Ferrari Built This One-Off, $1 Million Pace Car in the ’80s. It Just Resurfaced

Pace cars are typically production models with nifty liveries, but in the 1980s and 1990s, PPG commissioned a series of wild one-offs to serve as pace cars for what was then known as the CART Indy Car World Series. At the time, CART was the pinnacle of American open-wheel racing, and PPG was the sponsor. Many were crushed or lost to obscurity, but one of the wildest PPG Pace Cars recently resurfaced.

This Ferrari Mondial T-based pace car is now part of The Caretakers Collection, home to a number of unusual vehicles like a Tucker sedan (number 29 of 51 built) and one of 12 GM Futureliners. But this Ferrari stands out even in that company. As explained in a video by The Caretakers Collection, Ferrari spent $1 million in 1987 (approximately $3 million in today’s money) turning a production Mondial into a pace car.

The Caretakers Collection via YouTube

Ferrari is no stranger to one-off builds, but the PPG Pace Car was an unusual project for the automaker. Its open-wheel racing series of choice is Formula 1, not CART/IndyCar, and in fact Ferrari had canceled a CART program about a year before the Mondial pace car was unveiled in October 1987 at Laguna Seca. The pace car is also unusual because it was designed not by Pininfarina—which did all of Ferrari’s production-car styling at the time—but by the Institute of Development in Automotive Engineering (I.DE.A.), a Turin-based design firm that had previously worked with Ferrari parent Fiat.

The Mondial’s wheelbase was stretched, and more streamlined front and rear fasciae were added, with corrugated trim wrapping around the body to connect them. [Ed. note: Today I learned, “fasciae” is the plural form of “fascia.” Thank you, Stephen! –CJ] Safety lights were also integrated with the bodywork, including in clear plastic flying-buttress sections around the engine cover. The interior was redesigned in Kevlar and suede, the most obvious changes being a new steering wheel and dashboard that clustered more of the gauges and controls around the driver.

If you ask car enthusiasts what their favorite Ferrari is, the Mondial probably won’t be mentioned. Unveiled at the 1980 Geneva Motor Show, it lacked the style and performance of other Ferraris of the period. The pace car is based on the later Mondial T, and so it has a 3.4-liter V8 producing 300 horsepower from the factory. That was enough for zero to 62 mph in a Ferrari-estimated 6.3 seconds and a 158-mph top speed. Chassis modifications were likely made to ensure the car could safely be driven at the consistent high speeds needed for pacing the CART field.

According to a 2025 Forza magazine article, the Mondial was on active duty from 1988 until 1991, but was not very reliable (some stereotypes exist for a reason). It’s great that somebody decided to save it, and that it seems to have a good home. Today’s IndyCar bosses could use a bit of the creativity that spawned the PPG Pace Cars.

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