Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Ferrari 458 Italia — Carpornstar of the Year, 2010

I love Fer­rari race­cars, and the 458 Italia is the new “pro­duc­tion model Berlinetta” (aka “cheap” Fer­rari) in the elite sta­ble from Mod­ena, Italy. Watch­ing videos of cool race­cars that get your heart rac­ing, but which you aren’t likely to own or drive any­time soon, is the very def­i­n­i­tion of watch­ing car­porn. This year’s star, in my opin­ion, is the Fer­rari 458 Italia.

The 458 fol­lows in the foot­steps of the great 355, 360, and 430. Each step of the way, Fer­rari has upped the ante and cre­ated a car bet­ter than the last. Con­sid­er­ing that in each gen­er­a­tion in the series, the Fer­raris have arguably been best-in-class, this is an extremely admirable and envi­able achievement.

If you haven’t seen any­thing about the 458, here’s a great lit­tle intro — an offi­cial intro, as a mat­ter of fact — from seven-time For­mula One World Cham­pion Michael Schumacher.

7-speed paddle-shift F1-based trans­mis­sion. 9000rpm. 500+ horse­power. All for the price of a freakin’ house. If I’m going to have a house on 4 wheels, I’d much rather have a Fer­rari than an RV.

The fol­low­ing video is, for any­one who is a race­car fan or for the diehard tifosi, pure carporn:

Michael Schu­macher has been a phe­nom­e­nal addi­tion to the Fer­rari fam­ily, not only on the race­track, but also for his con­tri­bu­tions to the devel­op­ment of Ferrari’s road-going thor­ough­breds. The 458 is, unfor­tu­nately, the last Fer­rari with which Schu­macher will have lent his influ­ence. It is the end of one era in the Fer­rari saga, but this ven­er­a­ble and for­mi­da­ble mar­que will cer­tainly con­tinue to pro­duce more gems.

But, for the moment, the 458 is Ferrari’s pro­duc­tion model. There will be plenty of time in the future to be nos­tal­gic about eras past. For now, the real ques­tion for those of us who wish we owned one of these 4-wheeled gems is “what’s the car like on the road?”

Some­one wrote that Fer­raris aren’t nec­es­sar­ily the most pow­er­ful cars on the road, nor are they nec­es­sar­ily the fastest, but they have soul and are fun to drive.

I cer­tainly “buy into” the Fer­rari mys­tique, as it were. Not hav­ing owned and dri­ven a Fer­rari or other com­pa­ra­ble sports­car to com­pare against, I can’t say whether that’s true or not. Maybe it’s just some­thing we Fer­rari fans tell our­selves to make our­selves feel bet­ter. True or not, though, a sports­car this expen­sive, owned for plea­sure and not for pure com­pe­ti­tion, will never be put to its paces at the very edge of its per­for­mance enve­lope. The plea­sure of own­ing the car is all about the emo­tion and the expe­ri­ence sit­ting in the driver’s seat.

Just to fin­ish off nicely, here’s a video clip of the Fer­rari 430 accel­er­at­ing. How­ever impres­sive this is, the 458 per­forms even bet­ter. That gets my heart rac­ing and puts a smile on my face!

Okay, I can’t help it, here’s some F430 car­porn to really fin­ish you off — and hold you over until I find some more cool videos of the 458 itself