Ferrari Pinin: The Car That Proved Enzo Didn’t Run Ferrari We take one thing for granted that simply isn’t true: that Enzo Ferrari did whatever he pleased at Ferrari. The old man, the patriarch, sole master of the Prancing Horse, deciding by decree what got built and what didn’t. Well, there was one car — … Read more
Ferrari Enzo: too much name for one car Ferrari did not put Enzo Ferrari’s first name on a road car to decorate the history books. It did it because the entire project had to answer for him. In 2002, Maranello could have followed the obvious sequence. F40. F50. Another code, another number, another supercar carrying … Read more
Shelby Daytona Coupe: six cars to take the world away from Ferrari Before Ford stormed Le Mans, before the movie, before the GT40 became a legend, a skinny Texan with a bad heart did something that seemed impossible: he took a world championship away from Enzo Ferrari. Not General Motors with its bottomless resources. Not … Read more
Ferrari built an SUV designed to hide the SUV Ferrari spent years swearing it would never build one. Then it built one, refused to call it an SUV, and invented a three-letter acronym rather than say the word out loud. FUV. Ferrari Utility Vehicle. Easy to laugh at. Marketing departments do this all the time. … Read more
Fiat: 126 years to build an empire, five to dismantle it Every so often Top Gear used to do those hagiographies about brands that “shaped motoring”. They did Ferrari. They did Aston. They did Porsche. They never quite did Fiat properly, and if you think about it for more than thirty seconds, that omission is … Read more
LaFerrari: The Most Powerful Ferrari of Its Day Is the One That Lets You Drive Least Every other outlet is about to tell you the same thing, so let me not waste your time with it. They’ll hit you with the 963 horsepower, the F1-derived HY-KERS, the Fiorano lap five seconds quicker than the Enzo, … Read more
Ferrari FXX: the most elegant scam in motoring history Run the numbers. In 2005 Ferrari pulled off a move that, attempted by anyone else, ends in a courtroom. They sold you a car for over a million euros. Then they kept it. They stored it at their place. They charged you separately for the privilege … Read more
The Engineer Ferrari Tried to Erase There’s a car that regularly sells for over fifty million dollars at auction. It is, by most measures, the most valuable automobile ever made. The man who engineered its engine never saw it win a race. He was fired before it crossed a finish line — handed a sealed … Read more
Colombo V12: The V12 Drawn on a Garden Table That Stayed Inside a Ferrari for Forty-Two Years Some engines get designed in proper engineering departments. Glass-walled offices, slide rules, scheduled meetings, espresso machines, the lot. And then there’s this other one, which was sketched in pencil in Milan, in August nineteen forty-five, while Italy was … Read more
Ferrari F40 LM and Competizione: Maranello’s Group B Debt, Paid Ten Years Late There are cars that arrive on time and cars that arrive late. The Ferrari F40 LM arrived late. It arrived three years after Henri Toivonen was killed in Corsica and the FIA killed Group B. It arrived two years after the road … Read more
Ferrari F40: The Car That Was Born So Five Prototypes Wouldn’t End Up In The Scrapyard Everything you’ve been told about the origin of the Ferrari F40 is half-true. That it was Enzo’s gift to celebrate forty years of the factory. That it was the answer to Porsche and the 959. That it was the … Read more
The Man Who Built the Most Recognisable Brand on Earth and Buried Eight of His Drivers The official newspaper of the Vatican compared him to Saturn devouring his own children. Not a rival. Not a bitter ex-driver. Not some leftist tabloid sniffing around for controversy. L’Osservatore Romano. The official newspaper of the Holy See. In … Read more
