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Engadget previews Ferrari's future hypercars at the World Design Contest (video)
Ferrari's been one of the most respected car manufacturers in the world since the 1940s, but it hasn't exactly gotten there by being bleeding-edge. In the early '60s, when rear-engined cars were sweeping the charts in Formula One, Il Commendatore -- Enzo Ferrari -- refused to take one racing, famously saying "the horse doesn't push the cart along with its nose." It would take many humiliating defeats before his company would finally put that horse where it belongs. Being an early adopter, obviously, was not a priority. It's only in the past few years, with cars like the Enzo and 458 Italia, that Ferrari has truly embraced modern ideas of whizz-bang tech to make their cars genuinely faster -- not just easier to drive. That's just the beginning. Automotive technology is finally starting to accelerate the way personal computing devices have for the past few decades. New means of propulsion are combining with ever-greater integrated systems and it's easy to see this as leading us toward a generation of cars faster and still more efficient than anything we've yet seen on the roads. Ferrari calls this four-wheeled singularity the "hypercar," and to get an idea of just what that car of the future might look like it invited 50 teams of designers from major universities around the world to compete. Join us as we look at some of the best creations. %Gallery-133210%
