Ferrari Mailing List: The 10,000 RPM street Ferrari

[Fellippe Galletta (fellippe.galletta]

In discussing what the future holds for the high end exotic, there's so much talk that the next generation of big boy exotics has to do one of two things:

a) Turbocharging

b) Naturally Aspirated with electric motor

As a fan of NA, I'd rather see the latter, naturally. 

While many of us are cursing the car gods for allowing all of this to happen, this could be a good opportunity for a new look at street engines.

The essence of the Ferrari motor has essentially been about high revs and high hp, whether V8 or V12. As displacement rises, torque improves but not at the level it does for other cars which don't rev quite as high.

Looking over the Lexus LFA V10 carefully in recent time, I'm blown away that a street car has been made with a 9,500 rpm redline. A 4.8 liter V10 with a very high redline.....much higher to my knowledge than the 5.0 V10s from Porsche and Lamborghini....

So it got me thinking with the low end torque advantages of electric, could Ferrari be enticed to scale back their V8 and V12 cars in displacement, up the revs and have the hybrid system pick up the slack?

Bring the V8 down from 4.5 to 3.5 liters, and the V12 from 6.5 to 4.7 liters. In both scenarios I think you can get the magical 10k redline. 

It seems that engine advances since the mid '90s would allow for a higher revving F355 or F50? :)

FG