The Ferrari Icona Monza SP1 supercar is one of the most striking road cars Ferrari has ever built — a single-seat, roofless, windshield-less machine that looks like it drove straight out of the 1950s. Unveiled in October 2018 at Ferrari’s Capital Markets Day in Maranello, the SP1 wasn’t a design concept or a one-off show car. It was a fully engineered, street-legal supercar built as the first entry in Ferrari’s new “Icona” (Italian for “icon”) series — a line of cars designed to revisit the most romantic chapters of Ferrari’s racing history using every ounce of the company’s modern engineering knowledge.
Alongside its two-seat sibling, the SP2, the Monza SP1 set the template for how Ferrari would celebrate its own past going forward: not through retro styling exercises, but through genuinely modern hypercars built around the emotional core of what made Ferrari’s early race cars special.
What Is the Ferrari Icona Monza SP1?
The Ferrari Icona Monza SP1 takes its name and inspiration from the Ferrari 750 Monza and 860 Monza — open-cockpit racers that helped define the brand’s competition success in the mid-1950s — along with echoes of the earlier 166 MM “barchetta.” Those cars were minimalist by necessity, stripped of anything that didn’t contribute to speed, with drivers exposed to the elements behind a small aero screen.
Ferrari’s design team, led by Flavio Manzoni, set out to capture that same purity of purpose without simply copying the old shapes. The result is a long, low, almost weightless-looking silhouette, with a single-seat cockpit positioned toward the rear of the body.
Design: Reviving the Spirit of the Barchetta
Instead of a windshield, the Monza SP1 uses a “virtual windshield” — a channel of air redirected by a small deflector ahead of the driver that minimizes buffeting at speed. There’s no roof and no conventional door glass, and barely any interior trim beyond what’s needed to operate the car. Every visible element exists for a functional reason, which is precisely why the design succeeds as more than nostalgia.
Ferrari Monza SP1 Specs and Performance
Underneath its barchetta bodywork, the Monza SP1 shares its platform loosely with the Ferrari 812 Superfast, including its engine. Key specs include:
- Engine: 6.5-liter naturally aspirated V12 (codenamed F140 GA)
- Power: 799 horsepower (810 PS) at 8,500 rpm
- Torque: 530 lb-ft at 7,000 rpm
- Drivetrain: Rear-wheel drive only, no all-wheel-drive system
- Transmission: Seven-speed dual-clutch automatic
- 0–62 mph: Approximately 2.9 seconds
- 0–124 mph (200 km/h): Under 8 seconds
- Top speed: Over 186 mph
- Dry weight: Approximately 1,500 kg (roughly 3,300 lbs), thanks to an almost entirely carbon-fiber composite chassis and body
At launch, this made the SP1’s V12 the most powerful naturally aspirated engine Ferrari had ever put in a road car. Despite the exposed cockpit, the car isn’t spartan — Ferrari included an airflow management system, a digital instrument cluster, and heated cockpit surfaces to make top-down driving more bearable at speed.
Why the Monza SP1 Has Only One Seat
The most talked-about feature of the Ferrari Icona Monza SP1 is its single seat. While the companion SP2 offers a second seat, the SP1 commits fully to a solitary, purist driving experience closer in spirit to a competition car than a grand tourer built for two.
Interestingly, Ferrari still built a functional passenger-side door into the SP1: underneath the carbon cover sits a fully finished panel — essentially a completed passenger area that was simply never opened up for use. It’s a small detail that reveals just how closely related the SP1 and SP2 are underneath their differing personalities.
This single-seat layout separates the Monza SP1 from rivals like the two-seat McLaren Elva or the Aston Martin V12 Speedster, both of which arrived shortly after as competitors in the growing market for windshield-less speedsters. Ferrari’s choice to offer a genuinely single-seat car gave the SP1 its own identity: the closest thing to a modern Ferrari racing barchetta that money could buy.
Ferrari Monza SP1 Price and Exclusivity
Ferrari built the Monza SP1 and SP2 together as a combined, limited run of 499 cars, offered only to existing top-tier Ferrari clients rather than sold on the open market. Deliveries began in 2019, and production wrapped in 2022.
At launch, the Monza SP1 carried a price of roughly €1.5–1.6 million before taxes and options — around $1.75 million in the United States at the time, though early pre-reveal estimates had speculated figures as high as $2–3 million. Given the limited allocation, those factory prices proved to be just the starting point: on the secondary and auction markets, individual SP1 and SP2 examples have since fetched prices in the multiple millions of dollars, reflecting both their rarity and Ferrari’s track record of limited-edition models appreciating sharply after production ends.
Why the Ferrari Icona Monza SP1 Matters
The Monza SP1 could easily have been a nostalgia exercise — a coachbuilt curiosity wheeled out for auto show photographs and forgotten. Instead, it represents something more deliberate: Ferrari applying its most advanced contemporary engineering, from its most powerful naturally aspirated V12 to sophisticated aerodynamic modeling, in service of a design language and driving philosophy pulled directly from its own racing archives.
As the first car in the Icona series — a program Ferrari has continued with a small number of similarly bespoke, historically minded models — the Monza SP1 didn’t just look like a 1950s Ferrari race car. It tried to recreate the feeling of driving one, filtered through decades of progress in materials, power, and control.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much horsepower does the Ferrari Monza SP1 have? The Monza SP1 produces 799 horsepower (810 PS) from its 6.5-liter naturally aspirated V12 engine.
How many Ferrari Monza SP1 cars were made? Ferrari built 499 cars total across the SP1 and SP2 combined, with deliveries running from 2019 to 2022.
How much does a Ferrari Monza SP1 cost? The original list price was around €1.5–1.6 million ($1.75 million), though auction prices have since climbed into the multiple millions of dollars.
Why does the Monza SP1 only have one seat? Ferrari designed the SP1 as a purist, single-driver experience closer to a racing barchetta, while the companion SP2 model offers a second seat.
