Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 5 i Enzo

FERRARI HAS BEEN collecting yet more silverware for its engines at the international engine Of The Year awards. This was the 20th year of the awards and not only did Ferrari pick up a record six accolades but one of them was for the ‘Best of the Best’, the 68 international judges naming the 3.9-litre, twin-turbo V8 fitted to the 488 and other V8 models (above) as the greatest of all the winners of the last 20 years. The V12 from the 812 superfast won two awards, for best engine over 4 litres and best new engine, it being 75 per cent new in enlarged 6.5-litre, 789bhp form for the superfast. Dino cranks… SUPERFORMANCE, THE INDEPENDENT Ferrari parts specialist, has commissioned a batch of new crankshafts for the dino 246.…

‘It’s for anyone who would like to get close to the most exciting cars in the world’ THE FERRARI OWNERS’ CLUB HAS had a packed season so far, with a wide range of events for all tastes. The club’s two race series are well under way and it has also put on a couple of trackdays, a well-supported European tour and a number of purely social events, in addition to having an official presence at some key events around the UK. and as if all this weren’t enough, the club has also worked with Silverstone auctions to put on the UK’s first sale focusing exclusively on Ferraris. The season opener is traditionally a gala dinner, and this year it took place at the Grosvenor house in London. No fewer than…

‘Until I drove it, Le Mans was just a place of legend. Now it’s like a drug’ There are so many exciting things about the Circuit de la Sarthe. The hugely fast dive off the main road onto the infield, followed by the sequence that makes up the Porsche Curves. The two chicanes along Les Hunaudières where the braking is so hard to judge, especially at night. The swerve up to the Dunlop Chicane after the pits that’s so tempting. And, of course, the gladiatorial streak past the amphitheatre of grandstands and pits where the noise reverberates off the walls and pours back into the cockpit. Until I drove it, it was just a place of legend. Now it’s like a drug. After every visit, every lap, the next one…

‘The starter motor churns only briefly before the V12 music begins’ If you were to compile a shortlist of the most important Ferrari road cars, most of its members would not be hard to choose. There’d be the 275 GTB, the 365 GTB/4 Daytona, the Dino 246 GT, the F40 and so on and on, up to the LaFerrari. But how many of you would include this one, the car known variously as the 250 GT 2+2, the 250 GTE and 250 GT/E? Not many, I’m guessing. But you should. For this was the car that was not only Ferrari’s first successful volume production car, it transformed the business from cottage industry to major manufacturer and, in the process, began a brand new model-line for Ferrari that endures to this…

I WAS DELIGHTED that we’d managed to bag a big beast to re-launch the Performance Car magazine road test. the handsome 456 would produce some arresting numbers at Millbrook and look great on the cover. Best of all, I’d broached the subject of tyre wear with tony willis, our contact at Maranello Concessionaires, and was delighted when he said that he was planning to replace the whole set when it came back from the loan anyhow. Very much game on, then. At the track we suckered our datron Correvit test gear to the rump of the 456, wound up its 5.5-litre V12 and sidestepped the clutch. the results were impressive and right on the money: 0-60mph in 5.1sec (the factory claim was 0-100km/h or 62mph in 5.2) and 100mph in…

‘There are hints of Stratos, though the inspiration is said to be the F40’ When you Want a Ferrari but you want to stand out from the Ferrari crowd (such as it is), who you gonna call? Special Projects. this is the department Ferrari launched a decade ago to give clients the opportunity to personally shape a car, and the results – to judge by those that have been revealed publically – have been never less than intriguing. The latest example, dubbed SP38, is based on a 488 and, as with the more handsome one-offs, looks as though it could have been one of the concepts Ferrari considered before settling for the 488 as we know it. there are hints of Lancia Stratos, though the inspiration is said to be…

Bianchi SF01 Limited Edition Giallo Modena £15,500 | store.ferrari.com Released to mark the 120th anniversary of Enzo Ferrari’s birth, and the Old Man would no doubt have approved of its go-faster construction. The carbonfibre frame weighs a mere 780g and benefits from a clever damping layer that reduces vibration, while the finish of the 94g saddle is just like that of the driver’s seat in a Ferrari F1 car. Walero base layer £131.02 | walero.uk Essential kit for anybody taking to the track in anger over the summer, this is no mere shirt: it boasts temperature-regulating technology developed by NASA, and has the FIA’s stamp of approval. Zodiac Olympos Limited Edition Automatic $795 | zodiacwatches.com You might have to look across the pond (or go online) to find one, but…

‘STRANGE THAT THE BOXER IS SOMETHING OF A FORGOTTEN FERRARI’ The Berlinetta Boxer. Ferrari’s first genuine, full-fat, range-topping supercar, if you take the purist view that a supercar requires an exotically mid-mounted engine with a lot of cylinders, a hefty capacity and monstrous power. It’s strange, then, that the BB is something of a forgotten Ferrari, a side-road off a highway trafficked by V12s and V8s. It shouldn’t be. The Boxer is a charismatically mad machine. Bad, too, if its reputation is to be believed. Place the engine on top of the gearbox, the pundits reckoned, and the resulting high centre of gravity would surely make an already tailheavy car into a tail-snapping monster. But that was why the Boxer has, obviously, a low-built ‘boxer’ engine. It’s a flat-12, the…

I knew it was going to be loud when we entered the tunnel, but the volume and resonance still came as a sensory shock, like turning on a TV and finding that the surround-sound has been cranked to maximum. And this echoing yowl was merely the Spider’s V8 on the overrun. What on Earth would it sound like hauling hard in second gear? It was no coincidence that our photo location featured a choice selection of tunnels. Nor was it a surprise, as evening faded into night, to find that this spot at the Brighton Marina was a magnet for others. The illuminated car park beneath one of the elevated sliproads was the muster point for a gathering of cars, vans and motorbikes, and there was a relaxed, regular feel…

You hear them long before you see them. The distant, unmistakable wail of high-revving race cars, punctuated by whipcrack gearchanges and a crackling fusillade of exhaust gunfire as drivers get hard on the brakes for the next turn. I’m barely through the Silverstone barriers and already my heart is beating that little bit faster. It’s been a while since I’ve been to the ‘home of British motorsport’, and much has changed here in recent years, but that ability of racing cars to accelerate the pulse and heighten the senses never changes. It’s good to be back. We’ve come to the Northamptonshire circuit for a new event called Passione Ferrari. Actually, it’s not entirely new – what we’re looking at here is an expanded version of Ferrari Racing Days, which has…

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. LaFerrari: 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 California T and Lusso T). Spider version (above) launched in 2016. 488 GTB: 3902cc V8 twin-turbo, 661bhp, 205mph+ GTC4 Lusso/Lusso T (2016-) Refresh…

‘Ferrari brought a fantastic car to le mans, but we were unable to compete. It doesn’t seem fair’ The 86Th 24 hours of le mans proved frustrating for af Corse and its trio of ferrari 488 GTe evoluziones. British driver sam Bird praised the latest evo updates to the car, but criticised Balance of Performance (BoP) regulations, which aim to create a level playing field in each class by adjusting weight and power outputs. ‘The new evo kit has really helped transform the 488 and its handling. It’s a superb car,’ said Bird. ‘It has very little understeer, the rear of the car is pretty nailed, it’s nice and smooth under braking and the downshifts are much better this year. everybody has put in some great work to get to…

BIG AUCTIONS THESE DAYS tend to be held alongside big events. it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement, but in almost all cases the event remains, in the parlance of boxing promoters, the a-side. every once in a while, though, the auction tent becomes the main attraction… At goodwood Festival of speed in 2013, Fangio’s Mercedes-Benz W196R caused more excitement than any car on the hill, and made £19,601,500 when it crossed the block. a year later it was unseated as the most expensive car sold at auction by 250 gto chassis 3851gt, which changed hands for $38,115,000 at Bonhams’ Quail Lodge event and made headlines around the world. in 2015, Rétromobile became the artcurial show as the auction house offered dozens of crowd-pleasing barn-finds from the long-neglected collection of Roger Baillon.…

I have a pair of cheap sunglasses that I take on car launches in sunny climes, and over the years, and unlikely as it may seem, they have taken up an inadvertent yet key role in my testing protocols. It is true that they probably do not qualify as scientific instruments, but the results they yield are unfailingly instructive and, in my experience, equally accurate. The test starts with said sunglasses in their raised position, propped up on my brow. I then accelerate as fast as my car will go in third gear. If the specs don’t move, the car is slow; they need to lift slightly and pivot around my ears before a car can be called truly fast. And just a few cars will require me to reach…

‘FOR ALL ITS APPARENT COTTAGE-INDUSTRY CRUDITY, IT’S A STRONG CHASSIS’ Usually, when we major on a particular Ferrari family, we include the story of its engine, how it is constructed, how it was designed and developed. For this issue’s exploration of the Berlinetta Boxer breed, though, we’re doing things differently. That’s because, during our research, we were led to the very first right-hand-drive Boxer to be built, which is now being rebuilt, slowly, by arch-enthusiast Nick Buist. It’s the inside of his barn that you see here, containing not just his 365 GT4 BB’s engine (in pieces) and gearbox (freshly rebuilt) but also many of the body panels (some new), lots of fixtures and fittings and, in all its naked tubular glory, the chassis. A Boxer’s bare bones. How could…

‘Ferrari was in the middle of its longest fallow spell since the early ’50s’ Sometimes the meaning of words changes according to who is saying them. Take this quote about Michael Schumacher’s performance in the 1996 Spanish Grand Prix as an example: ‘That was not a race. That was a demonstration of brilliance. The man is in a class of his own. There is no-one in the world anywhere near him. I do not think there has ever been a driver who is so far clear of the field in terms of ability. It was one of the most fantastic demonstrations of skill I have ever seen, up there with Senna and Fangio.’ Had they been uttered by Schumacher’s manager, Willi Weber, or spokesperson Sabine Kehm we might not take…

‘A MONDIAL IS STILL ONE OF THE MOST AFFORDABLE ROUTES INTO FERRARI OWNERSHIP’ For many years, Mondials topped those lists of ‘bargain Ferraris’ so beloved of motoring magazines. The same lists also included the wedge-shaped 308 GT4 2+2 and the 365/400/412 range of saloons. All were the rather-less-sexy siblings to the two-seater berlinettas and fire-breathing supercars. They were also the more practical Ferraris; the cars in which you could take the wife and kids along for the ride. Which meant that, when they were new, they sold in very respectable numbers – which in turn helped keep secondhand prices low. Today, none of these is quite the bargain it once was. A good GT4 is well north of £50,000, a really nice 400/412 could be as much as £75,000 –…