RUMBLE SEAT
When the shark bites ...
Ferrari puts Formula 1 teeth into its F430 road car, another sign of a
company transformed.
By Dan Neil
Times Staff Writer

October 13, 2004

A decade ago, visitors to the Ferrari factory announced themselves in a
small showroom inside an unassuming complex of low brick buildings —
hip-roofed and painted burnt orange, sturdy and traditional, like
Ferrari itself.

Today, the Ferrari campus looks more like Starfleet Academy than the
house that Enzo built. The new wind tunnel is by architect Renzo Piano.
The Luigi Sturchio-designed F1 logistics building looks like a zeppelin
that has crash-landed outside the Fiorano test track. The Product
Development Center, designed by Massimiliano Fuksas, is like a 3D
Mondrian painting, its externally framed colored glass boxes stacked
weightlessly, roofed with reflecting pools and connected with glass
tunnels. It's part water garden, part gerbil habitrail.

What has happened in the past decade? Luca Cordero di Montezemolo
happened. The chairman and chief executive officer, who succeeded
founder Enzo Ferrari four years after his death in 1988, brought the
company back from near collapse and engineered its transformation into
one of the world's most profitable car companies and the dominant force
in Formula 1 racing, in whose employ is seven-time world champion
Michael Schumacher. Montezemolo, 56, who managed the F1 team in the
1970s, was recently appointed chairman of Fiat Group — parent company of
Ferrari — after the death of Umberto Agnelli. He has resisted — so far —
entreaties to run for the Italian presidency, which polls show he would
win in a walk.

We've got the Donald. Italy has Luca Maximus.

Yet pared to its essence, Ferrari's business model hasn't changed much
since Enzo ran the company: Win at Formula 1 racing and amortize that
investment, when and where possible, in the technical development of the
road cars.

For the tifosi — the Ferrari fans — there is a holy purity to this
philosophy; to Montezemolo, it's just good business sense. "Win on
Sunday, sell on Monday" works as well in any language.

I would love to be cynical about Ferrari. One of the few places where
photography is not allowed is the factory assembly line — such images
would dull the legend of the cars being hand-built by white-haired Gepettos.

Yet the degree to which Ferrari has integrated its street car and racing
divisions is extraordinary. For example, Jean Todt, the director of the
all-conquering racing team, has recently been named managing director of
the Ferrari Maserati Group — a position for which he has no credentials
beyond kicking butt in Formula 1. The same aerodynamics team that dials
in Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello's F1 cars also develops the road
cars. The new machining facility builds parts for both the Gestione
Sportiva and the GT car division. In fact, the very architecture of the
campus, with its multivectored staircases and connecting tunnels,
reflects the osmosis between racing and passenger car operations.

And then there is the brand new F430, the mid-engine, V8-powered
berlinetta replacement to the 360 Modena. Like the Modena, which sold
about 10,000 units between 1999 and 2004, the F430 will be Ferrari's
bread-and-butter coupe, and like the Modena, the F430 is reasonably
civilized, not a carbon-fiber crucifix like the Enzo hypercar, of which
only 399 copies were made.

But the F430 simply reeks of F1 racing technology, including the
first-ever use in a production vehicle of a race-bred electronic
differential transaxle — Ferrari calls it "E-Diff." All cars have
differentials, which allow the driven wheels to rotate at different
speeds, as required when cars go around a corner; the outside wheels
travel farther than the inside wheels. Ferrari's E-Diff system comprises
an electro-hydraulic actuator that shifts torque between two friction
discs, maximizing traction according to the data coming in from the
steering angle and accelerator pedal angle sensors, the yaw sensors and
individual wheel sensors.

Other race-derived hardware includes optional carbon-ceramic brakes; a
"launch control" program (not available in the North American market)
for maximum acceleration from a standing start; and the vehicle dynamics
manettino, a five-position switch that adjusts the thresholds of the
traction, stability and antilock systems, the suspension stiffness, the
E-Diff and the gearbox shifting action, all integrated according to the
car's constellation of sensors. Just like the one on Schumacher's
steering wheel. Dial L for lap time.

On the "Ice" setting, for example, the adaptive suspension is soft, even
plush; the F1-style gearbox switches to automatic mode and takes a
leisurely 0.8 second to change gears; the antilock, stability and
traction control systems all intervene at the slightest indication of
wheel slip; and the throttle response is relaxed so that an overeager
right foot won't spin the car.

At the other end of the spectrum, the "Race" setting puts the car in
"seek and destroy" mode. The gear changes crack off at 0.15 second; the
suspension goes rock hard; and the dynamics system — ABS, stability and
traction — takes its invisible hands away so that a skilled driver — or
even I — can slide the car around a track. In race mode, the E-Diff
allows maximum usable power to be transferred to each rear wheel.

When the car hooks around the hairpin at the Fiorano test track, you can
lay the power on and the car powers out with the most beautiful,
progressive oversteer you could imagine.

According to Ferrari, the F430 laps Fiorano three seconds faster than
the Modena.

Does any of this sound familiar? A similar sort of system, employed for
very different purposes, can be found in the new Land Rover LR3. Its
five-position switch (rock, sand, mud, etc.) adjusts the concerted
behavior of systems from throttle response to shock valving. We are
seeing the first generation of digitally animated automobiles.

Like the Modena, the F430 uses an aluminum space-frame design built by
Scaglietti. The weight of the car (3,196 pounds in European trim) is up
10% over the Modena.

The body design, a shared credit between coach builder Pininfarina and
Ferrari head of design Frank Stephenson, sends the Modena to the gym.
It's intensely muscular, particularly around the rear flanks, which
include engine intake scoops on the fenders reminiscent of the '60s-era
250LM endurance car. The quad taillights are the same parts as on the
Enzo, and both cars' quad exhausts subtly echo the taillight array. Also
like the Enzo, the F430's rear end is dominated by a vaned aerodynamic
diffuser curling up from the car's underbody. The car's ground effects
are excellent. At 124 miles per hour, the car generates 50% more
road-gripping down force than the Modena.

The F430's front bumper intakes are a visual analog to the "shark nose"
design of Ferrari's 1961 world championship car driven by Phil Hill and
other cars of the era. This is the one false note in the car's styling:
The actual intake duct, covered in black mesh, is quite a bit smaller
than the painted-black oval surround. It's plausible, I suppose, that
the gaping vent holes create Venturi effects that move air more
efficiently through the twin radiators, but these intakes look phony up
close.

The F430 has a monster under glass — the all-new 4.3-liter, 32-valve V8.
Its flat-crank design punches out 490 hp (25% more than the Modena) and
343 pound-feet of torque (23% more). Despite the increase in
displacement, the engine is nearly the same size and weight as the
previous motor. One vital statistic: The centerline of the crankshaft is
only about 5 inches from the bottom of the engine, thanks to the use of
external oil sumps and a smaller twin-disc clutch array just over 8
inches in diameter. This means the engine's center of gravity is lower
than the Modena's, which benefits overall handling.

With its variable-valve timing on intake and exhaust sides (using a very
racy hydraulic tappet actuation), variable-intake plumbing inside the
gorgeous red intake plenums, and beautiful polished intake trumpets
jutting from the cylinder heads, the 4.3-liter motor looks, and sounds,
the part. The wild noise this thing produces at full honk will make you
whimper with tearful, lugubrious joy.

How is the drive? Perfect. Just perfect. Thanks to a slimmer central
tunnel, the cabin is roomier than the Modena's, and the stitched-leather
interior, while lean and purposeful, is quite comfortable — you can even
get a navigation system (take that, purists!). The paddles for the F1
shifter have been revised so that they fall to hand more easily.

Stereo? Don't know. Never turned it on.

On the unwound roads of Emilia-Romagna's hill country, the F430 commands
utterly. The front-end grip is amazing. The car will refuse no order
given it; turn the wheel and it goes where pointed, ready or not. Lay on
the carbon-ceramic brakes and the landscape freezes as if you had
yelled, "Simon says 'Stop!' " If you happen to be wearing the optional
four-point racing belts, the sensation is distinctly like being hung up
by your underwear.

Romp the throttle and a year's migration of monarch butterflies alights
in your stomach. Ferrari quotes a 0-to-60 mph time of 3.9 seconds, but I
have it on good authority -- Car and Driver magazine's intrepid tester
Aaron Robinson — that the car is a couple of tenths quicker than that.

Top speed is rated at 195 mph, which I suspect is a similarly
conservative estimate. Nail the throttle and upshift three times. The
car rolls its eyes back in its head and takes a bite of time and space.
Very like a shark.

The balance, the grip, the steering — it's all so effortless. I've never
felt anything like it. The only thing I could think of: It's like
beating up a bar full of rednecks with the world's most perfectly
balanced set of nunchaku. Whap! Whap! Down they go. Oh, that feels good!

It's funny to think that if you pointed Enzo Ferrari at this car and
told him to adjust the timing, he wouldn't know where to start. Despite
the nearly 500 horses amidships, what makes this car go is less hardware
than software — a reflection of the hypertech world of Formula 1 racing
that Ferrari currently owns.

True, compared with the forbidding technological heights of F1, the F430
is only at base camp. And yet the view is awfully good from there.

*

2005 Ferrari F430

Estimated base price: $190,000

Powertrain: 4.3-liter, 32-valve, dual-overhead-cam V8, hydraulically
actuated variable valve timing, variable intake geometry, flat crank,
dry sump lubrication, twin Bosch electronic engine controls, by-wire
throttle; six-speed electro-hydraulically actuated rear transaxle,
paddle shifted with auto mode (six-speed manual available).

Horsepower: 490 at 8,500 rpm

Torque: 343 pound-feet at 5,250 rpm

Curb weight: 3,196 pounds

0-60 mph: 3.9 seconds

0-124 mph: 17.3 seconds

Top speed: 195 mph

Overall length: 177.6 inches

Wheelbase: 102.4 inches

Wheels and tires: 19-inch alloys; 225/35R19 (front), 285/35R19 (rear)

Brakes: 12-inch cast-iron cross-drilled and ventilated discs, four-pot
calipers

Final thoughts: Montezemolo's revenge

Automotive critic Dan Neil can be reached at dan.neil@latimes.com.

courtesy of The Los Angeles Times and MC