Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano Panamerican
Statistically speaking, the world's most dangerous road is a 40-mile-long gravel ledge hacked into a Bolivian mountainside in the 1930s by Paraguayan POWs. It descends 10,000 feet from La Paz down to Coroico in the Amazon basin. Each year, roughly 150 people and a couple dozen vehicles topple off this 10-foot-wide path, plunging some 1600 feet to their doom. Almost immediately upon our arrival in La Paz, photographer Brian Vance and I head out to preview the Camino de la Muerte in a Toyota Town Ace van. We don't want any surprises when we set off for Lima, Peru, in a few days on our 1000-mile leg of Ferrari's Panamerican 20,000--an epic P.R. stunt in which two 599 GTB Fioranos will spend three months driving from Brazil to New York City, via Canada.
Affordable Ferrari?
Before our eagle-eyed readers start firing letters off to our editors, let us be clear that we know the Enzo is the fastest and most powerful sports car ever to emerge from the house that Enzo Ferrari built. That said, if you're talking "reasonable" price and "high" volume - all relative terms, of course - it would likely be hard to beat the new F599 GTB Fiorano, the long-awaited replacement for the 575M Maranello.
Hard as it might imagine, the new sports coupe might actually qualify as a daily driver, as a factory team set out to demonstrate by driving a pair of F599s all the way from the far end of Brazil all the way to New York City, where they wrapped up the Panamerica 20,000 earlier this month.
The sleek shape of the new coupe sweeps from the low, aggressive nose across a bulging hoodline, and back to its broad, rear fenders.
Bologna Show: Maserati MC12 Corse Debuts
Maserati's answer to the Ferrari Enzo Fxx, the MC12 Corse rolled into the sunlight for the first time at the Bologna auto show yesterday. The severely limited-edition model is based on the MC12 GT1 racer, which took the Spa 24 Hours in 2005 and 2006 and several FIA titles in both years. The Corse model gets a major boost in horsepower over the base model, to 755 hp, from a mere 600 in the MC12. And while its racer cousin gets a manual sequential gearbox, the Corse gets Maserati's electro-hydraulic Cambiocorsa (as well as a passenger seat). The price is the same in all markets, the company says, -- that is 1,000,000 Euros (around $1.3 million). It'll be available (that's a relative term, of course) starting in December 2006, ahead of Wall Street's holiday bonus season in early 2007, followed by All Hoonage Eve, which takes place in Westport, Connecticut around April.
· Ferrari See, Ferrari Do: Aussie Hoon Hopes For T-Shirt, Crashes 360
What's up with the dick in a box-types who keep crashing their high-po super cars into immobile objects? I mean yeah, this guy who crashed his Ferrari 360 Spyder into a pole in West Perth, Australia may be a hoon par high dollar, but that don't mean we'll make a shirt out of it. Sorry big man, no matter how many times you crash an Anderson Cooper Ferrari into a pole, your automaker's already got us to make a t-shirt for the Enzo. So, go get yourself a Carerra, Mr. Hoon, and try your level best to get a t-shirt made for that one -- because right now, despite the rumors you imbibed ten Foster's before you put the proverbial pedal to the metal in this here Spyder for the last time, you're just plain outta luck. But hey, we've still got a full gallery of the hoonage below. [Hat tip to David, Laurens & Simon!] – Ray Wert
[Save The Enzos!]
Related: Ex-Smith Barney CEO Robert Greenhill Revealed As Owner Of Busted Porsche Carrera GT; Ferarri Flambe En France: Russian Billionaire And Duma Deputy Suleiman Kerimov Crashes Enzo [internal]
Another day, another Ferrari crashed
Why do bad things happen to good cars? It seems to us that Ferraris are getting crashed left, right and center, and we're here to say they don't deserve this. We're speaking up for the little red-headed sportscars that can't speak for themselves (except in indiscernible revs and exhaust notes... and in Pixar movies).
The latest, at least, was not an Enzo. The world supply of those rare supercars is being rapidly and dangerously depleted by ostensibly careless drivers who seem to be routinely writing them off. No, this one was "just" a Modena, a 360 Spider to be precise, crashed into a lamp post at an intersection in Perth, Australia. By the looks of things, it was just the front end that was wrapped around the pole, while the rest of the car looks fine. But there's bound to be some structural damage to the 360's aluminum frame, and you can try to fix that, but she'll never be the same.
I Wanna Be Like Enzo! Carrera GT Attempts to Eat Pole, Fails
Hot on the heels of the Suleiman Kerimov/female passenger/Ferrari Enzo/Promenade des Anglais crash comes this Carrera GT single-car pileup in what we glean to be New York. Apparently the driver escaped with minimal fractures, but the car seems to be very, very broken. [Thanks to Alex for the tip.] – Davey G. Johnson
What NOT to do with a Carrera GT [Elisetalk]
Related: Ferarri Flambe En France: Russian Billionaire And Duma Deputy Suleiman Kerimov Crashes Enzo [Internal]
Another crashed Enzo... this time a yellow one!
Will the maddness ever end? Word has just surfaced that yet another Ferrari Enzo has been trashed after a crash in Abu Dabia left it far from pristine. We have no details yet on what happened, who was driving or even who owns the car, but the yellow Enzo definitely came in direct contact with the stubby trunk of a palm tree-like plant. That's normally something you want to avoid while driving an Enzo. From the pictures that are viewable by clicking the Read link, it doesn't appear the Enzo was damaged too badly, so perhaps it's salvageable.[Source: Tovx.com] .
Another Enzo bites the dust. Billionaire Russian politician ...
Yesterday, Suleiman Kerimov a billionaire Russian State Duma Deputy, crashed his black Ferrari Enzo into a tree in Nice, on the French Riviera. The car subsequently caught fire, severely burning Kerimov. His passenger, an unidentified female companion, was also injured in the crash but the extent of her injuries was not reported. Kerimov is currently hospitalized in Marseilles, where he was airlifted to after medical personnel in Nice stabilized him. Hospital officials are not commenting on Kerimov's chances for survival. The politician is a member of Russia's Liberal Democratic Party and is said to be worth over 7 billion dollars. This is the latest in a series of Ferrari Enzo wrecks over the last year, the most high-profile of which was Stefan Erickson's crash in Malibu this past February which his car split in half.[Sources: Bloomberg via The Moscow Times, ITAR-TASS]Related Items Ferrari Enzo - half off Say it ain't Seoul! Another Enzo meets its maker T-Top Enzo destroyed in high-speed crash Another Enzo crash...and this one's fatal .
Maserati finally delivers: MC12 Versione Corse in Bologna
Although it showed the first car in Madrid back in May, Maserati is finally delivering MC12 Corsas and it took the occasion of the Bologna Motor Show to unveil the first customer car. In case you don't remember, the Versione Corse takes the basic MC12 and kicks it up a notch. Maserati is only building a dozen of these Fabergé eggs for special customers on a "build to order" basis. Neither fish nor fowl, the Corsa won't go through the certification process to make it road legal, nor will it qualify for any existing racing series. Similar to Ferrari's FXX, with which it shares a lot of hardware, the Corsa will essentially be a very fast, very rare, and very expensive trackday car. For your $1.275 million, buyers will not only get exclusive bodywork for their Enzo derivative, but many mechanical upgrades including a horsepower bump from 600 in the standard MC12 to 755.
Dream rides one-up each other
Dizziness and confusion are legitimate symptoms when reviewing the overabundance of new cars being introduced for the 2007 model year.
I've managed to cull this year's clutter of new machines to recommend six rides dreamed of and developed for those who love to drive:
Audi TT Coupe/Roadster
A design icon since its 1998 debut, the second-generation TT has been improved with a new aluminum and steel space frame resulting in better weight distribution.
A 200-horsepower, 2.0-litre turbo four or 250-horsepower, 3.2-litre six will be available for the 2+2 coupe and the two-seat, cloth-top convertible. It's not yet confirmed, but plan on front-drive 2.0 TTs with either the six-speed manual or optional S-tronic dual-clutch manumatic gearbox and all-wheel drive 3.2s with the S-tronic.
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