not shortened. Not replaced with a race-style aero screen. Simply gone.
Instead, two thick roll-over bars—reminiscent of industrial scaffolding—were mounted behind the driver and passenger, cleverly designed to double as aerodynamic channels. These directed airflow from the headlight inlets rearwards, bypassing the cabin and adding visual drama in the process.
Doors That Scissor, Seats That Don’t Move
The modifications didn’t stop there. Scissor doors—something no Ferrari of the era featured—were bolted on. The cockpit was radically reworked: the dials were relocated to the center console, and the seats were fixed directly to the chassis, much like today’s hypercars from Pagani or Koenigsegg.
Power came from the same 4.9-liter flat-12 as the stock Testarossa, producing 390 horsepower and mated to a five-speed gated manual. While mechanically unchanged, the car’s visual transformation turned it into something closer to a cyberpunk speedboat than a traditional Ferrari.
Even the side profile, with its sharp creases and dramatic cutaways, seems eerily prescient of modern minimalist hypercars like the McLaren Elva or even the Lamborghini Essenza SCV12. Sbarro may have been dismissed as eccentric in the ’90s, but there’s no denying he was ahead of his time.
Three Built. One Road-Legal.
Only three examples of this Ferrari Alcador were ever made, but just one received road registration—making it perhaps the most exclusive (and road-legal) open Ferrari you’ve never heard of.
Now, nearly 30 years after its Geneva debut in 1995, that very car is up for sale in Germany. The price? Available only upon request, of course.
While it may never be as famous as Ferrari’s own Monza SP1 or Aston’s V12 Speedster, the Alcador stands as proof that good ideas sometimes come a few decades too early. It’s a fascinating time capsule from the future—dreamt up in the past.
Source: Thiesen Automobile