Germany’s most outrageous tuning house Mansory has punched higher and harder than ever with its treatment of the Ferrari Purosangue.
The Modena marque’s first crossover was controversial enough even before Mansory turned it into “The Pugnator”. Apparently that’s Latin for “competitor” so in ancient Rome you might have found its namesake doing laps of the Circus Maximus or battling it out in the Colosseum.
Today it feels like Mansory is taking part in the 21st Century’s favourite combat sport – trolling. It’s as if the firm is deliberately trying to trigger the tifosi by releasing photos of the Pugnator onto the internet.
Where Ferrari’s gently-lifted four-door 4×4 was once elegantly restrained in its styling the Pugnator is about excess in all areas. Forged carbon fibre is used to extend the wheelarches, add vanes to the front splitter, create side skirts and for a bi-plane rear wing. The hood is also sculpted in the lightweight material and features all manner of bulges, scoops and ducts, and the front wings gain additional vents – none of which were deemed necessary by Ferrari’s engineers. Black forged alloy wheels of 22 and 23-inch diameter are fitted, revealing carbon rotors in the same vermillion red as the car’s bodywork. Ivory is the color choice for the lashings of leather inside, complemented by carbon fibre trim.
A quad-pipe exhaust system feeds out through the rear diffuser and aids a power hike to 744bhp , with 538lb-ft of torque also on tap.
Subtle it is not, but then that’s not the Mansory way. Among the company’s other recent ruinations are the Rolls-Royce Spectre, INEOS Grenadier and Maserati MC20, all of which have likely driven their original designers into therapy.
Nah! Change it back.