The Dutch-British firm Niels van Roij Design is responsible for a number of impressive one-off and small-range vehicles, including a Tesla Model S shooting brake, the Carat Duchatelet Rolls-Royce Wraith shooting brake, and of course the two-door Range Rover known as the Advent Cup. The most impressive so far it has to be, the strictly one-off Niels from Roij Design Breadvan Hommage. The Dutch designer, first sketched in 2018, was hammered into the hand by renowned builder Bas van Roomen, with a donor Ferrari 550 Maranello coupe fitted with a six-speed manual gearbox.
The real call was to build a homage to the 1962 original using a V12 engine. Not only did the 250 GT use the same recipe, but the 550 Maranello itself also became a proper racing machine thanks to companies such as Italtecnica, Baumgartner Sportwagen Technik and the most famous Prodrive in England. Now, ready for 2021, we get the new Breadvan recorded by Niels van Roij, who had the difficult task of applying all the rather strange design features of the original Drogo prototype to a Ferrari from the nineties, designed by Pininfarina. The Dutch have done their best, and the result is, to say the least, impressive.
While it’s getting harder to get excited about the recent flood of one – time Ferrari V12s, those using this Breadvan Hommage will not be bored with this totally transformed 550. Even before we consider the details, this is what the 1962 Ferrari 250 GT SWB Breadvan is all about:
The “palace revolution” at Ferrari was when engineers Carlo Chiti and Giotto Bizzarrini, as well as a number of other high-profile employees, severed ties with the famous difficult Enzo Ferrari in 1961, only to establish ATS and continue racing against Scuderia Ferrari. with the financial support of Giovanni Volpi, Head of Scuderia Serenissima. When Ferrari refused to sell the new 250 GTO to Count Volpi due to its involvement with its former crew, Bizzarrini and Volpi came up with a new idea against Enzo’s GTOs, which turned a 1962 obsolete 250 GT SWB into a lightweight made sample with a longer nose. and an aerodynamic rear brake with a comb tail, hand-built by Piero Drogo.
The car was successfully painted in a period and silver, and has since been restored several times and remains in excellent race-ready condition to this day. Thanks to this, I’m happy to have seen this car race more than once at Goodwood, and as it turns out, the customer of Niels van Roij Design also saw the miracle that the bread cart is there, just as he did his best against ‘ n Jaguar E-Type. Then an idea was born.