Originally posted by Lizking
Factory applied or not, THAT watermelon is rice.
Naaah, it was completely functional. It's what they call a "homologation special". For FIA production based classes, you have to build a certain number of cars to qualify it as a "production car". And the bodywork and most of the mechanicals on the race car have to be the same as the production car. Instead of modifying a street car for racing, Enzo Ferrari figured out that it was better to design a race car first and modify it slightly to make it street legal. So every once in a while, a manufacturer takes a big risk and builds 500 or 1000 or even 10,000 cars which are basically street legal racers. They keep a few for themselves, modify them as much as they can within the rules, and usually kick some butt at the track. Some of the greatest performance cars were born this way - Ferrari 250 GTO, Chevrolet Camaro Z28, Ford Mustang GT350, BMW M3, Audi Quattro, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo, Subaru Impreza WRX, Lancia Delta Evo, Ferrari F40, Porsche 959, etc etc.
