Universo Ferrari is, at its simplest, a brand exhibition. At its most honest, it is Ferrari building a cathedral to itself and then selling you a ticket to the pews. I mean that as a compliment. Very few companies have earned the right to stage a retrospective of their own work, and fewer still would have the nerve to haul it roughly 6,000 km from Maranello to the outskirts of New Delhi. Yet here we are. The fifth edition of Universo Ferrari, and the first ever on Indian soil, runs at Yashobhoomi, the India International Convention and Expo Centre, until November 1. It is the closest this country has come to a Ferrari museum with a Delhi pin code.
The doors opened on October 17 for clients, press and partners, with Italy's ambassador Antonio Bartoli among the early guests, before the public was let in from the 19th. Benedetto Vigna inaugurated it himself. Ferrari's chief executive called the show "an invitation to experience the world of Ferrari in its entirety," which reads like press release copy until you walk the floor and realise he was being literal. Ferrari likes to say it has three souls, Racing, Sports Cars and Lifestyle, and the floor plan gives each one its own room.
The Room Everyone Came For
The sports car hall is where the current range lines up like a casting call. The 849 Testarossa Spider, the 12Cilindri Spider and the Amalfi Spider make a strong case that the roof is the most overrated component on a car. Then there is the F80, parked with the air of something that knows it is the point of the whole exercise. The successor to the LaFerrari pairs a 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6 with three electric motors for roughly 1,200 hp, gets to 100 km/h in a claimed 2.15 seconds, and is limited to 799 examples at €3 million each before options. Every one of them is spoken for. Rather than being just a car, you look at it the way you look at a grand complication behind glass at a watch fair: as an act of appreciation, with no transaction in sight.
The smartest piece of scenography sits nearby. Ferrari has displayed the Daytona SP3 from its Icona series alongside its 840 cv V12, the engine pulled out and presented on its own like a sculpture in a gallery plinth. It is the most Wallpaper thing in the building, and the most honest: this is where the money goes, so here it is, naked.
Look closer at the car beside it, though, and the placard seems to be lying. The body panels are riveted on, there is test equipment where a customer would expect trim, and the silhouette is unmistakably LaFerrari Aperta. The placard is right. This is a Daytona SP3 mulotype, a car from the middle of the SP3's development.
Ferrari builds a new model in four stages. First comes the mule, an existing car carrying the new hardware; for the SP3, that was a 488 GTB stretched to swallow a V12. Next comes the mulotype, which brings the new chassis and components together under borrowed bodywork. Then come the camouflaged prototypes that turn up in spy videos outside Maranello, and finally the homologated pre-series cars. What you are looking at in Dwarka is the moment the engineering was done and the styling was not: a LaFerrari on the outside, a Daytona SP3 underneath.
The finished article is worth knowing too. The Daytona SP3 is the third Icona, after the Monza SP1 and SP2, and it was revealed at Mugello in November 2021. Its name salutes the 1967 Daytona 24 Hours, where a 330 P3/4, a 330 P4 and a 412 P finished one, two, three in Ford's own backyard. The 6.5-litre naturally aspirated V12 makes 840 cv at 9,250 rpm and 697 Nm with no hybrid help, and at launch it was the most powerful combustion engine Ferrari had ever built. All 599 production cars, at roughly €2 million each, were spoken for before the public saw one.
Which is exactly why the mulotype is the more interesting object. Ferrari now sells development cars like this through its Special Sales arm, often to clients who already own the finished version. Seeing one under convention-hall lights is like being shown the architect's working model next to the building. Then walk over to the Classiche hall, where the 365 GTB/4 carries the same 1967 race in its nickname. Ferrari has parked two answers to one result under the same roof, half a century apart.
The Luce Question
The Luce is Ferrari's first electric car, styled by LoveFrom, the studio Jony Ive co-founded after Apple. At 5,026 mm it is the largest Ferrari ever built and the first to seat five. Four electric motors deliver a combined 1,050 PS, and it carries the lowest drag coefficient of any road-legal Ferrari. Ferrari has given it a dedicated exhibition space unpacking the ideas, technology and craft behind it, which tells you exactly how much explaining the company believes it needs.
My verdict: the Luce is not a betrayal. It is a different instrument from the same orchestra. The people who hate it are mostly arguing with the idea of a quiet Ferrari, and the people who will buy it never wanted to be heard arriving anyway.
On the other side of the emotional ledger sits a Tailor Made 12Cilindri Manuale, one of 1,499 and billed as Ferrari's first manual in 14 years. That claim deserves an asterisk. Underneath there is still the familiar eight-speed dual-clutch gearbox, now operated through shift-by-wire, a rounded aluminium lever in a gated-style surround and a real clutch pedal. The 830 hp 6.5-litre naturally aspirated V12 and its 340 km/h top speed are entirely genuine. Everything you touch is authentic, and everything behind the set is thoroughly modern. I am not complaining. I would like one in the same shade of disapproval my left knee will register in Mumbai traffic.
Classiche: Where Grown Men Go Quiet
The Ferrari Classiche corner is where the crowd thins out and the posture changes. The F50 is here, one of 349 built, with its 4.7-litre naturally aspirated V12 lifted from Formula 1 thinking, 519 PS, a gated six-speed manual and no power assistance for steering or brakes. An entire generation had this car on a bedroom wall. Standing in front of it, you understand why nobody ever took it down.
Beside it is the 365 GTB/4, the car the world calls the Daytona after Ferrari's one-two-three at the 1967 24 Hours of Daytona. Six carburettors, a 4.4-litre V12, a Pininfarina body that is all bonnet and attitude. Around 1,400 were made, and far fewer survive in this condition.
But the car that matters most in this particular hall is the least glamorous one: a 612 Scaglietti in a red and white livery, Indian regional motifs along its flanks and the tricolour on its tailgate. In 2008, it took part in the Magic India Discovery Tour, a 13,000 km, 70-day drive across the country with more than 50 international journalists taking turns behind the wheel. The cars were fitted with thick underbody protection for Indian roads. 18 years later it is back, the first physical evidence of Ferrari's Indian story, still wearing its armour. If you only have ten minutes, spend four or five here.
The Racing Hall
The motorsport section is shorter on nostalgia and longer on carbon fibre. The SF-26, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton's 2026 Formula 1 car, has already won the Spanish and British Grand Prix this season. It is a product of the sport's new rulebook: a bigger share of electric power, movable front and rear wings, and a boost function in place of DRS. Alongside it stands the 499P, the Le Mans Hypercar that has won the 24 Hours three years running from 2023 to 2025, with a twin-turbo V6 and a full carbon tub that keeps it to around 1,030 kg. The 296 GT3 and the 296 Challenge, the first six-cylinder car in Ferrari's one-make series, round out the grid.
The curveball is Hypersail, Ferrari's offshore sailing project. It looks out of place for about four seconds, until you see the same obsession with weight, aerodynamics and control simply applied to water.
The real racing news, though, is buried in the paperwork. Avelon Luxe, an Indian experiences company, has signed on as the India-based partner of both the Ferrari Hypercar series and Ferrari Challenge Middle East. Read that again: an Indian name now sits inside Ferrari's motorsport machinery, across two of its racing worlds. For a country that has mostly watched the Scuderia from the sofa, that is a bigger step than any car on this floor.
The India Link
The most interesting work at Universo is the work that was not shipped from Italy. For the Tailor Made India project, Ferrari handed a design brief to students at the National Institute of Design and asked them to read the character of ten Indian cities: Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Varanasi and Goa. Ferrari Design then translated their concepts into ten digital Tailor Made specifications, five on the 12Cilindri and five on the Purosangue. It is a rare instance of a European luxury house treating Indian design talent as collaborators and not as a mood board, and I would happily see these built.
India also gets rooms of its own. Beyond the cars, the exhibition carves out dedicated spaces for Ferrari in India, for the Ferrari community, and for what Maranello calls Co-Prosperity, its umbrella for social commitments. That last one sounds like a slide from a corporate offsite until you notice how much of this fortnight was built around students and schoolchildren.
The road to Dwarka was also part of the show. Twenty-five Ferraris drove roughly 1,800 km from Mumbai through Vadodara, Udaipur, Jaipur and Agra to New Delhi, which is about as close as this country gets to a Mille Miglia. Around 1,000 students were invited in for seminars with Ferrari leadership on design, engineering and entrepreneurship. And at the client dinner, a ten-lot charity auction with Avelon Luxe raised funds for Save the Children's Bal Raksha Bharat to support early education for children from underserved communities.
The Business Under the Bodywork
None of this is philanthropy in a pit-lane jacket. Universo is the overture, and the opera is retail. Ferrari will open two new dealerships in India by the end of 2026: in Chennai with KUN Group and in Ahmedabad with Infinity Group. The company still talks about measured, selective growth, and it means it. Ferrari does not chase volume in any market, least of all one where waiting is part of the pleasure.
What Universo actually sells is belonging. A child looking at the F50 today is a client in 2045. A collector who sees the 612 gets a reminder that Ferrari has been here longer than most people think. And the NID student whose Varanasi concept now exists as a Purosangue specification has a story nobody in the room can top.
Go before November 1. Skip the selfie queue at the F80, give the Daytona SP3 engine a proper lap, and end at the 612 Scaglietti. Take someone who still has the poster.
Universo Ferrari is open to the public at Yashobhoomi, Dwarka, New Delhi, from October 19 to November 1, 2026. Tickets are on District.
