The PFO is the Pininfarina concept you couldn't see at Pebble Beach

Without that invite, the best look we have of the first car to be designed, produced and branded solely as a Pininfarina is the new teaser shot issued this week, showing the 250mph electric hypercar’s rear end. And very intriguing it looks too, with its glassy teardrop cabin, twin-section rear wing and strips of lights.

The car to fulfil Battista ‘Pinin’ Farina’s dream to establish Pininfarina as a brand in its own right is codenamed PFO, and set for its world debut at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2019. The Pebble Beach previews were to entice luxury car retailers and prospective customers in the US, sure to be the multi-million pound machine’s biggest market.

The PFO is the debut model from Munich-based Automobili Pininfarina, a sister company to the famous design house Pininfarina SpA of Turin, and part of the Indian Mahindra group that rescued Pininfarina from financial woes in 2015.

The new car company follows other Italian design houses turning to manufacture in their own right such as Automobili Italdesign Speciale. Unlike Ital’s handful-only of Audi R8-based Zerounos, Automobili Pininfarina plans to hand-assemble 150 of the carbon-fibre PFO hypercars in Italy, with first deliveries in 2020. Other ultra-luxury electric cars including SUVs and all badged Pininfarina will follow, says the firm.

“For a new car company, the US launch programme was hugely challenging, exciting and ultimately rewarding,” said Automobili Pininfarina CEO Michael Perschke. “Our guests in Pebble Beach were classic and performance car aficionados and judged that the PF0 design delivered the right balance of beauty and functional performance visuals. They came to see classic Pininfarina and weren’t disappointed.”

So what will PFO – Pinin Farina One is our guess – be like? Apart from the clear shot of the rear, other teaser images released since the company was announced in May this year have shown a curvaceous and sculptural body with a single strip of light at the front taking the place of traditional headlights.

The car will live up to its famous design heritage by delivering innovation in engineering, technology and performance all “wrapped in a  beautiful skin”, according to Automobili Pininfarina design director Luca Borgogno, formerly a lead designer at Pininfarina SpA.

“We are defining a car that is not overdesigned; we want something that is super clean and looks impossibly simple. Whenever you look back at classic Pininfarina cars, these qualities stand out,” added Borgogno.

Pininfarina design icons spanning 60 years have been cited as inspiration for the PFO. Three cars are singled out: the streamlined Cisitalia 202 of 1947, the dramatic wedge-shaped Ferrari 512S Modulo concept of 1970, and the sleek shooting brake Sintesi concept of 2008.

Apart from having a lot to live up to on the design front, the battery-powered PFO has lofty performance targets: a top speed of 250mph, 0-62mph in less than two seconds and a range of 300 miles. The company is working with partners on the project including an electric car specialist yet to be confirmed but rumoured to be Rimac.

The first man to prove PFO’s performance credentials is likely to be  their development driver, Nick Heidfeld. Among his many F1 and FormulaE achievements is that he still holds the record of 41.6 seconds for driving a car (a Formula 1 McLaren) up the Goodwood hill.

Here’s hoping Nick will be back at the Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard soon to show exactly what one of the more interesting – and surely one of the most beautiful – electric hypercars of the new generation can actually do.