Ferrari Mailing List: Great review of the 599 by Dan Neil (Pulitzer prize winning auto writer for LA Times)

[Dennis Liu (bigheaddennis]

http://www.latimes.com/classified/automotive/highway1/la-hy-neil11apr11,0,68
86194.story

RUMBLE SEAT / DAN NEIL
Speed-style continuum
Ferrari's new 2007 599 GTB Fiorano gives the laws of physics a run for their
money. Newton would approve.

DAN NEIL

April 11, 2007

SIXTY years ago, the legendary Italian industrialist Enzo Ferrari set about
to improve the lives of rich guys everywhere. On May 11, 1947, at Piacenza,
Ferrari rolled out his new company's first car, the 125 Sport, a 1,500-cc,
front-engine, 12-cylinder two-seater. Today we salute the work of this great
humanitarian.

The car on this page, the new 599 GTB Fiorano, is heir to Ferrari's glorious
tradition of front-engine V12 dueposti, except that it hasn't been much of a
tradition. There was nearly a 20-year gap between the 365 GTB4, the Daytona
? think "Miami Vice" and cue Jan Hammer ? and the recently departed 550/575M
Maranello (1996-2005). For much of that time, the company offered only
mid-engine exotics such as the Testarossa and the hinges-of-hell F40. These
cars were stupendously quick but loud, uncomfortable and, driven near their
limits, hairier than Ron Jeremy.

When it came time to build the successor to the terrific Maranello, Ferrari
boss Luca di Montezemolo stipulated that the car have the supreme elegance
of a luxury GT while exceeding the performance of the F40, a raw, race-bred,
carbon-bodied monster of a car ? less a car, actually, than a four-wheeled
death threat. I drove an F40 once and was never, ever so glad to park
anything in all my life.

So let it be written, so let it be done. The 599 GTB Fiorano accelerates
quicker (Road and Track reported a 0-60 mph of just 3.2 seconds and a
quarter-mile estimated time of 11.2 seconds), corners harder and shreds the
matrix of space-time faster than the F40. The 599's top speed is more than
205 mph and it manages to stay ground-bound even without the F40's
preposterous rear wing providing down force.

Powered by an Enzo-derived 6.0-liter 12-banger channeling a ferocious 612 hp
through the new F1-Superfast gearbox (which cracks off gear changes in as
little as 100 milliseconds), set up on a new semi-active suspension and with
all manner of next-generation traction and stability systems managing the
tiller of Newton's laws, the 599 feels like the ultimate man-macadam
interface: a big, comfortable, gorgeous, richly appointed sports car with
the soul of a racing machine. The 599 has the glint of divine inspiration,
like the Sistine Chapel or the U.S. Constitution, or Paris when the
Americans go home.

It is, in other words, a pretty nice car. If you don't get off on the 599,
you don't have a rosso corpuscle in your body.

For the 599's all-around excellence, you could credit many things. For
example, the aluminum space frame has a chassis stiffness that's an almost
inconceivable 50% higher than that of the foundry-cast 575M. All that
substance comes at a cost, of course: This two-door weighs in at a hefty
3,722 pounds (roughly 600 pounds heavier than a Corvette Z06). And yet
compared with the 599, ordinary cars of that weight division feel like
sagging, over-full diapers.

You could credit the car's arrangement of masses, that is to say, the
positioning of the car's heaviest components: fully 85% of the car's weight
is situated between the axles (as compared with 70% for the 575M). That
gives this front-engine GT the low polar inertia of a mid-engine car, and
yet there's still space for a surprisingly roomy trunk. The weight balance,
meanwhile, is an optimal 47/53, front-to-rear.

You may also want to render praise for the car-specific, tarmac-warping
Pirelli tires, which are, incidentally, staggered: 245/40/ZR19s in front and
305/35/ZR20s in the rear. Our $320,000 test car was fitted with $18,000
worth of carbon-ceramic brakes with six-pot monobloc calipers in front, a
little upgrade that shaves nearly 30 pounds off unsprung weight.

Or you may salute the trick new electric dampers that monitor the road,
speed and steering and adjust in a mere 40 milliseconds, using a system
called (spell-checker alert!) SCM Magnetorheological Suspension. These
babies employ a special fluid that changes viscosity depending on the
electrical charge the computers impart to it. This semi-active system helps
the tires maintain an instantaneous grip while cornering even over broken
pavement, nulls out body lean, and can go from velvety soft to harder than
dragon scales with a flick of a knob.

Like the F430, the 599 uses Ferrari's manettino, an adjustable dynamics
system that allows drivers to incrementally increase the ride stiffness,
redline, and gear-change speed, as well raise the intervention thresholds of
the traction and stability controls. The adventurous can turn them off
altogether. New is the race-derived F1-Trac, which might be described as
traction control with a PhD in computer science. On the company's Fiorano
test track ? where the name comes from ? a 599 with F1-Trac lapped an
amazing 1.5 seconds faster than one with conventional traction control.

Put it all together and you have a sports car that operates in a wholly
different graviton wave field. It's not simply that it is fast ? after all,
the Corvette Z06 is fast, plus it's a quarter-million dollars cheaper ? it's
just that the 599 is so benevolently easy to drive fast. It might, actually,
be too easy to drive, because the 599 hardly gives any clues that it's
working hard. Crank the wheels at 100 mph and the car just darts wherever
you point it. Hit your apex and hammer the throttle: The car puts its
carbide claws in the asphalt and bolts. This car blows your mind to spumy
flinders. New from Kellogg! Spumy Flinders!

Sorry. I'm not right yet.

Wait. Go back a minute. Did I say $320,000? Yup. At that price, Ferrari can
afford to focus on details. For example, the sound quality. Unlike the
brassy, biting, to-the-marrow shriek of the F430's flat-crank V8, the 599's
V12 vocalizes in richer, darker, bourbon-y tones ? around downtown, a warm
flutter; on the track, a thrilling chordal note to shake Mormon Tabernacle
Choir members down to their temple garments. Ferrari tuned this car like a
pipe organ, from the air intake to the exhaust silencer, paying particular
attention to the engine's third and sixth harmonics, the latter ? says the
company ? giving the car its "pleasant timbre." Pleasant, that is, unless
it's on your back bumper.

All that money also buys you the world's most famous V12 ? famous because
pictures of it, sitting cold and unaccommodated on the Pacific Coast
Highway, were beamed around the world last year. This is the same
low-profile, lightweight 65-degree V12 (block, heads and sump) with
chain-driven cams and variable intake geometry and valve timing. With a
screaming top speed of 8,400 rpm, the V12 generates 102 hp per liter, and
448 pound-feet of torque, 90% of which is on tap at just 3,500 rpm. Every
gear offers a gag-on-your-tongue burst of accelleration. Let the rpm die off
and savor the delirious popping overruns. Zing! Zing! Spumy Flinders!

Unlike the bit-biting, eye-rolling turbocharged evil under the Plexiglas
canopy of the F40, this engine is silky smooth, utterly tractable and
effortless to drive around town. But crack the whip over the cavalli and the
thing spools up like a 1-liter Ducati. Thanks to its lightweight twin clutch
and apparently lighter-than-air internal components, the engine seems to
have no reciprocal mass to speak of.

This engine is perfectly matched to the new F1- Superfast gearbox, which
adjusts shifting crispness ? the degree to which the car whacks you between
the shoulder blades ? exactly to how hard you're driving.

I don't think the car is quite as pretty as the 575M, and it has reproduced
the 612 Scaglietti's Mona Lisa smile, rather regrettably. It's still amazing
looking and has the advantage of subtlety (the F430, on the other hand,
arrives with all the quietude of a Hooters Mardi Gras float). A singular bit
of aero styling is the 599's wraparound rear, close bracketed by flying
buttresses (shades of Pegaso and Bertone's BAT cars). The 599 generates
significant downforce (352 pounds at 186 mph). It is also practically immune
to crosswinds, as I found out during my rather spirited jaunt through San
Gorgonio Pass.

Gonzo fast, awesomely cool, harder than Simon Cowell's heart yet with a deep
sense of owner preservation, the 599 reminds me that I don't want much in a
car, as long as I can have everything. And here it is, the world's best-ever
front-engine sports car.

Arguments? Anybody? I thought not.

*


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
dan.neil [at] latimes.com

*

(INFOBOX BELOW)

Ferrari 599 GTB

Base price: $260,000 (est.)

Price, as tested: $320,000

Powertrain: 6.0-liter DOHC V12, 48 valve, with variable valve timing and
variable intake geometry; six-speed automated gearbox; rear-wheel drive with
limited-slip differential

Horsepower: 612 at 7,600 rpm

Torque: 448 pound-feet at 5,600 rpm

Max engine speed: 8,400 rpm

Curb weight: 3,722 pounds

0-60 mph: 3.2 seconds*

Wheelbase: 108.3 inches

Overall length: 183.7 inches

EPA fuel economy: 12 miles per gallon city, 15 mpg highway

Final thoughts: Spumy Flinders!

*Figure from Road and Track