MOVERS AND MAKERS
Meet Ferrari's artist in residence
Dan Neil

October 13, 2004

Frank Stephenson is the American-born chief of design for Ferrari and
Maserati, in charge of coordinating design and styling between the
factories and the styling house Pininfarina in Turin, Italy. Before
coming to Ferrari, Stephenson worked at BMW, where he famously designed
the new Mini Cooper. The F430 is the first complete car to emerge from
Ferrari during his tenure. Dan Neil interviewed Stephenson at the
Ferrari factory in Maranello, Italy.

Neil: There are lots of shiny new office buildings on the factory
grounds since the last time I was here, as well as the giant wind tunnel
facility used by the Formula 1 race team. I wonder if the high-tech
character of the factory reflects a fundamental change in the cars?

Stephenson: Definitely, the cars are more technical and more electronic
— look at the E-Diff and the manettino [dynamics control]. I mean,
Formula 1 is not cheap, and we have to get some advantage out of it.
Anything we can do to push our cars in the Formula 1 direction, to adapt
or adopt that technology, that's an advantage for us — it's costly for
Ferrari but it's quite a bit more costly for anybody else. Literally, if
we could put a license plate on a Formula 1 car, that would be the
ultimate Ferrari.

Neil: Does that mean you walk away from the myth of the little Italian
factory that could?

Stephenson: We all realize that being at the top, that is the hardest
thing to do. When you are there everybody wants your place. Everybody's
at a high level now, everybody's pushing, and you can't stand pat.

Neil: I understand you have a new CFD [computational fluid dynamics]
modeling program for aerodynamic studies. How reliable is it? Do you see
a day when you can get away from the wind tunnel?

Stephenson: It's state of the art, as far as we've ever been able to
achieve. At the same time, I don't think physical tests in the wind
tunnel will ever be replaced. Aerodynamics is a black art. You don't
know what you're going to get. What you think might not work works, and
what you do think works sometimes doesn't.

Neil: How have all these technical demands unduly influenced styling?

Stephenson: True design is more than just styling. The challenge of a
good designer is to make something that works better look better. At the
same time, we have to sell these things — they are road cars — and they
have to look like Ferraris. We have an obligation to not only make the
car technically correct but also add that artistic element that it is
beautiful sculpture.

Neil: Tell me about the "shark nose" styling on the front of the car.
It's met with mixed reviews.

Stephenson: In 1961 Phil Hill won the F1 world championship in this car,
and it has such a distinctive face. It's such a distinctive car, you
either like it or hate it…. That face is such an atypical face; to be
able to use that face for a road car is just cool. It performs much
better than our last bumper aerodynamically, and you immediately
recognize our DNA.

Neil: But has it resonated with the public?

Stephenson: It has resonated with the people who know what a Ferrari is
all about. It doesn't resonate with people who don't really know Ferrari
or who are not really racing aficionados.

Neil: So it's a litmus test? Is it retro?

Stephenson: Retro doesn't go forward; it goes back. We've taken
something that — like your grandfather's eyes have … evolved into your
eyes. And in that way you see the link. It's not that you're going back,
you're going forward. It's an evolution of a design that we're proud of
and that works.

Courtesy of the LA Times and MC