Ferrari teases possible 488 GTO in a new video clip

Gran Turismo Omologato. That's a magic sequence of words for most car lovers, even fanbois, but for Tifosi (aka fanatics), it means something extraordinary. GTO has graced some of history's most beautiful, exciting and valuable cars… and the 599. Based on the teaser video that Ferrari dropped today on Facebook, it might be ready to roll out that moniker one more time.

The 488 GTB is already an exciting, game-changing car. It at once helped Ferrari to cross the 600 horsepower barrier with its production V8 engines but also signaled the end of the screaming, naturally aspirated V8s that had come to define the brand. While it wasn't the first turbocharged Ferrari by any means, it divided loyalties to the brand.

Cultural implications aside, the 488 is a technological marvel. The engineers at Maranello pulled out all the stops when it came to defining the way that turbocharging would influence the character of its engine. It uses gear-dependent boost settings to maximize the powerband and rid itself of the elastic throttle that had plagued the F40.

How would Ferrari go about turning the GTB into a GTO? Typically in the past, it has meant less weight, more power and a whole lot of racing pretension (in the case of the first two examples, less so with the 599 GTO). We'd expect to see power jump to well-North of the 700-horsepower mark, and the price to skyrocket as well.

Ferrari tends to play these things relatively close to the chest, so details are somewhat thin on the ground. We're crossing fingers that maybe we'll see something at Geneva since every other cool car seems to be debuting there this year.