Ferrari F355: The Car Honda Forced Into Existence The most beloved Ferrari of the 1990s exists because a Japanese company embarrassed Maranello. That is the part of the story that gets skipped. People talk about the sound, the five valves, the Pininfarina lines. Far less gets said about the state Ferrari was actually in when … Read more
Pininfarina, The House: Ninety-Five Years of Shaping Cars That Other People Built The Geneva Motor Show of 2012. Ferrari unveiled the F12berlinetta. A brutal car — naturally aspirated V12, razor lines, the last card played by pre-turbo Maranello. Nobody made much of it that morning, but the F12 was the last road-going Ferrari drawn by … Read more
Ferrari 512 BB: The Boxer That Never Was There is a Ferrari where almost nothing written on the car turns out to be true. The engine is not a boxer, despite half a century of the factory saying it is. The two letters in the name do not mean what Ferrari says they mean, according … Read more
Ferrari Daytona: The Name Enzo Cancelled America gave this car its name. America redrew its face. America ran it across the continent in thirty-five hours. America faked it twice over. And then America priced Ferrari’s twelve-cylinder engine out of the country for eleven years. The 365 GTB/4 is one of the most imposing things Maranello … Read more
Ferrari Testarossa: The Most American Italian Supercar Ever Built Italy gets the credit. America wrote the rules. The single most recognizable piece of 1980s car design came out of a US regulation. The car’s fame came from a Miami cop show and a Japanese arcade cabinet. The convertible everyone remembers was cut open in Southern … Read more
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
