Ferrari LaFerrari
The Ferrari LaFerrari, what do we know of this, Ferrari’s
flagship hypercar – successor to the 2005 Enzo and before that the
legendary F50 and F40? Well for starters, we can tell you that it’s
absolutely huge. It might be low, but while McLaren’s rival the P1 looks
positively petite, the Ferrari shocks with its whacking great, long,
pointing nose, significant girth, long, long tail and vast out-on-stalks
wing mirrors.
It’s a complete technical tour de force too, featuring (cliché alert)
Formula 1 technology for the road. That means its V12 engine is coupled
to a so-called Hy-Kers system (effectively making it a hybrid, complete
with chunk-sized battery pack) driven through a seven-speed automatic
gearbox.
That combined little lot means it produces in excess of 900
horsepower and – important when you’re a supercar maker that’s into
willy-waving – it’ll reach 186 mph in 2 seconds faster than its British
rival from Woking. Which we imagine will matter to its owners.
If we can bring ourselves to stop being all cynical for a moment,
we’ll admit there are a lot more interesting bits of F1 inspired stuff
here – like a significant raft of aerodynamic measures. These appear to
have dictated the styling somewhat, which is full of slashes, cuts, and
peeling-away surfaces. The most interesting of these is a surfboard-like
rear spoiler which deploys from a (for Ferrari) discreet line between
the rear lamps. When it’s tucked away, it forms an aesthetic triangle
with the brake-lamp and exhaust section below it to make LaFerrari look
like it’s wearing a bikini G-string from behind.
While our battle to get on the stand (and a press scrum around it
which ranked second only to British tabloid reporters around the Duchess
of Cambridge) meant we struggled to truly stand back and drink in the
car, we grew to like its looks. It might be extreme but it didn't feely
stupidly gratuitous in the way the nearby Lamborghini Veneno did.
You get a pair of dramatic, wing/scissor doors, which when open give
the Ferrari an almost exo-sceletal quality and reminded us a little of
certain Pagani Hyura design cues. Inside, it’s positively restrained –
spare even – as Ferrari’s sought to get the weight down as low as
possible. So you sit in a carbon tub, with Carbon finish everywhere, a
small digital gauge cluster and those air-vent nozzles out of the F12
which remind us of a bit of Dyson Vacuum cleaner.
Should you have a spare Million-odd euros sloshing around to buy one,
you’d better hope you’re on first-name terms already with some
important people in Maranello (it might help if your second name is
Clapton or Mason). Because only a couple of hundred will be made and you
need to be "selected" in order to get one – just like you did with the
Enzo that this car "replaces".
It’s perhaps this exclusivity and total diva attitude towards the
outside world in general that makes Ferrari such an enigmatic brand –
one people love and hate in equal measure. And the once-a-decade
occurrence of a new flagship model accounts for the reason this car was
surrounded by such a media scrum for its two days on stand.
We suspect that, for most Ferrari fans, it’s this sense of true
stardom that the brand’s really all about. Which if you’re into it,
means that all there’s left to get your heard around, is a truly
spectacularly silly name.
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