Well, the F40 IS the purest form of what a Ferrari should be even today.

By the way, the 0-100Kmh (or 0-60 for statute miles users) was 3.2 seconds, not 3.7, in a F40. Still something not every modern supercar, and even the odd hypercar, can still dream to equal, let alone surpass. Only the Veyron easily trumps that time... that I seem to remember... then again, having 1000Bhp, or 1200Bhp in the SS version, VS 478 and not managing AT LEAST that...

The Atom can hardly be defined a car though, more an overpowered kart. True, its performances are impressive and even Veyron-smashing in some aspects, but would you be able to drive one every day, to do anything that a car does, in every weather conditions? I think not. A pretty powerful road-legal toy it is, but hardly a complete car.

Can't really say I share the same point of view about the GTO... it's not ugly, but not what I would define pretty either... then again, watching Top Gear I've come to the realization that tastes vary A WHOLE LOT between cultures. What an American may think pretty, a Brit is liable to find shameless, an Italian may think excessively boisterous instead and so on and so forth... case in point, take the Ferrari Testarossa... every time one of the three blokes in Britain's most known car program say it's vulgar I cannot but raise doubts about their sanity, or eyesight, or both. Yet I am aware that doing so I am doing them a disservice. They are Brits. Ferrari is not. Some things are just not made to enter in sync.

Especially so when blatant parochialism enters the fray. Just think the ungodly racket they (well, more like HE. J. Clarkson. Always in the forefront of these things) made about the DB9 some years back in their, lately mercifully dropped, Cool Wall, declaring it "super cool, regardless", putting it in a toy safe as an untouchable unreachable cool category of its own, and other such sillinesses. Talk about impartiality.

In the end tastes, as it always were and should be, are a personal matter, to be studied and criticized maybe, but never to be questioned.

ozzy72 wrote on Jul 28^th, 2012 at 4:16am:


The only proper supercar I ever drove was a Diablo. It was black, sleek and COOOOOOOOL in my twenty-four's mind... eighteen years ago... and it was lent to me for a day by a loaded friend when my BMW had to have the water pump replaced, back in those days, and it was in THAT car that I understood PERFECTLY and with years of advance what the three for Top Gear mean when they talk about a car that plots new and ever more exciting ways to kill you.

It wasn't a bad ride by any stretch, mind you, but on the Modena bypass (the old one, before today's overpasses were made and there were still traffic lights every now and then to allow from traffic from inside the city to get out or from outside to get in) in a moment of very light traffic all around and with a good stretch of free road in front of me, in the good old days when the words "speed" and "cameras" were never put together, the only time i DARED floor the throttle, in third gear... in my terrified mind I could see a slitted pupil inhuman EYE opening itself in the center of the wheel, glaring death at me in a way that would have made Sauron in Mordor give himself of the amateur and begin taking notes.

And I was sober. I swear.

On the dry, good tarmac (notice, it was dry and in good conditions, or I wouldn't have attempted to give full throttle at all), the back end came alive and began trying every dirty trick in the book, and some still unknown to mankind, to overtake the front wheels in spite of the chassis in the way, spinning in a cloud of burned rubber and making the car weave in an forward accelerating way, like a rocket going out of control... until I raised my right foot and cut power to the back wheels with the clutch, allowing them to recover grip... all of this in a cloud of blue-white smoke that attracted more than a single stare from all around... and I was screaming all the way in the same way Clarkson did in a crosswind or when a lorry overtook him when he had the brilliant idea to put a building block on that Citroen, in that self-built campers episode some years back. How I did not die that day is still a mystery to me.

Never dared put pedal to the metal again in that black clad ninja assassin on four wheel for all the time (a day or so) I kept it.

About the Testarossa, I was talking about appearances. To say it's VULGAR... well... you must be British.


ozzy72 wrote on Jul 28^th, 2012 at 4:16am:


Exactly what I meant when talking about tastes.


ozzy72 wrote on Jul 28^th, 2012 at 4:16am:


Oddly enough, you are in sync with the three from Top Gear, here. Having never had, nor I fear ever will, money to afford to drive Ferraris at the drop of a hat, I fear I will never be able to tell from personal experience. Pity.

ozzy72 wrote on Jul 29^th, 2012 at 10:43am:


WILCO.