CLUBHOUSE | DRIVING RANGE
The Special One
LaFerrari, which was unveiled at last month’s Geneva Motor Show, is the most extraordinary road car Ferrari has ever made, writes Ben Oliver.
M
aranello in the Italian industrial midlands seems a long way assists the extraordinary 800hp 6.3-litre V12 to go for lunch when you live outside London. But as any car petrol engine – which can rev to a stratospheric enthusiast knows, it’s the home of Ferrari, and the lunch was a 9250rpm – giving a system total of 963hp. That’s private one in Chairman Luca di Montezemolo’s dining room at almost as much as the 8.0-litre, 16-cylinder Bugatti the factory with Ferrari’s Technical Director Roberto Fedeli and Veyron but in a much lighter car: around twoStyling Director Flavio Manzoni. The subject of our conversation thirds the weight. And that means incandescent performance, of over the typically Modenese tortelloni? It’s only now, after its unveiling at the Geneva Motor Show in March that I can discuss it. Then code-named the F150, course. Ferrari won’t discuss a top speed (“it doesn’t and now known to the world as LaFerrari, I was to be given a quiet preview of the matter,” they say) but it’s well in excess of 350kph. most extraordinary road car Ferrari has yet made. It might have required two plane LaFerrari will hit 100kph in under three seconds, and get to 300kph in 15 seconds, a couple faster than rides, but I didn’t hesitate long before accepting that lunch invitation. the V8-powered McLaren P1 hypercar, LaFerrari is the fifth of what Ferrari calls its ‘specials’: cars that sit its main rival which was also unveiled apart from and above even its regular supercars, with a greater level of The name in production form at the Geneva rarity and performance (and price) and which incorporate technology is the only show. At this level, that’s an eternity. from its Formula One siblings, which will later filter down to its other awkward thing The extraordinary drivetrain is models. The first was the sensational 288GTO of 1984, followed by wrapped in the usual Ferrari ‘special’ the F40, F50 and the Enzo. Just 499 LaFerraris will be made, costing about this package: an uncompromising, €1.3 million and most are believed to have been reserved already by astonishing stripped-out, race-car like cabin, serious Ferrari enthusiasts. Like most of the specials it uses F1-style new car and a body honed in the F1 wind carbon-fibre construction, but the big news is the first use by Ferrari in tunnel, though LaFerrari eschews big, a road car of its F1 HY-KERS petrol-electric hybrid drive system. Don’t worry. LaFerrari has as much in common with a Toyota Prius as a panther garish wings in favour of ‘active aerodynamics’, its has with a kitten. It won’t coast along silently on electric power, although future, openings and surfaces changing shape to suit its lesser models using the system may be able to. Instead the 163hp electric motor speed and allowing a truly beautiful body.
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HK Golfer・APR 2013
HKGOLFER.COM
SCORECARD How much?
Ferrari LaFerrari
€1.3 million (Hong Kong pricing TBA)
Engine: 6.3-litre V12 800hp plus 163hp HY-KERS electric motor Transmission:
Seven-speed twin-clutch paddle-shift manual
Performance:
Under 3sec 0-100kph over 350kph
How heavy?
1,255kgs dry
We didn’t discuss the name over lunch. LaFerrari means simply ‘the Ferrari’, suggesting that this car is the summation of all Ferrari knows. But it also makes it officially the Ferrari ‘the Ferrari’, which sounds a little awkward. If they’d told me then what it was to be called, I’d have been blunt. But the name is the only awkward thing about this astonishing new car. And if you can afford to buy one, you can call it what you like. HKGOLFER.COM
HK Golfer・APR 2013
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