15 replies to this topic

[Shi]

He's just cost Evo all access to future Ferrari launches but I applaud him for spreading the word

Looks like it's not just the F1 team that's paranoid, same paranoia permeates the road car division

the important bits from http://ca.jalopnik.c...w-ferrari-spins

as a journalist you are expressly forbidden from driving any current Ferrari road car without permission from the factory. So if I want to drive my mate's 458 tomorrow, I have to ask the factory.

rival brands just hand over their car with nothing more than a polite suggestion that you should avoid crashing it too heavily, and then return a week later.

Ferrari will never admit that its press cars are tuned, but has the gall to turn up at any of the big European magazines' end-of-year-shindig-tests with two cars. One for straight line work, the other for handling exercises.

I think it started in 2007 when I heard that Ferrari wanted to know which test track we were going to use for Autocar's 599 GTB road test, but in reality the rot had set in many years earlier. Why would it want to know that? "Because," said the man from the Autocar office, "The factory now has to send a test team to the circuit we chose so that they can optimize the car to get the best performance from it." They duly went to the track, tested for a day, crashed the car, went back to the factory to mend the car, returned, tested and then invited us to drive this "standard" 599.

How bad has it been? I honestly don't know where to start. Perhaps the 360 Modena press car that was two seconds faster to 100mph than the customer car we also tested.

Remember the awesome 430 Scuderia? What a car that was, and still is. One English magazine went along with all the cheating-bullshit because the cars did seem to be representative of what a customer might get to drive, but then during the dyno session, the "standard" tires stuck themselves to the rollers. And this is the nub: how fucking paranoid do you have to be to put even stickier rubber on a Scuderia? It's like John Holmes having an extra two inches grafted onto his dick.

So, when we used an owner's 430 Scud because Ferrari wouldn't lend us the test car, it was obliterated in a straight line by a GT2 and a Lambo LP 560-4, despite all the "official" road test figures suggesting it was faster than Halley's Comet. The forums went nuts and some Scud owners rightly felt they hadn't been delivered the car they'd read about in all the buff books.

[vietlol]

[MrHahn]

This has been common knowledge for years. Mclaren also sending out "Production Prototypes" and "Experimental Prototypes" as standard trim cars doesn't make the British media bat an eyelid. Just wait for all the propaganda that will pop up in the coming months on the MP4-12C
I'm not commenting on Nissan and their Godzilla

Ferrari wouldn't even give 2 (different) cars to EVO for Car of the year because 1 would always lose (they both would have lost in the end, anyway).

Cheers for the article

[yonson]

I'll give the same response I gave in the OT thread, Fuck Ferrari...

[Nacho]

This has been common knowledge for years. Mclaren also sending out "Production Prototypes" and "Experimental Prototypes" as standard trim cars doesn't make the British media bat an eyelid. Just wait for all the propaganda that will pop up in the coming months on the MP4-12C
I'm not commenting on Nissan and their Godzilla

Ferrari wouldn't even give 2 (different) cars to EVO for Car of the year because 1 would always lose (they both would have lost in the end, anyway).

Cheers for the article

To be fair, the MP4-12c isn't even in production yet, making it hard to give out 'customer production' cars.

In fact, every article I've read on the new McLaren states that they're driving test mules and pre production prototypes.

[Redliner]

Dammnit Ferrari

But mad props to the Monkey. I've always liked he manages to bring across the excitement of the car he was driving through his emotions not only in his words but his overall body expressions. And now I want to have his child for standing up for his values.

[_R_]

here's my 3 cents...

I get every other car company is all "yeah, here is the keys, have fun, go flog the Fiesta/Merc C/BMW 3,4,5,6,7,8 Series/etc etc"... cause they're an everyman's car...
Ferrari on the other hand is built for the track... why wouldn't they tune it for such and such track to better showcase what the car can really do? I'd expect Lambo to do the same, Pagani to do the same, etc etc....

Ferrari is a racing company that makes cars... I'd want them to tune my car for the track that i'm at...

it's kinda like my motorcycle for example... the suspension setup is made for someone ranging from 100lbs to 300 lbs... it's not setup for me... to really get what the bike can do, I need to go have it setup for my weight, for my riding style, for body type... on an everyday car, you can't do that, on a sports car with as much electronics as the ferrari, it can do that, so why not?

[Dr. Jimmmah!]

here's my 3 cents...

I get every other car company is all "yeah, here is the keys, have fun, go flog the Fiesta/Merc C/BMW 3,4,5,6,7,8 Series/etc etc"... cause they're an everyman's car...
Ferrari on the other hand is built for the track... why wouldn't they tune it for such and such track to better showcase what the car can really do? I'd expect Lambo to do the same, Pagani to do the same, etc etc....

Ferrari is a racing company that makes cars... I'd want them to tune my car for the track that i'm at...

it's kinda like my motorcycle for example... the suspension setup is made for someone ranging from 100lbs to 300 lbs... it's not setup for me... to really get what the bike can do, I need to go have it setup for my weight, for my riding style, for body type... on an everyday car, you can't do that, on a sports car with as much electronics as the ferrari, it can do that, so why not?

Lets say your Ferrari has a rev limit of 8500rpm as it is designed to last 50,000mi before a major overhaul. If they are going to bump the limit to say 8700rpm, to sacrifice the engine life to 10,000mi then it is not really representative of what the end user receives.

I can understand throwing on sticky rubber on the car, its a fairly easy thing for the end-user to buy the latest Hoosier compound for their Ferrari, but hacking into the ECU to modify the rev-limit or engine mapping voids the warranty, thus is not really a fair assessment.

I guess the bottom line for me is that if I can do whatever mods to the car without voiding the warranty from the manufacturer that they do to 'prep' the car for the tests, then fine. If they want the demo cars to have this extra oomph then they need to offer this as an option that you can have done at the dealership without voiding the warranty IMO. Even Jaguar had to tape up the seams and drove on a slight decline to try achieve 219mph (or whatever it was they ended up achieving) with the XJ220

[MrHahn]

To be fair, the MP4-12c isn't even in production yet, making it hard to give out 'customer production' cars.

In fact, every article I've read on the new McLaren states that they're driving test mules and pre production prototypes.

Completely true.

The point being - in 10 years when everyone recalls the classics they drove which were the pre-production prototypes and remember them as the production version. Autocar is still doing this with the F1

[Redliner]

Because if the Ferrari is going heads-up with the other cars don't receive the same treatment from their respective company, than the match is un-fair.

[Nacho]

Ferrari on the other hand is built for the track... why wouldn't they tune it for such and such track to better showcase what the car can really do? I'd expect Lambo to do the same, Pagani to do the same, etc etc....

Ferrari is a racing company that makes cars... I'd want them to tune my car for the track that i'm at...

it's kinda like my motorcycle for example... the suspension setup is made for someone ranging from 100lbs to 300 lbs... it's not setup for me... to really get what the bike can do, I need to go have it setup for my weight, for my riding style, for body type... on an everyday car, you can't do that, on a sports car with as much electronics as the ferrari, it can do that, so why not?

Because Ferrari doesn't tune each customer car for the track/straight line/test/etc. that the customer takes it to. There's a 'general' setup on it that the car comes with. Ferrari certainly doesn't fly out a team of engineers to setup your car for each track you take it to.

I'd argue that most Ferraris never see the track. And the ones that actually do are likely drive far, far from their limits.

[Dr. Jimmmah!]

Because Ferrari doesn't tune each customer car for the track/straight line/test/etc. that the customer takes it to. There's a 'general' setup on it that the car comes with. Ferrari certainly doesn't fly out a team of engineers to setup your car for each track you take it to.

I'd argue that most Ferraris never see the track. And the ones that actually do are likely drive far, far from their limits.

Unless you are fortunate enough to be driving a FXX

[Redliner]

Unless you are fortunate enough to be driving a FXX

I thought the FXX lives at Ferrari and it is brought out to certain track events all over Europe for their owners?

[Shi]

here's my 3 cents...

I get every other car company is all "yeah, here is the keys, have fun, go flog the Fiesta/Merc C/BMW 3,4,5,6,7,8 Series/etc etc"... cause they're an everyman's car...
Ferrari on the other hand is built for the track... why wouldn't they tune it for such and such track to better showcase what the car can really do? I'd expect Lambo to do the same, Pagani to do the same, etc etc....

Ferrari is a racing company that makes cars... I'd want them to tune my car for the track that i'm at...

it's kinda like my motorcycle for example... the suspension setup is made for someone ranging from 100lbs to 300 lbs... it's not setup for me... to really get what the bike can do, I need to go have it setup for my weight, for my riding style, for body type... on an everyday car, you can't do that, on a sports car with as much electronics as the ferrari, it can do that, so why not?

The Ferrari press car 360 Modena was 2s faster to 100mph than regular cars off the showroom floor. That's a pretty large discrepancy I think

[vietlol]

Because Ferrari doesn't tune each customer car for the track/straight line/test/etc. that the customer takes it to. There's a 'general' setup on it that the car comes with. Ferrari certainly doesn't fly out a team of engineers to setup your car for each track you take it to.

I'd argue that most Ferraris never see the track. And the ones that actually do are likely drive far, far from their limits.

I would say so too, most Ferraris are status symbols. So if you dont care about actual on track performance who is Ferrari fooling? Then again I guess a lot of people want the fastest even if all they do is film rap videos with it

[Nacho]

I would say so too, most Ferraris are status symbols. So if you dont care about actual on track performance who is Ferrari fooling? Then again I guess a lot of people want the fastest even if all they do is film rap videos with it

Bragging rights mean alot.