Spot the Difference

At Maranello, the search for perfection not only the present and the future; it also concerns the past. At Ferrari Classiche, the department charged with restoring more mature Prancing Horse cars, artisans use a mix of technologies and processes old and new when they are tasked with bringing a past beauty back to its original glory. Now they have a new tool in their arsenal: Digital Bodywork Analysis.

Above: The 3D body is applied over pictures from the Classiche archives and checked with the original drawings

“This is a technology that is perfectly suited to a precise need: digitally checking the surface of a historic Ferrari when it arrives in our department, so that we can then compare it with historical documents and ensure restoration brings it back to its original shape,” explains Andrea Modena, head of Ferrari Classiche.

These days we take it for granted that all cars of a specific model line have the same, identical body. But this was not always the case: going back to the origins of Ferrari, each car was bodied by specialised 'carrozzieri', or body builders, so 'de facto' no two Ferrari were ever precisely the same. Maranello produced the engines, which were indeed the same for each model, as well as the rolling chassis, which was taken to one of the most recognised carrozzieri – specialists like Scaglietti, Farina, Vignale, Zagato, and Carrozzeria Touring, for example – where the car was then 'battuta a mano', Italian for ‘bodied by hand’. It was a very artisanal process: even as each car of a specific model was essentially shaped to look like its siblings, there was no perfect replication.

Above: differences – even the smallest – can be identified, and corrected for, during the restoration

This process of coachbuilding by hand lasted up until about the early 1970s, making each vehicle unique. Andrea Modena’s department deals also with cars that were originally built with these essentially manual methods; it was an age far away from the mass-produced perfection that is possible today. “The carrozzieri of yesteryear would ‘sew’ a dress onto the car’s mechanical components, like tailors,” Modena adds. For the most part, the cars that reach the Ferrari Classiche Department have lived intense lives, having been used by their previous owners and not left parked in a garage. Many raced, some crashed, some were re-bodied or restored. The result is that when a client comes to Maranello with a restoration project, often the car body is not exactly the way it was when it first left the Prancing Horse’s gates on Via Abetone Inferiore. Enter the Digital Bodywork Analysis solution.

Using advanced computer software the Ferrari Design team, together with Ferrari Classiche, is able to create a complete, three-dimensional image of the whole car and its body in its current state. No detail is missed – no bump, scratch, or dent. The Classiche artisans then search through Maranello’s archive, where they can find images of the car precisely as it was when it left the factory, with its original body. Applying ‘slices’ of the 3D image of the car onto the archival images of the original vehicle enables the technicians to see where there have been modifications over the years, considering the mechanical constraints.

Above: the Ferrari Design team, together with Ferrari Classiche, is able to create a complete, three-dimensional image of the whole car in its current state

The process is crucial for restoration purposes: older Ferrari cars over time have had their imperfections ‘touched up’, with the menders being guided more by their own sense of what was right than by what was actually the car’s original body shape. The new process developed by Ferrari will allow this subjective element to be significantly reduced – something which is important also for the value of the car itself. “It’s about offering a service that only Ferrari can offer to the custodians of these cars, for that is what the owners of Classiche cars are: custodians,” concludes Modena. With this new technology, present custodians of Maranello classics will be better able to preserve and pass on the value of their unique charges to future generations.

Cover image: the first project to which Ferrari Classiche and Ferrari Design have applied the new technology – Digital Bodywork Analysis – is this splendid Ferrari Dino 206 S

THIS STORY WAS TAKEN FROM ISSUE 64 OF THE OFFICIAL FERRARI MAGAZINE