Tabla de contenidos para Issue 9 en Enzo

NOW IN THEIR ninth year, the Historic Motoring awards are the most prestigious in the industry, recognising all that is exceptional in the international classic automotive world. Held on the October 17 at the stunning rosewood Hotel London, this year’s distinguished gala night will see the celebration of a broad range of categories, selected by the experts at Octane magazine and an international panel of judges. among them will be the Enzo award for outstanding achievements in the Ferrari world. the evening will be hosted by broadcaster and Formula 1 pundit Steve rider. To make sure you’re there to enjoy a fabulous night of celebrations, book your tickets now by visiting historicmotoringawards.co.uk or emailing sophie_Valentine@dennis.co.uk…

Great cars deserve to be displayed and enjoyed with ease. The answer: the ultimate subterranean garaging solution THE CONCEPT OF true luxury continues to evolve, and for car enthusiasts the car world has changed beyond all recognition in the last couple of decades. Classic and performance cars are now desired and valued by collectors as works of automotive art. Recently an Italian court ruled that a Ferrari GTO (36 constructed, last one sold for $48.4 million) is now a protected ‘Work of Art’ alongside masterpieces by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. With so many superb motoring events to choose from today, car enthusiasts are also collecting exciting cars to enjoy driving, showing or racing. But with many collectors living in busy metropolitan areas such as London, finding suitable garaging is…

The old adage about Ferrari customers purchasing an engine and getting the rest of the car thrown in for free may have been obsolete for a generation, but there was a time when, in Enzo’s eye, the engine was all. It didn’t matter where you put it, which is why Ferrari was last to produce a mid-engined F1 car, and then only after being ignominiously defeated by the British garagistas, and it didn’t matter that you couldn’t get rid of all that speed your monster motor acquired – which is why Ferrari was so late in adopting disc brakes. So long as there was a powerhouse of a V12 doing its stuff up front, all would be well. And the thing is, if you look at it from almost any…

Top of the list of things I don’t want to hear at 4.15am is my alarm clock. Today, a very close second is the heavy patter of raindrops. That was emphatically not in the forecast. Judging from the demeanour of our guest house owner, I’m guessing that a new entry at the top of her own personal list is the high-idle drone of five flat-plane-crank V8s warming up at 5am. Still, one person’s cacophony is another’s amazing, laugh-out-loud, close harmony quintet. A gentle, warming trundle through the sleeping town pops us out onto the smooth, glistening sweep of the bypass. In the darkness, I’m tracking the glow of four pairs of round tail-lights, a feature that has been a constant of the mid-engined V8 model line. With the exception of…

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Mondial. A strange thing to say perhaps, but true nonetheless. Regulars may recall the first Ferrari I ever drove was my dad’s Mondial QV, which my brother thoughtfully rolled into a field, but there was not space to say it was the first of three owned by my father, being followed in quick succession by a 3.2 and a ‘t’. So maybe I’m biased. Or maybe not. Because I’m also old enough for the Mondial still to have been in production when I started driving cars for a living, and I recall very well a group test with a Jaguar XJR-S, Porsche 928 and BMW 850i in which the Ferrari performed quite exceptionally well on the road even if, thanks to some…

‘WHAT THE NUMBERS don’t project is the feeling of power in the Boxer, something that starts right off the line and continues on up with no wait-until-it’s-on-the-cam hesitation. There’s remarkably little drama to it all, just a little initial burble caused by richness, the engine clears its many throats and then you tick off the gears and watch the speedometer climb steadily. And providing just the right background music is the characteristic Ferrari growl, sounding a little lower than the smaller V12s, but with the usual multi-cylinder smoothness. That sort of power would mean nothing, of course, without a proper suspension and once again the Boxer doesn’t disappoint. It is well balanced and doesn’t care to be thrown about, but driven smoothly. On our slalom course, it wanted to be…

‘SF90’s hybridisation is less about economy and emissions and more about maximising performance’ SKIP OVER a couple of details and the SF90 Stradale sounds like the sort of Ferrari that those predicting the demise of drivers’ cars and driving for pleasure have been expecting. It’s Ferrari’s first PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle), its first four-wheel-drive sports car, is built on a new ‘multi-material’ platform and has completely new driver interfaces. The main detail that’s missing is that, as well as an electric drivetrain, the SF90 also has Maranello’s most powerful V8 ever, all 769bhp of it. And this, when added to the electric power, gives a total of almost 1000bhp, making the SF90 Ferrari’s most powerful road car ever. It’s Ferrari’s fastest road car ever, too, shading even the LaFerrari;…

THE MAN BORN Andreas Nikolaus Lauda would have been perfectly content to go through life as ‘Niki’, but for much of his Formula 1 career he had to put up with ‘The Rat’ (‘A marketing guy thought of it because of my teeth,’ he recalled, wearily) or ‘The Computer’. If anything, the latter was more insulting than the former, implying a certain imperturbability, yes, but also painting him as a bloodless data-processor lacking the instinct of other racers on the grid. This was bunk, but his talent seemed to be diminished in the eyes of some by his unfashionable professionalism. Unlike many other gifted drivers, Lauda was prepared to work at the business of going fast – in the garage, on the test track, and with whichever team gave him…

‘MORE INTOXICATING THAN ANYTHING THIS SIDE OF SIGNING UP FOR THE FERRARI CHALLENGE RACE SERIES’ For a Ferrari that has been pared back to offer one of the purest Maranello driving experiences, the 488 Pista Spider is positively dripping with impressive details. Aerodynamics play as big a role here as they do with the Pista coupé, and as with that car there’s a great deal of aero wizardry going on, both over and under the car’s aluminium and carbonfibre bodywork. It starts with the F1-inspired ‘S-duct’ that drops deep into the car’s snout and accounts for 18 per cent of the increase in downforce compared with the standard 488 Spider. Then there’s the complex rear diffuser that looks substantial enough to leave furrows in a field. The V8 engine’s air…

This must have been a bitter pill of pragmatism for Enzo Ferrari to swallow. But the man who loved V12s above any other engine configuration, and whose company’s first creation was a car thus powered, knew resistance was futile in the face of evidence from his young engine chief, Aurelio Lampredi, then in his mid-30s. It was 1951. They were debating what sort of engine they would need for the planned new rules for Formula 1 in 1954, which mandated a 2.5-litre capacity limit. And there was also Formula 2 to consider, which became especially important given that F2 races were about to count for the world championship. The talk was of torque, something not abundant in a small V12, and of saving both weight and fuel thirst. The inescapable…

When it comes to Ferrari’s current racing activities, the F1 team tends to steal almost all of the limelight. If a team happens to be the foundation stone of the Formula 1 World Championship, that’s to be expected. But in recent seasons it’s Maranello’s Competizione GT racing programmes that have quietly gone about their business, enjoying the greater and more consistent success. Since 2016, it’s the 488 GTB that has formed the Competizione GT racing platform. With derivatives ranging from close-to-production Challenge cars running in Ferrari’s own highly successful one-make series, to the 488 GT3 built for customer teams to race in national and international championships, right up to the 488 GTE factory entry in the World Endurance Championship’s GTE-Pro class, the 488 has proved as adaptable as it is…

Jackie Stewart called it ‘the most courageous thing I have seen in sport’ and certainly within the automotive sphere there can be few things with a better claim. The event he was referring to was Niki Lauda’s participation in the 1976 Italian Grand Prix, six weeks to the day after a crash that should have killed him. Lauda’s condition after his accident at the Nürburgring was so bad that the view of those who tended to him was that he would be lucky just to survive. That he confounded medical opinion and lived was largely down to him. Obviously he was young and fit, but Lauda was something else again: determined to the point of pig-headedness. If a man can decide not to die, that is what he did. It…

‘The fact that Barkaways has its own body and paint shop makes it unique in the UK’ It hasn’t taken long for Barkaways to establish itself among Ferrari specialists. When it first opened its doors in 2011, home was a single industrial unit in Tonbridge, Kent, and the firm employed just three people. Eight years on, it occupies three units, employs 19 and has made a habit of winning prestigious concours awards. On the day of our visit, the subject of another concours-standard restoration is on the ramp, almost complete: a delectable Dino 206 GT, a rare car finished in a rare shade, Oro Chiaro Metallizzato. ‘It was a box of bits from Venice, but a matching box of bits with all the panels,’ says Barkaways boss Ian Barkaway. ‘It…

MY FIRST FERRARI? fisher-Price should have made the model. the 246 GT Dino, what else? If that sounds a bit demeaning, it’s nothing compared with the casual abuse the small, achingly pretty V6-engined Ferrari received at the hands of uncaring third or fourth owners. those who saw a Ferrari merely as means to enhance their image did so at the expense of the Dino’s, and a lot rapidly became very tatty. market esteem nose-dived, and so did prices. most rough examples needed heaps of cash to put them right. Thankfully, there were enthusiasts who were prepared to do just that and the Dino slowly matured into the six-figure classic it is today. Thirty-five years ago, its metal wasn’t so precious, but that didn’t make my first drive any less special.…

IT’S 90 YEARS since Enzo Ferrari founded his eponymous racing team, and the landmark is being celebrated with a fabulous display of racing machinery at the Ferrari Museum in Maranello. Enzo formed Scuderia Ferrari in November 1929 to provide cars – usually Alfa Romeos – to the most skilled gentlemen drivers of the day, among them Tazio Nuvolari, who gave the marque its first win at the Trieste-Opicina hillclimb. Many more victories would follow, in the Mille Miglia and Targa Florio, at Le Mans, Daytona and spa, and of course in F1. The cars on display go right back to the alfa 8C 2300 spider, the very first car to sport the Prancing Horse as part of its livery at Le Mans in 1932, and come right up to date…

NOW THAT IT’S THE HEIGHT of midsummer, the season is in full swing for the Ferrari Owners’ Club of great Britain. already this year, many hundreds of members have created memories of a lifetime with social and motorsport events, along with drives out into the country. As i write, the world’s biggest classic car event is fast approaching. the Silverstone Classic runs from Friday July 26 to Sunday 28 and, among the dozens of clubs and thousands of cars taking part, right in the middle of it all will be the Ferrari Owners’ Club with its 150-strong display of cars spanning more than half a century. the club would love to see you there, so if you’re going, be sure to say hello. The Silverstone Classic falls slap bang in…

As March turned to April in 1964 and the 48th running of the Targa Florio drew near, two topics dominated conversation in bars across Sicily: Enzo Ferrari’s decision to skip the race, and Carroll Shelby’s determination to win it. Enzo was on less than friendly terms with both the FIA and the Italian government at the time (the latter owed him more than 200 million lire under a scheme designed to support companies making products for export), but he had chosen to sit out the Targa Florio for practical rather than political reasons. The poorly surfaced roads of the 72km circuit routinely wrecked even the best-prepared cars, and with the Formula 1 season and the 24 Hours of Le Mans just around the corner, the competition mechanics at Maranello were…

At the end of the 1973 season, with his team’s fortunes at rock bottom, Enzo Ferrari turned to fresh blood. What he had not bargained for was the frankness of youth. By then an old man, he had grown unaccustomed to hearing straight talking from his drivers. For years, most of them had told him what he wanted to hear. When someone like John Surtees chose to give him an unvarnished opinion of the team’s deficiencies, the outcome was seldom pretty. So when a 23-year-old Austrian, having driven his first laps in the then-current Grand Prix Ferrari, got out of the car and started to explain how useless it was, the Old Man was disinclined to listen. It would not be long, however, before Niki Lauda had persuaded him to…

In the last issue we ran a buying guide on the 365 GTB/4, more usually known as the Daytona. And now, with a pleasing sense of chronology (we don’t just throw this magazine together, you know) we turn the spotlight on the car that in 1973 replaced it as Ferrari’s production flagship, the Berlinetta Boxer. So we’ll start with that name – because it marked a significant change of direction for Maranello. After a quarter of a century spent building road cars that had their cylinder banks arranged in a ‘V’, Ferrari switched to having them horizontally opposed for its new super-sports car. Now, engineers will tell you that very few ‘flat’ engines are actually true ‘boxers’ and the BB’s flat-12 was more accurately a V12 with the angle between…

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