Allan Buys a Ferrari and look what comes out...

Mako and Capt. Chaos

 

I just talked to Christian.. And it's correct. I stand corrected. Christian is dealing with this nonsense too. He can only get cars from the factory or Ferrari UK.

 

PS: Talked with him about doing the story in the mag that Harris has written on jalopnik. If Harris stands alone on this, he will get nowhere.

 

Your whole world must be collapsing. It has happened to all of us at one point of another, innocence was lost forever at some point in these companies and their manipulation. It's sad really, but reality.

 

However, let this be a learning exeperience Hostrup and I mean this. There are VERY knowledgeable minds on this board, far more experienced than yourself. Before running your opinion, especially if that opinion directly opposes those experienced minds, sit back and reflect on why they're saying what they are on that topic.

 

This is not an insult, as you seem like you want to engage the board in a thoughtful way...I'm giving you advice on how to do just that.

 

Don't give opinions. Give facts. If you don't have the facts, wait until you can get some.

 

Think about it: If you had called your boy first before giving your nonsense "oh gee guys, I don't think Ferrari does this at all gosh golly" first post in this thread, you'd look like a knowledgeable pro right now and you'd have much more credibility in the future on Ferrari matters.

 

Opinions are worthless, get facts.

 

Thanks for following up on the story though, good job. It's nothing the older members of the board didn't already know as Ferrari, and several other mfgs, are total bullshit, including their acceleration times. This is why our board prizes Vbox runs above all else...not magazines.

Tuning presscars is old stuff, but this kind of need of controll is just stupid!

 

Anyone remember reading old road-tests with the Miura? The one that actually lifted in front was as Bob Wallace called it, tuned like a pure race engine, and nobody actually knew how much more power it had than the stock engine. But it was MUCH!

 

And the factory testcar Countach Sandro Munari drove in 314 kph (196 mph) on public highways, with a journalist in the passenger seat was probably not totally stock either...

 

This might be the Italian way of overdoing everything, as long as it is macho:)

Not surprising at all.

 

Nothing that most maufatures don't try and do. Remember a few years back where a bone stock Ford GT was right with a Carrera GT and Enzo. Yeah right.

 

Everybody's always looking for an edge. It's business.

 

 

Most Ford GT's will pull away from the Carrera GT or Enzo with a supercharger pulley change (less than 1K).. (700 hp and less weight = bye bye Enzo!)

Not surprising at all. Ferrari is shit. Shady practices and the cars aren't even great anymore. Living off past glories.

 

Lambo, Aston, LFA, GTR, all cars I'd rather drive.

 

Hell, Nissan actually underrates the GTR whereas Ferraris have consistently been dyno'd at 100hp less than Ferrari claims.

Not surprising at all. Ferrari is shit. Shady practices and the cars aren't even great anymore. Living off past glories.

 

Lambo, Aston, LFA, GTR, all cars I'd rather drive.

 

Hell, Nissan actually underrates the GTR whereas Ferraris have consistently been dyno'd at 100hp less than Ferrari claims.

Please go buy up all the LFAs. Lexus needs you.

lols at LFA

Most Ford GT's will pull away from the Carrera GT or Enzo with a supercharger pulley change (less than 1K).. (700 hp and less weight = bye bye Enzo!)

 

 

No shit retard.

 

I'm talking about stock, like in the article.

If Harris stands alone on this, he will get nowhere.

He's not looking to get anywhere as far as I can tell.

His objective is not to make Ferrari change, but to make the audience aware of their practice from a (presumably) reliable source, and that he has accomplished.

this is not good for Italy: i knew something about this Ferrari "system", but i did not think it was so much bad.

 

What to say? Ferrari was used to consider himself like God on hearth: they just still going on that way.

 

I am from Modena, i like Ferrari but i prefer Lamborghini cars: one of the reason is also the different "way of life" their fouders had.

 

Lamborghini was less superb than Ferrari: Ferruccio made tractors and was a genuine fellow that came from countryside, a worker, not a S.O.B.

 

I think Allan will soon invite Winkelmann for a dinner...

Well done Chris Harris, you've got bigger balls than anyone else who's in the car mag world.

 

But it doesn't take a journo to spell out what Ferrari are like, just look at F1. The cheating, the lies, the spin, the team orders, the posturing with the FIA, the whole thing stinks and they'd never get away with it in any other sphere of sport or business.

 

I personally wouldn't own one - the brand is too polluted by liars and posers. Just look at the 458 where the factory provide 2 cars for road tests, one for straight lines and one for corners, what a joke!

 

Not sure about Lambo, but IMHO, the good guys out there are Porsche. Their cars usually perform better than their stated numbers e.g. 997 Turbo S

Not sure about Lambo, but IMHO, the good guys out there are Porsche. Their cars usually perform better than their stated numbers e.g. 997 Turbo S

 

Porsche was ethically unchallenged until their poor reaction to the GT-R throwing low times on their backyard course at the N-Ring got them flustered.

 

They did almost everything under the sun to retake that time...and then lost it again to the GT-R after Nissan accused them of falsifying the results, running massively manipulated cars/tires/etc.

 

For a company so vested in the tradition of winning and losing gracefully at motorsports for over 60 years it was embarassing to outsiders how they handled the entire episode.

 

This is why Aaron and Allan's (and others) good work with the Vbox should be applauded as yet another tool to help us understand the real performance of these cars.

can someone post the article here....I click it, and it doesn't populate for me since I am running a antiquated browser.

can someone post the article here....I click it, and it doesn't populate for me since I am running a antiquated browser.

 

This is it in a nutshell (lol):

 

The full article in case anyone else has Pikemike "Interent from 1997" syndrome:

 

How Ferrari spins

Chris Harris — I told the blokes here at Jalopnik I was pissed at Ferrari and wanted to tell a few people. They said I could do it here. Stay with me, this might take a while.

 

I think it started in 2007 when I heard that Ferrari wanted to know which test track we were going to use for Autocar's 599 GTB road test, but in reality the rot had set in many years earlier. Why would it want to know that? "Because," said the man from the Autocar office, "The factory now has to send a test team to the circuit we chose so that they can optimize the car to get the best performance from it." They duly went to the track, tested for a day, crashed the car, went back to the factory to mend the car, returned, tested and then invited us to drive this "standard" 599. They must have been having a laugh.

 

Sad to say it, but the ecstasy of driving a new Ferrari is now almost always eradicated by the pain of dealing with the organization. Why am I bothering to tell you this? Because I'm pissed with the whole thing now. It's gotten out of control; to the point that it will soon be pointless believing anything you read about its cars through the usual channels, because the only way you get access is playing by its rules.

 

Like anyone with half a brain, I've been willing to cut Ferrari some slack because it is, well, Ferrari –- the most famous fast car brand of all and the maker of cars that everyone wants to know about. Bang out a video of yourself drifting a new Jag XKR on YouTube and 17 people watch it; do the same in a 430 Scuderia and the audience is 500,000 strong. As a journalist, those numbers make you willing to accommodate truck-loads of bullshit, but I've had enough now. I couldn't care if I never drive a new Ferrari again, if it means I never have to deal with the insane communication machine and continue lying about the lengths to which Ferrari will bend any rule to get what it wants. Which is just as well, because I don't think I'm going to be invited back to Maranello any time soon. Shame, the food's bloody marvelous.

 

How bad has it been? I honestly don't know where to start. Perhaps the 360 Modena press car that was two seconds faster to 100mph than the customer car we also tested. You allow some leeway for "factory fresh" machines, but this thing was ludicrously quick and sounded more like Schumacher's weekend wheels than a street car. Ferrari will never admit that its press cars are tuned, but has the gall to turn up at any of the big European magazines' end-of-year-shindig-tests with two cars. One for straight line work, the other for handling exercises. Because that's what happens when you buy a 458: they deliver two for just those eventualities. The whole thing stinks. In any other industry it wouldn't be allowed to happen. It's dishonest, but all the mags take it between the cheeks because they're too scared of not being invited to drive the next new Ferrari.

 

Remember the awesome 430 Scuderia? What a car that was, and still is. One English magazine went along with all the cheating-bullshit because the cars did seem to be representative of what a customer might get to drive, but then during the dyno session, the "standard" tires stuck themselves to the rollers.

 

And this is the nub: how fcuking paranoid do you have to be to put even stickier rubber on a Scuderia? It's like John Holmes having an extra two inches grafted onto his dick. I mean it's not as if, according to your own communication, you're not a clear market leader and maker of the best sports cars in the world now, is it?

 

What Ferrari plainly cannot see is that its strategy to win every test at any cost is completely counter-productive. First, it completely undermines the amazing work of its own engineers. What does it say about a 458 if the only way its maker is willing to loan it to a magazine is if a laptop can be plugged in after every journey and a dedicated team needs to spend several days at the chosen test track to set-up the car? It says they're completely nuts –- behavior that looks even worse when rival brands just hand over their car with nothing more than a polite suggestion that you should avoid crashing it too heavily, and then return a week later.

 

Point two: the internet is good for three things: free porn, Jalopnik and spreading information. Fifteen years ago, if your 355 wasn't as fast as the maker claimed you could give the supplying dealer a headache, whine at the local owners club and not much besides. Nowadays you spray your message around the globe and every bugger knows about it in minutes. So, when we used an owner's 430 Scud because Ferrari wouldn't lend us the test car, it was obliterated in a straight line by a GT2 and a Lambo LP 560-4, despite all the "official" road test figures suggesting it was faster than Halley's Comet. The forums went nuts and some Scud owners rightly felt they hadn't been delivered the car they'd read about in all the buff books. Talk about karma slapping you in the face.

 

It's the level of control that's so profoundly irritating and I think damaging to the brand. Once you know that it takes a full support crew and two 458s to supply those amazing stats, it then takes the shine off the car. The simple message from Ferrari is that unless you play exactly by the laws they lay down, you're off the list.

 

What are those laws? Apart from the laughable track test stuff, as a journalist you are expressly forbidden from driving any current Ferrari road car without permission from the factory. So if I want to drive my mate's 458 tomorrow, I have to ask the factory. Will it allow me to drive the car? No: because it is of "unknown provenance," i.e. not tuned. I'm almost tempted to buy a 458, just for the joy of phoning Maranello every morning and asking if its OK if I take my kid to school.

 

Where I've personally run into trouble is by using owners' cars for comparison tests. Ferrari absolutely hates this; even if you say unremittingly nice things about its cars, it goes ape shit. But you want to see a 458 against a GT3 RS so I'm going to deliver that story and that video. Likewise the 599 GTO and the GT2 RS. Ferrari honestly believes it can control every aspect of the media — it has actively intervened several times when I've asked to borrow owners' cars.

 

The control freakery is getting worse: for the FF launch in March journalists have to say which outlets they are writing it for and those have to be approved by Maranello. Honestly, we're perilously close to having the words and verdicts vetted by the Ferrari press office before they're released, which of course has always been the way in some markets.

 

Should I give a shit about this stuff? Probably not. It's not like it's a life-and-death situation; supercars are pretty unserious tackle. But the best thing about car nuts is that they let you drive their cars, and Ferrari has absolutely no chance stopping people like me driving what they want to drive. Of course their attempts to stop me makes it an even better sport and merely hardens my resolve, but the sad thing is its cars are so good it doesn't need all this shite. I'll repeat that for the benefit of any vestige of a chance I might have of ever driving a Ferrari press car ever again (which is virtually none). "Its cars are so good it doesn't need this shite."

 

None of this will make any difference to Ferrari. I'm just an irrelevant Limey who doesn't really matter. But I've had enough of concealing what goes on, to the point that I no longer want to be a Ferrari owner, a de-facto member of its bullshit-control-edifice. I sold my 575 before Christmas. As pathetic protests go, you have to agree it's high quality.

 

Jesus, this is now sounding like a properly depressing rant. I'll leave it there. Just remember all this stuff then next time you read a magazine group test with a prancing stallion in it.

 

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Chris Harris is a UK-based freelance car writer who once bought a 1995 512 TR but sold it when his mates called him Tubbs and put Jan Hammer on his iPod.

 

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" how fcuking paranoid do you have to be to put even stickier rubber on a Scuderia? It's like John Holmes having an extra two inches grafted onto his dick." LOL

Man all this 458 talk makes me want to go and test drive one, not because I want to buy one.

I only want to see what the competition is working with

Man all this 458 talk makes me want to go and test drive one, not because I want to buy one.

I only want to see what the competition is working with

 

I will quote my new friend Hostrup and say that you don't win all those "best of" awards for nothing...

 

It's impressive for sure, I just have a hard time with the look. Black is the best I've seen, thank god at least Allan's car is the right color.

 

Drive one and tell us your thoughts, would be a good "counter point" piece.

I will quote my new friend Hostrup and say that you don't win all those "best of" awards for nothing...

 

It's impressive for sure, I just have a hard time with the look. Black is the best I've seen, thank god at least Allan's car is the right color.

 

Drive one and tell us your thoughts, would be a good "counter point" piece.

 

Arrhhhhh Thaaanks .. Agree with the color btw. Best looking in black, looks mean. Like the white with black roofs and wheels also - if I remember correctly, you are not a fan of that right?

Arrhhhhh Thaaanks .. Agree with the color btw. Best looking in black, looks mean. Like the white with black roofs and wheels also - if I remember correctly, you are not a fan of that right?

 

Those black-roof ones are hideous, I hate the LP560 version of that look also (the new Bicolore).

 

I did like the 2006 Gallardo SE color combos back then, but as time passes the white/black contrast look is getting a bit played out now.

I will quote my new friend Hostrup and say that you don't win all those "best of" awards for nothing...

 

It's impressive for sure, I just have a hard time with the look. Black is the best I've seen, thank god at least Allan's car is the right color.

 

Drive one and tell us your thoughts, would be a good "counter point" piece.

 

Ok I will take one for the team

Doesn't Nissan and Porsche do very similar things with their Halo cars when bringing them to tracks such as Nurburgring?

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=1_kwx...4&vq=medium

 

Here's a Shell commercial shown in Europe . They're selling gasoline, but the cars used in the video steal the show.

 

Ferrari pulled several of their race cars from various ages out of storage, flew them around the world, and filmed them running through the streets of Rome , Rio , New York , Hong Kong, Honolulu , and Monaco . No CGI -these are the original cars on the original streets.

 

The best part is the sound - from the basso-profundo notes of the early, front-engine era, each scene cuts to a later generation, ending with the wail of a modern F1 car.

 

The sounds alone bring a tear to the eye. Even if you're not a gearhead, this video will stir the soul.

 

 

 

I only want to see what the competition is working with

dont worry lambo's gonna have several 458's they're probably taking apart right now.

dont worry lambo's gonna have several 458's they're probably taking apart right now.

Thats their problem.. Do you think ferrari took appart a Gallardo before they made the 458?

 

 

Thats their problem.. Do you think ferrari took appart a Gallardo before they made the 458?

you sure as hell can bet they did. Infact I remember when the LP560 and 430S were released (ill try to find the article, but its a really old one) but essentially in the article it states that the LP560 was in development at the time of the Gallardo's initial launch (2003) and Ferrari and Lambo essentially traded a 430S and an LP560 to one another. They KNOW the other will get their hands on it one way or another, they just made the process easier for themselves.

 

Ferrari will definitely be taking Gallardos apart, and likely Porsches too. Id also bet that Mclaren did a lot of this. Its competition. Its a good thing!

 

I think the notion that Ferrari is putting together technical marvels, completely ignoring what the competition is doing, and that lambo is sitting there with nothing but really powerful engines and nothing in the way of technology has got to go out the door. Yes their platforms are old and are due for updates, and these updates are coming.