We are fans of lightweight sportscars here at Double Apex. The purity of driving experience is heightened manifold when a car has very little inertia to deal with. The credo: for more performance, just add lightness applies perfectly to the Ferrari Conciso.

The Ferrari Conciso (pr: con-chee-so, Italian for concise) is a little-known, one-off Ferrari that was created in the early 1990s. It is part of a very long line of one-off products to wear the Prancing Horse badge. We covered the history of special Ferraris in this story from a few months ago.

Coach-built

The rare model was built in 1993 by German designer Bernd Michalak. His aim was to create a Ferrari-based sportscar shorn of all excess. Starting point for this exercise was a 328 GTS. Michalak removed the body and everything else bar the chassis. He then clothed the car in a bespoke aluminium body and fitted just the essentials, such as lights and fenders, to make it road legal; he didn’t even bother with a roof.

Click here to learn about the latest one-off Ferrari creation, a track-only car called the P80/C and click here to see it in action.

V8-powered

The Ferrari Conciso retained the 3,2-litre multi-valve V8 from the 328 GTS, which is mounted behind the cabin in a transverse layout. Power is delivered directly to the rear wheels via a five-speed manual transmission. The V8 motor was good for just over 200 kW and in this guise only has a shade over 900 kg to propel, even less than a Mazda MX-5.

A showpiece

For the better part of 25 years, the car was a showpiece in the living room of Belgian family. It was recently bought by its most recent owner and he decided that it deserves to be driven; he even uses it to work as often as he can.

US talk show host, and car collector, Jay Leno recently got to experience the Ferrari Conciso first-hand. You can see the car in action in the video below.