No doubt you have seen this car everywhere online, the one-off Ferrari 550 Maranello inspired by the 1962 Ferrari 250 GT SWB Breadvan racer. But while many in the press see a modern interpretation of the iconic and unusual Breadvan, to me, it looks like a modern version of a 70s Greenwood Corvette Sport Wagon conversion. I know, not a popular opinion, but someone needs to discourage people from ruining perfectly good cars to make awkward nods to truly iconic vehicles of the past.
The original Breadvan is special because of the story behind it, Count Giovanni Volpi was having a feud with Enzo Ferrari, and built it out of spite. Enzo was miffed that the Count had hired away Ferrari employees for his own car company so he refused to sell him a new Ferrari 250 GTO. Count Volpi decided to hire Giotto Bizzarrini and Piero Grogo to take a 250 GT SWB Competition and reengineer and design it to compete with the new GTO to beat Ferrari at his own game. The fact that the car did well and the interesting story behind its development is what makes it a legend. To put it mildly, the original Breadvan is the Tinder profile picture and the Breadvan Hommage is what shows up for the date, yeah not bad...but not what you were expecting.
I can't really fault the Niels, a client, likely with literal bags full of money, showed up and asked for a car to be based on what is one of the strangest and arguably least attractive Ferraris of all time, to be built on a 25-year-old chassis, and call it "Breadvan Hommage." But, since the customer is always right...stuff like this happens.
The frontend of the design is well done and is a nice aftermarket refresh of the standard 550, but the overall proportions of the car are awkward since the design was forced to conform to the existing chassis and bound by the Breadvan theme. The result is a car that looks like something you would see at the SEMA show in a luxury wheel booth parked next to a Chrysler 300 with a Bentley grille.
This isn't directed just at Niels, I feel the same way about nearly all of these rebodied cars, they just don't work, be it a Corvette Nomad Wagon, or this Breadvan. The constraints of designing around the factory windshields and other modern proportions don't lend themselves to the shapes that looked so good on the original cars. If you are going to do a rebody, just do your own design, Niels is extremely talented and could have created something that is truly unique, not restricted by the expectations and heritage of a historic car like the Breadvan.
Despite my dislike for this kind of project, the workmanship looks fantastic, the body was hand-beaten by coachbuilder Bas van Roomen in the Netherlands, one of the few companies in Europe still offering complete coachbuilt cars and was behind the incredible Ferrari 612 Shooting Brake. The car is basically a new creation with just the OEM windshield and frame remaining of the original bodywork, all other panels were made from scratch. Inside the modern Breadvan is more luxurious than it's 60s counterpart, but the interior was also obviously bespoke. But like all of these facsimile cars, the Breadman Hommage falls short, on paper they hit all of the right notes, but they always lack the magic that made the original an icon.
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