Suppose you’re a young Brazilian boy with dreams of becoming famous. There are at least two ways to do that. One is through soccer, and the other is through motor racing. Emerson Fittipaldi followed the latter route when he became a racer and won the 1972 Formula One Driver’s Championship, the youngest driver to do so at that time. But unbeknownst to a lot of people, the now-70-year-old Brazilian also had another dream. He wanted to build his own GT sports car. And now, 45 years after winning the F1 title, he’s crossing off his second dream at the 2017 Geneva Motor Show with the introduction of the Pininfarina Fittipaldi EF7 Vision Gran Turismo track car.
It might be easy to scoff at Fittipaldi’s hopes and ambitions if you’re an automaker that routinely produces performance cars, but for someone who literally started from scratch and relied on the help of so many partners to get his project off the ground, the sight of seeing the car on display in Geneva is nothing short of a crowning achievement. Fittipaldi himself was overcome with emotion when he helped unveil the car, calling the occasion “the happiest day of my life,” before adding that his dream of building a GT car actually preceded his goal of becoming a race car driver.
That tells you a unique backstory of the EF7, the kind that people will be talking about for years, provided of course that the track car carves out a legacy as rich as the one its creator etched during his exploits in Formula One. More importantly, the car is also a reminder that as long and accomplished a life as Emerson Fittipaldi has lived, he is proving at the 2017 Geneva Motor Show that no matter his age, no dreams are worth giving up on, even if it takes you a while to accomplish it.
Continue after the jump to read the full story.
from Top Speed http://ift.tt/2naUSd1
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