Ferrari CZ26: a one-off that wins by leaving things out

One client, two years, one car

Ferrari presented the CZ26 in Monterey on August 13, 2026, a One-Off from the Special Projects programme built for a single US client. The Ferrari Design Studio drew it under Flavio Manzoni, and underneath it is an SF90 Stradale: Ferrari says the car keeps that car's technical specifications intact.

So this is a rebody, not a new machine. What makes it worth looking at is what the design team chose not to do.

The restraint is the whole idea

Look at the flanks. There is almost nothing happening on them. No scalloped doors, no slashed intakes, none of the folded-paper aggression that has become the default language of the modern hypercar. The silhouette is two boxes, low and horizontal, with a central cabin capsule sitting between pronounced arches.

That simplicity is why it will age well. Cars that lean on surface drama date the moment the next one arrives with more of it. A shape this plain has less to go out of fashion.

The car does not have the usual curves of a hypercar, and that is exactly why it will still look good in fifteen years.

The paint helps. Argento Veloce is a silver with a liquid-like effect that reads almost like mercury over those long, flat panels, with Rosso Lampante accents and pigmented carbon fibre for contrast. On a busier body it would be lost. Here it is doing real work.

Where it stumbles, and where it sings

The front is the weak point. The full-width treatment with concealed lighting and that red-striped panel is the one area where the discipline slips into oddness, and it reads strangely from some angles. It is the part of the car you have to talk yourself into.

The rear is the opposite. The truncated tail and the full-width light bar are the best thing on it, clean and confident in a way the nose never quite manages. If you only see one photo of this car, make it the back.

Against Ferrari's other recent design departure, the electric Luce, the CZ26 comes out ahead. Not by a wide margin, though, and both are Ferrari testing how far it can move away from what people expect a Ferrari to look like.

Inside

The cabin is trimmed in black technical fabric with 3D-printed seat inserts, Rosso Lampante detailing, an embroidered CZ26 logo, gloss carbon fibre shot through with metallic filaments and satin carbon elsewhere. It looks superb in photographs.

Whether it works over years is another question. Technical fabric of this kind marks, and unlike leather it does not wipe clean, which is an odd thing to specify in a car someone will actually drive. Ferrari has not said whether a leather alternative was on the table for this commission.

The numbers, which are the SF90's

Nothing mechanical changed, so the figures are the donor car's:

Ferrari has not published a kerb weight for the CZ26, and has not said what the client paid. Neither is a surprise: One-Offs are quoted privately and the bodywork changes make the donor car's weight figure meaningless.

For where the SF90 platform sits against the rest of the range, our SF90 XX page has the full spec.

Sources: Ferrari media centre release on the CZ26, which gives the August 13, 2026 Monterey date, the Special Projects and Flavio Manzoni attribution and the design description; Motor1 on the powertrain, performance, interior materials and wheel sizes; CarBuzz on the Argento Veloce paint and the 986 hp combined figure. Engine output is quoted as Ferrari states it in cv, with hp converted at 1 cv = 0.98632 hp. No kerb weight or price has been published. Photos: Ferrari.