A few years ago Emerson Fittipaldi launched a new car: the Fittipaldi EF7. This wasn’t a one off as he had been building road and race cars for a while, including the Fittipaldi F1 cars. What happened to the EF7? There was a fanfare and launch in London and then ….??
The car was a supercar designed by Pininfarina in Italy and constructed by HWA, the racing company formed by the founders of AMG after Mercedes-Benz absorbed the tuning house. Power was to be provided by a 4.7 litre V8 delivering 600hp and it was to be a lightweight track car. The idea was to provide track day advice from Fittipaldi himself for all owners. The first version was virtual – appearing in the Gran Turismo Sport video game, then one was actually built, to be shown at various motor shows in Europe and the Middle East. The V8 appears to come from the Mercedes-AMG stable and modified by HWA.
39 units were planned, one for each of Fittipaldi’s F1 wins. Reports at the time suggested that the car had been in development for several years, although it only took Pininfarina six months to come up with the design. Production was expected to start in 2018 with a $1M minimum price tag for each custom built vehicle – that was the media thought up price, no one really knew.
The name changed for the exhibitions: it was now called the Fittipaldi EF7 Vision Gran Turismo by Pininfarina although it is also known as the EF7 GTR. We can’t help thinking that the design has a number of Ferrari influences even though Fittipaldi wanted a shark look – there are influences of Ferrari from the last fifty odd years if you look carefully, the front side view is reminiscent of the Ferrari Dino 206 S Competizione Prototipo also developed by Pininfarina back in the late 1960s.
Since the launch in 2017, there has been no news of the EF7 or the Fittipaldi Racing Club – Fittipaldi himself appears to be focused on his youngest son’s racing career, currently in international karting, however is expected to go as far as his illustrious father. HWA announced great financial results for 2018 with no mention of the Fittipaldi, so one can deduce that it provided no revenue for the company.
The only place it seems that you can see the car is in a video game, although one example has definitely been built. Hopefully the new Brabham BT62 will fare batter.
Images owned by Fittipaldi Motors LLC.
Leave Motoring Weekly a comment! Your views are very welcome.