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It is the closest you are going to ever come to experiencing a nervous breakdown.
From the February 1991 Issue of Vehicle and DriverHere are twelve factors you should know about the Ferrari F40:
· Its sticker cost is $ 399,150.
· But dealers are obtaining about $ 700,000 for one particular, a bargain from last summer’;s peak value of $ 900,000 and adjust.
· The cost does not incorporate a spare tire or a jack. Neither is accessible.
· The value does incorporate a cost-free trip for 2 to the Ferrari factory in Italy for the objective of showing the buyer how to drive it.
· It goes 122 mph in the quarter-mile.
· Flat out, it goes 197. You have our word.
· Insurance costs about $ 15,000. Every 6 months.
· The F40 meets all U.S. emissions and security regulations. In brief, it is legal.
· As soon as he got his, Formula 1 driver Nigel Mansell sold it.
· It pulls 1.01 g on the skidpad.
· Financed over 5 years, the monthly payment on an F40 runs about $ 12,000 a month.
· One particular purchaser took no possibilities. Without even driving it, he sealed up his new F40 in the safest place offered: his living space.
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Here at Car and Driver, Rule 1 for test drivers is this: Be Cool. Rules 2 by way of 10 are equally basic: Stay Cool.
Sad to report, a wrecking ball called the Ferrari F40 has just put large crow’;s feet on our stony editorial face. Difficult as it is to admit, the F40 has produced our knees tremble involuntarily, our hearts do little stutter steps, and it created our palms disgustingly wet. Medical doctor, doctor! Perhaps the editorial feet are touching ground, maybe not—we’;ll get back to you on that a small later.
Right after 2 days on the road and an afternoon at the test track, we can report that absolutely nothing we’;ve ever driven can match the mix of sheer terror and raw excitement of earth-scorching around in an individual else’;s 3-quarter-million-dollar toy. (Our privately owned test vehicle came to us thanks to the kind help of Ferrari dealer Rick Mancuso, who owns Lake Forest Sports Vehicles, in Lake Forest, Illinois. Understandably, the F40′s owner wants to remain anonymous—lest he one day arrive property to learn his loved ones removed to a village in the Andes and a ransom note for, oh, about the money value of an F40.)
Piloting an F40 is like, properly, envision getting blindfolded in a pitch-black closet with Michelle Pfeiffer, Cher, and Ellen Barkin and obtaining to guess their identities without having talking—but, sorry, you are married. Imagine standing alone in center field at Dodger Stadium while the crowd cheers. But also picture riding about with a million bucks in your trunk and a 3-foot neon sign on the roof reading: “Million Dollars in Trunk.” That’;s what driving an F40 is like.
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A deep breath here and we’;ll attempt to explain additional. You see, a Ferrari F40 isn’;t like other existing exotic cars. In the final twenty years, the vehicles with the mile-high price tags and headache-inducing acceleration have gone by means of a outstanding metamorphosis: they’;ve turn out to be thoroughly domesticated. They have power windows and respectable air conditioners and adequate area for 6-footers now. You can see out of them nicely enough to adjust lanes without saying Hail Mary initial. You can hop into virtually any of them and drive cross-nation reasonably assured of emerging of sound mind and body.
Not so the F40. It harks back to a time—the late 1950s and before—when tends to make like Ferrari, Maserati, Jaguar, and Porsche built sports and GT cars for the road that could be raced with a minimum of modifications. Some started life as higher-strung racers and had been barely tamed for the street. We’;re talking about vehicles like the original Testarossa, the Jag C- and D-sorts, the Porsche 550 Spyder. The Ford GT40 Mark III is the lone American car that follows this blueprint. None of them had been comfy, tractable, or reputable. What they supplied was unvarnished excitement—the raw, elemental race-car experience for the street.
The F40 is like that. It looks like a race auto that produced a wrong turn at the end of pit lane. Its nose droops to shovel air out of the way. Its Kevlar body is pockmarked with sufficient air scoops to inhale a flock of sheep. A wing fit for a Formula 1 vehicle sprouts from the rear deck—no wimpy spoilers right here. The F40′s midship-mounted, twin-turbocharged 2.9-liter V-8 is on show beneath a lightweight plexiglass rear window that is been slotted to let hot engine-compartment air out. Know of any other street car with a rear window like that? The F40 has height-adjustable suspension, too. There are 2 positions, one about 2 inches reduced than the other. You have to unbolt the entire suspension to move it but, hey, you have a pit crew, appropriate?
Continued…
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