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.

Catch us next week on Expresso!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuaxJn71zhA

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.

PPPPOOOOOOWWWWWEEEEERRRRRRRR.

Enjoy.

By Ciro De Siena

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.

More pics and details when you click >

This particular one is incredibly newsworthy because it is Ferrari’s first official shooting brake design, ie a chopped off boot/estate shape that they’ve only previously made for the Sultan of Brunei and other astronomically well-healed clientele.

It’s the replacement to the 612 Scaglietti, which, if we’re honest, looked like a frog. Or a chameleon. Or the offspring of the two. Crucially, the new FF, as it will be known, features 4-wheel drive, another first for the brand. The patented system is apparently 50% lighter than existing systems, but Ferrari is keeping mum on details.

Expect the FF to seat four adults comfortably while scaring the shit out of them with a monstrous V12, as is the traditional powerplant for four-seater Ferraris. We guess they’ll probably lift the astonishing V12 from the 599 and tune it for more torque and less revs, as this is meant to be a Gran Tourer, or GT car.

The full reveal happens at Geneva in March. We’ll keep you posted.

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.

Check it out by clicking this word. Or this one.

The reason major manufacturers have left a sport that should be the pinnacle of engineering excellence has absolutely nothing to do with the “economic downturn”.  I believe it’s the old boy’s club that run the sport who yearn for the days of smuggling cocaine in DFR cylinder heads. They’re Essex wideboys who should be selling pirate DVDs outside pubs.

The grid hasn’t been this close since the inception of the sport, but the major manufacturers are being forced out by blinkered management with a style more suited to a country club than a spectator sport.  We’re going back to the dark old days of shite cars, way off the pace, being lapped and having a young Gavin Williams hope Senna trips over one of them.

Bernie Ecclestone constantly bangs on about “preserving the future of F1” when all he’s really concerned about is the past and making money. Unfortunately his nostalgia doesn’t extend to classic circuits.  For instance, replacing the always thrilling Montreal GP with the Jean-Michel Jarre wet dream of Abu Dhabi and being on the verge of cancelling the British Grand Prix.

BMW, Honda and Toyota replaced by Campos Meta, USF1 and Lotus? A brand that has nothing more than faded heraldry and Malaysian owners.  Cosworth hasn’t made a competitive engine since the 70s.  I love the fact that I can support a team that represents the car I can go out and buy, and Formula 1 is slowly losing that.  Ferrari wants the sport to be professional and have bragging rights over other manufacturers, not hapless garagista.

Yet we keep watching.

I sincerely hope the manufacturers are using their usual “exit strategy” marketing speak for a reason instead of pointing an accusing finger at the FIA because they hope to return to the sport one day.

Gavin Williams

Jean-Michel Jarre, late last night.

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.

He’s a diminutive Napoleonic figure and above all Todt is a company man, something that might stand him in equally good and bad stead with the teams lining up on the grid next season.   He is the man responsible for reversing Ferrari’s fortunes mainly by understanding what an Italian in charge would do and then doing the exact opposite.

That’s unkind to Todt though, as he’s been one of the greatest team managers to ever grace the sport through so many “disciplines” Max Mosley might take interest.  It’s a tough call on this one because I would really liked to have seen Ari Vatanen (his opponent in the election) take over the reigns mainly because he’s Finnish. Luckily for Todt the Presidency isn’t decided by a hill climb up Pike’s Peak although it’d make Bernie some more money as a TV spectacular.

Jean Todt had a small role in the live-action film Asterix At The Olympic Games and Ari Vatanen had a major role in the very live action film “Climbdance”. So more similarities between the two than one would think having both had roles in largely unknown French films that I enjoyed.  I’m sure we could find Moseley in a few “obscure” roles as well if we trawled his cupboards or CCTV cameras in posh dungeons.

Gavin Williams

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.

By Gavin Williams

This is probably why McLaren’s most successful drivers in the past have also been fairly oddballish. Senna’s over-zealous religious fervour and psychopathic tendencies to win at all costs must have had Ron Dennis gleefully whispering “excellent” while tapping the tips of his fingers together a’la Mr Burns from The Simpsons.

Alain Prost’s absolutely metronomic pace (when he needed it) and Napoleonic French wilyness made “The Professor” one of his favourite cyborgs. Mika Hakkinen smiled once, because he had to, in a commercial for a Finnish children’s home.

Hamilton was literally poured into his uniform by Dennis, although he must shudder at the very thought of his beloved Pinocchio becoming a ‘real boy’ and swapping fluids with a pop singer on his weekends off. It must have been a strange relationship between Dennis and Raikkonen.  For all his supposed dullness in interviews, Kimi is an absolute loon in real life and the life of the party.

Now with Ron gone from the paddock, if McLaren do re-sign Kimi Raikkonen, maybe he can get away with more vodka-fuelled hi-jinx and just be left to do what he loves to do: drive fast. And in a more relaxed environment let’s hope he can deliver Whitmarsh the title that eluded him under the stern stewardship of Ron Dennis.

Now Alonso to Ferrari is interesting. If McLaren employees aren’t even allowed snaps of their wedding day at their “work stations”, Ferrari is all about family.  I don’t think you could get more differing team environments.

Alonso was in trouble for refusing to shave at McLaren, but might find the more “latin” approach to things at Ferrari suits him. That’s not to say Ferrari aren’t a professional outfit. Gone are the days of managerial nepotism, finger pointing, blown flat 12s and gearboxes that didn’t like changing gears.

The more continental approach of Ferrari may well be just what Alonso needs. He’s left one family environment -whose recently ousted matriarch left him without a mentor and a manager – for another, more competitive one. How he deals with the pace of a still-recovering Massa though, remains a mystery.

As always we’ll flock in our droves to watch the gasoline drenched soap opera that is Formula 1 and hopefully have one of our closest championship fights in years.

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.