Ferrari abandons its trademark red for a limited-edition version of the California 30 convertible targeted at the Japanese market. (Read More…)
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Steve Lang just asked the question, Which Car Companies Do You Not Like… But Respect?. That brings to mind a related question, sort of an inverse on Christianity’s love the sinner, not the sin, attitude. What car companies that you don’t like make cars that you do like? I’m pretty sure that I can guess how our friend Mr. Baruth feels about Porsche the company, but the guy owns three of Zuffenhausen’s best.
Ferraris are expensive, Porsches (usually) less so. This is something that every kid on the street knows, right? Turns out that it is, as the song says, truer than true.
Kudos to Ferrari for having the audacity to show off their carbon fiber monocoque like it was a new vehicle introduction – which it sort of is, for their new supercar. The big news here is that they’ve confirmed it will be a hybrid, packing a 804 horsepower V12 gasoline motor and a 90 kW electric motor.
It was 1986. One of the cruise ship’s ports of call was Puerto Rico. At a local gift shop, a 9-year-old boy received his first “nice” car model, a 1:18th scale Ferrari Testarossa. He’d spend far too much time in his stateroom, with no lights but the small bedside reading light, turning the model while admiring how the light danced over the curves and edges of Ferrari’s most influential car: a World Car in every way. The vehicle that refined the Super Car. It defined a decade, and warped the minds of several generations of car enthusiasts. And it took this boy to a Motown design school, and eventually to a little car blog called TTAC.
Sergio Pininfarina once called the Testarossa “an exaggeration in flamboyance.” A fitting quote for what must be the most famous vehicle to leave his design studio. And while he might be right, compared to today’s flamboyant Fezzas, the Testarossa was veiled in understatement and modernist modesty.
So let’s dig deep into the Mehta Brothers garage, and check out Dr. Mehta’s 1989 Testarossa: a car we’ve wanted for decades. (Read More…)
A Ferrari 458, followed by a Lamborghini Aventador were on an outing in Shanghai when a local horse riding club crossed their path. The Ferrari driver demanded the right of way with the tool commonly used in China, the horn.
The horse next to the Ferrari did what many Chinese would like to do: The horse kicked the 458 into the shins, hard. (Read More…)
In the summer of 1989, I was ten going on eleven. The fastest car I had yet ridden in was probably my dad’s 535i, clocked by the CHiP at well over the tonne, a ticket which the patriarch of the family talked himself out of with a “Not bad, right?”
It was hard to say if I really cared about cars yet: obviously they were important to my dad, and I’d already learned to drive our Series III Land Rover at walking pace on the banks of the Fraser River, but there were new Pirate sets coming from Lego, and G.I. Joe had just released a barely-disguised SR-71 Blackbird for the Cobra forces. Sean Connery had joined Harrison Ford in a quest for the Holy Grail. A friend had just gotten the new, side-scrolling Zelda Game.
The world was full of simple distractions for a young man: Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, E.T. and Ewoks, Yop bottles filled with vinegar and baking soda, Thundercats and Space Quest III.
Then, one day, in the basement of a Ladysmith home, I climbed behind the wheel of a 16-bit Porsche 959 and the whole world changed. I was exposed to the founding tenet of automotive enthusiasm.
What? The supercar? Don’t be daft, I’m talking about arguing. (Read More…)
Perhaps inspired by my recent TTAC fiction piece The little death, I was idly shopping for 360 Modenas on eBay this morning when I came across this little gem. Obviously, it’s not a real 360… but it’s not THAT bad, right?
Ferrari’s next flagship will have *gasp* a hybrid system mated to its usual V12/7-speed dual clutch gearbox.
From the Times of India to Jalopnik, all have the harrowing story that the Chinese government did “ban the word “Ferrari” from online searches.” According to the reports, a young man was killed on Sunday after his Ferrari 458 was split in two in Beijing. The reports say he was the son of senior Communist party official. According to the reports, that caused the word “Ferrari” to vanish from Internet searches in China. The Daily Mail wrote yesterday: “All references to the Italian supercar company were mysteriously removed from China’s online search engines in the early hours this morning.“ Jalopnik explains in its trademark shallow detail “why Chinese censors banned ‘Ferrari’ from internet search.”
I happened to be in China since Sunday. I volunteer life, limb, and personal freedom to put the story to the test.
(Read More…)
The initial shots of the Ferrari F12berlinetta looked suspiciously re-touched for our liking, so some live shots were a necessity before making any final judgement on the car. If you ask me, it looks even better without excessive rendering.
12 cylinders. 740 horsepower. 509 lb-ft of torque. A 7-speed dual clutch gearbox. 3,362 lbs. 211 mph top speed. Non CGI-pictures after the car gets its debut next week at the Geneva Auto Show.
If you are lusting for extra oomph, and if all you have to transport is that sadly childless trophy female of yours, then Ferrari has good news from you. The Italians will show a successor to the 599 GTB Fiorano two-seat coupe at the Geneva auto show next month. (Read More…)
As Porsche prepares to launch yet another product that’s not a sports car, Ferrari has steadfastly ruled out diluting their brand with anything approaching a crossover or a sedan. The closest we’ll ever get is the all-wheel drive FF shooting brake (above).
It’s no secret that Ferrari has been wrestling with the inevitable conflict between its bellowing V12s and European emission regulations, but that’s not the only challenge facing the Prancing Horse’s powertrain division. Sure, there’s the increasingly-tenuous link between the Scuderia’s Formula One technology and its road cars [sub], but in the short term that actually helps the emissions issue by creating a pretext for bringing KERS to the road (where it otherwise has little role). In fact, the real issue for Ferrari’s powertrain team is not even a “Ferrari issue” at all, but a Maserati issue.
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