I think it’s important that we don’t forget that cars in general should excite us. They should just exist in our lives for no other reason than to make us feel like 7 year olds. I haven’t felt this way about a car in years, I actually want a poster of this on my wall. The Ferrari 458 Spider.
We’ve driven the single and double cab variants of this car and I’ll start off by saying I think they’re brilliant. Volkswagen has really taken the fight to the establishment and created a clever, powerful, fuel efficient, good looking, massive range of bakkies.
We should point out that in America these bakkies are marketed as “compact pick ups”.The Amarok is anything but compact. It is simply massive. Its like driving New Zealand. Not driving around in New Zealand, I mean the whole thing.
Cue stirring music, dramatic snow-sliding shots from a chopper and a glorious V12 soundtrack. This is a video made during the Ferrari FF’s (many and varied) testing phase.
My grandmother was Italian, and her standard idiom for events that happened once in a blue moon was: “On the death of the Pope!” Things such as her husband ever cooking dinner, her son ever returning that loan or her fabled return to her homeland, would only happen, apparently, when her beloved Pope popped his clogs.
This used to be the same with another Italian institution, Ferrari. Mostly because Enzo Ferrari himself couldn’t give a prancing pony about road cars; he just wanted to make enough money to go racing. But then some enlightened stylish bastard worked out that anything with the fabled badge on the front would sell like hotcakes and at eyewatering prices. We therefore get treated to a new Fezza every two years or so these days, which I personally don’t have a problem with.
Argentina. Dangerous at corners. And pretty much everywhere else.
Fired up by firepower and not a lot of brains. Argentina is the Ferrari F40.
Football is essentially a very simple game. Retain the ball, keep moving and do some damage. Cars are the same. Their beauty lies in their unpredictabilty and National teams/car makers that insist on adhering to a certain style add to this heady cocktail of randomness. Not many car manufacturers have the sheer cajones to make something so undeniably theirs, so viscerally bold as the side Diego Maradona chose for the 2010 World Cup. But Ferrari did it with the spartanesque projectile they called the F40.
For Maradona, full-backs were a luxury he couldn’t afford. In the same way the F40 eschewed commonly held truths about how expensively assembled cars should be. It was gloriously stripped down and ready to attack. Ferrari -like Argentina- believe more in their ability to be frighteningly visceral and entertaining above any accepted norms. ”We have 3 of the best strikers in the world and one on the bench, let’s unleash them all at the same time”. The F40 was as daftly exciting as Maradona’s Argentina this World Cup. But as the Albiceleste found out, it didn’t take long for a good team from Germany to figure them out and surpass them. Red blooded passion and unpredictabilty only get you so far. But God how we loved them.
Ferrari has long loathed privateer upstarts. The old man himself, Enzo Ferrari, famously referred to the British teams as garagista -garage owners. Now, although I’m not particularly a fan of theirs, Ferrari has it absolutely right.
Jean Todt has just been elected President of the FIA. He’s the first Frenchy in charge since the often hated Jean-Marie Balestre’s senile reign ended over 15 years ago. One thing’s for sure, Todt’s private life couldn’t be more bizarre than Max Mosley’s extra-curricular activities even if he enjoyed collecting goat’s hoofs and claimed to be the Emperor of Neptune.
It also seems every FIA president needs to have some sort of connection to Hitler. Mosley’s dad -as head of the British Fascist Party- had the Fuhrer at his wedding no doubt boring people round the punch bowl and doing an embarrassing jitterbug once the schnapps started flowing. Balestre joined the French SS during the war and later claimed (obviously) that he was a spy for the good guys all along. Yes. So let’s hope Jean Todt doesn’t prove to have an Aunt who financed the Napoleonic wars or invented the U-Boat.
Ron Dennis is a weirdo. Not since Howard Hughes locked himself in a hotel room with jars of urine and wore tissue boxes as shoes have we seen anyone display such an aversion to germ-carrying scruffiness. His level of Second-World-War-matron-at-a-Catholic-hospital idea of cleanliness even extended to not allowing employees at McLaren to have any personal effects on their desks. Not even pictures of their families. (more…)
Oh dear. It hasn’t been an easy couple of weeks for Renault. After title sponsors ING and Mutua Federale peeled their stickers off the side of the car, the BBC is reporting that Ferrari are set to announce Fernando Alonso’s signing with the Italian team. Alonso is to race alongside the injured Felipe Massa in 2010, replacing Kimi Raikonnen who is tipped to move to McLaren. In the ensuing driver shuffle, Robert Kubica is expected to replace Alonso at Renault. Crikey, if only the on-track antics of the sport were this exciting.
This is very much aimed at our loyal German readership, so if you're not of a Deutsche persuasion you may proceed with your day. That's right, carry on. Okay then.
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