Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 4 i Enzo

THE INAUGURAL RUNNING of the Ronnie Hoare Trophy kicked off the 76th Members’ Meeting at a very chilly Goodwood on March 17. Named after the founder of Maranello Concessionaires, the new addition to the programme is not exclusively for Ferraris but for production-based, closed-cockpit sports and GT cars ‘in the spirit of the Goodwood Members’ Meetings of 1960-1966’. It looked as if the win might go, appropriately enough, to Vincent Gaye’s beautiful and finely driven 275 GTB/C (shown), pursued for much of the race by the SLR-Morgan of James Bellinger. But, after a tentative start from pole, the win was taken in impressive style by James Cottingham in a Porsche 904, who remarked afterwards that it would have been good for a Ferrari to have won. Cottingham dedicated his win…

AFTER A PARTICULARLY busy 2017, in which the Ferrari Owners’ Club of Great Britain celebrated its 50th birthday, this year promises another full programme of events, including picnics, socials, concours and racing. The season may only just be getting going, but the club has already enjoyed a couple of social events at opposite ends of the spectrum. The first was a very informal karting competition, an event that’s run each year, in which the various area groups compete against each other in a three-hour endurance race. Held at Formula Fast in Milton Keynes, the racing was fast and close, with the team from Hertfordshire taking the top slot. The karting was swiftly followed by one of the club’s flagship events: a black-tie gala dinner at the Grosvenor House in London.…

THEY SAID IT WOULD never happen, but Ferrari CEO Sergio Marchionne has now confirmed that, by 2020, the model range will include an SUV. Or, as Ferrari would prefer, an FUV – a Ferrari Utility Vehicle. This is to emphasise that the Modenese firm will make a 4x4 on its own terms, though it is also clear that it has the recently launched Lamborghini Urus in its crosshairs. Marchionne said that Ferrari could no longer ignore the 4x4 market, adding that customers would buy such a vehicle if it was ‘the king of its class’. It’s got a job on its hands. If Ferrari wants to build the fastest SUV in the world, its FUV – codenamed F16X – will need to be a 190mph machine because the Urus claims…

‘In the beginning was the V12, and it was good.’ Twelve cylinders mounted up front and driving the rear wheels: it’s a creed to which Ferrari has long adhered, one evident in creations from the 125 S to the 812 Superfast Seventy years of development separate those cars, of course. The busy 1.5-litre engine of the 125 S made 118bhp back in 1947. Its new 6.5-litre descendant offers close to 800bhp. That’s the sort of power you’d be happy to find in a full-on supercar, and which seems generous in a GT – but this is the Ferrari way. Lamborghini’s mid-engined Miura was arguably the first ‘supercar’ but Ferrari stuck to its front-engined guns and countered with the 365 GTB/4, or Daytona as it came to be known. While the…

‘The 126CK handled so badly and had so little grip that Villeneuve once called it a hopeless, fast, red Cadillac’ A successful driver must be a person of many strengths. He or she must know exactly when and how to brake, how to ply the perfect line, how to balance a car on the edge of adhesion and, if they wish to be known as a great racer rather than merely a good driver, they must know how to overtake. Speed through traffic and the ability to know exactly where, when and how to go slicing up the inside, or right around the outside, of the car in front are critical components of the racer’s craft. Did I miss anything? Well, yes, only the most under-rated skill of them all:…

In the early days, Enzo Ferrari often declared that his road cars would only ever have 12-cylinder engines. That was why, when the company first started producing models with V6s and V8s, they were badged as Dinos. Or at least they were when they left the factory; owners and sometimes even importers would add Ferrari badges – once they were away from the gaze of Maranello… So first came the V6-engined Dino 206 and 246 GT, joined a few years later by the V8-engined Dino 308 GT4 2+2. A sub-brand, we’d call it today. The 308 GT4 was a good car, but its sharp-edged Bertone lines left many pining for the curves of the earlier, Pininfarina-penned Dino. Happily, when it came to the 246’s replacement, Ferrari went back to its…

News, analysis and events THIS IS THE PISTA, the new 488 that brings the roll-call of lighter, faster, sharper, mid-engined V8 Ferraris bang up to date. It has a lot to live up to, the line of previous ‘special series’ cars including 360 Challenge Stradale, 430 Scuderia and 458 Speciale (see page 15) but all the signs are that the 488 Pista will be every bit as intoxicating as its predecessors The stats for the regular 488 GTB are none too shabby, of course – 661bhp, 0-62mph in 3.0sec and a top speed of 205mph – and it drives superbly. As with its forebears, the objective with the Pista was straightforward enough: turn everything up to 11, especially driver engagement. It’s hard to escape the feeling that the engineers’ targets…

1:8-scale 333 SP model by Amalgam £8735 | amalgamcollection.com We say ‘miniaturised’, but at 1:8-scale, this model – a likeness of the car that thundered to victory in both the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring – practically needs its own garage. Its size means that all sorts of fine details can be accurately rendered, which is why each 333 SP takes almost 400 hours to complete. 250 GT Lusso poster by Pullman Editions £395 | pullmaneditions.com The Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este had sadly disappeared from the calendar by the 1950s and wasn’t revived until 1995, but this limited-edition poster gives a tantalising sense of what might have been. JBL Synthesis K2 S9900 floorstanding loudspeakers £44,000 | jblsynthesis.com JBL provides sound systems to Ferrari, but you…

Elsewhere in this issue we feature a 365 GTB/4, aka Daytona. Its 60-degree V12 engine is commonly thought to represent one of the last incarnations of the Gioacchino Colombo design that is the lodestone of Ferrari’s V12 history. But while the line of descent is continuous from the first Colombo V12 to the last (before the configuration reappeared, with five more degrees in its vee-angle, in the 1990s 456), in reality it’s a case of King Harold’s axe. Nothing, not even a single dimension, was shared. None of it even looks quite the same. Ferrari type number F251 had become a whole new engine, and it’s intriguing to discover how the changes evolved. We’re looking at the bones of a Daytona motor at GTO Engineering as it is readied for…

The trainers. That’s what you notice first. There are myriad models and period photos and other fascinating ephemera (including a lifesize Terminator 2) in John Collins’s office, but somehow it’s his footwear that initially grabs your attention. Especially when we sit down and Collins rests his feet on top of his glass desk while he leans back in his big red leather chair, a little jet-lagged after returning from Dubai. They’re just so incongruous. And not even box-fresh or limited edition. They’re simply some ordinary, slightly battered, comfy-looking Mizuno trainers. Paired with white socks that disappear into stonewashed jeans. It’s not that we’ve caught him off-guard either (for a start I don’t think Collins is a man to be caught off-guard) because there are plenty of photos of him so…

LaFerrari/LaFerrari Aperta (2013-17) Ferrari poured everything it knew into creating a new ultimate road car in the shape of the extraordinary, hybrid LaFerrari, its 789bhp V12 boosted by a KERS unit to deliver up to 950bhp. Just 500 were built, with production switching in 2016 to the open-top Aperta, of which 209 were to be made. FF: 6262cc V12 plus KERS, up to 950bhp, 217mph 488 GTB/Spider (2015-) The latest in the long line of mid-engined V8 cars stretching right back to the 308. What sets the 488 apart from its immediate predecessors is its smaller-capacity twin-turbocharged engine (part of the F154 family, also found in the Cali T and Lusso T). Spider version (above) launched in 2016. 488 GTB: 3902cc V8 twin-turbo, 661bhp, 205mph+ GTC4 Lusso/Lusso T (2016-) Refresh…

TIME HEALS ALL WOUNDS and all that, but two months on from Artcurial’s Paris auction we’re still a bit sore that we did not get the chance to admire the 1964 Le Mans-winning 275 P in person. Our plans for a date with chassis 0816 were scuppered not by some diary clash or a missed train, but because the car was suddenly withdrawn from sale by the heirs to Pierre Bardinon’s great collection of Ferraris. The ‘ongoing proceedings surrounding the estate’ cited by Artcurial are no doubt labyrinthine… With or without the 275 P, the event was always going to be a success thanks to a brilliantly varied catalogue (we especially liked the 1930 Chenard & Walcker 1500 Type Y8 Tank and the Vanvooren-bodied 1928 Avions Voisin C11), and nine…

‘When it fires up, the revised, twin-turbo V8 sounds sonorous and complex’ There’s always been a sense that Ferrari itself was surprised by the success of the California. Around the time of its launch in 2008, there were rumours – denied by the factory – that it had been conceived as a Maserati. What was not in doubt was that it was a different sort of Ferrari. A decade on, we have the Portofino, the third-generation California in all but name, and it’s clear that Ferrari has thought long and hard about how to play to the model’s strengths and make it an even better GT, but also about how it could be better aligned with the rest of the range. That’s both exciting and slightly risky. Traditionalist Ferrari buyers…

‘There were rumours that Pininfarina had prepared something special but noone really knew what to expect’ Few styling houses have such a long and distinguished history as Pininfarina, and none has a closer association with Ferrari. So when Pininfarina bosses decided to produce a concept car to mark their company’s 50th birthday in 1980, it had to be something extraordinary, and it had to be a Ferrari. The Ferrari Pinin – named after founder Battista ‘Pinin’ Farina – was that car. It was Sergio Pininfarina, Battista’s son and by then head of the company, who dreamed of creating a Ferrari-badged rival to the new wave of high-performance high-prestige saloons, which included the Aston Martin Lagonda, Mercedes 450 SEL 6.9 and, most of all, the Maserati Quattroporte, whose third generation had…

There’s a picture on the wall in one of Goodwood’s briefing rooms, showing a Ferrari 250 GTO and a Zagato Aston DB4 GT in close embrace against the Madgwick banking. Both cars are significantly damaged, and not by amateurs out of their depth, but by the very best in the world, as in Jim Clark and John Surtees. It was 1962 and the Tourist Trophy; Clark had spun the Aston and Surtees – who was leading the race – had collected him. Both cars were then later clouted by Robin Benson’s errant Ferrari 250 SWB. So let’s get this out of the way early on. Today, that’s a car park with a value heading towards 100 million. Dollars or pounds, it doesn’t much matter, and, assuming you bought as seen,…

‘Enzo viewed road cars as a necessary evil, helping fund his racing activities’ I’m not entirely sure what road we’re on. When you’re following a photographer and they’re on point, you never know quite where you’re going to end up, although I do know the air’s getting thin as we climb through this dry, rocky corner of northern Portugal. Eventually we find ourselves on what appears to be an ex-road, the sound of stones ricocheting off the undercarriage of the Ferrari causing me to wince, my face scrunched like an accordion. There’s nothing for it but to slow to a crawl as the camera car dashes off into the distance, a trail of dust obscuring much of the track ahead, including the potholes and some of the steeper drops. But…

‘In the main workshop there are more 250 SWBs and Testa Rossas than I’ve ever seen before in one place’ Mark Lyon’s family business, GTO Engineering, is in rude health. It has around 50 very keen employees, most of them at the company’s main hub in Twyford, just east of Reading. It’s a leading authority on Ferraris with Colombo V12s, to the extent that it even makes brand new engines (and brand new Colombo-powered cars, but we’ll come to that), but it services, repairs and restores all classic Ferraris. And, lately, modern ones, too. Thus do the activities of this specialist and of today’s official Ferrari dealers show the first signs of common ground. The factory is encouraging its dealers to take on classic-car work and training staff accordingly, even…