its the camera, the R33 is about a 1sec faster
Cars, Bikes & More Cars
nipper575
#724
Just got a MAD case of Deja Vu!
It is an epic looking car, like cabby said, probably the best since the Carrera GT (it looks similar in some aspects).
nipper575
#726
Haha, just had a mental image of driving a Bugatti Veyron at ~400 km/h+ and being overtaken by a yellow blur.
nipper575
#728
How some people can have this sort of money for themselves keeps me up at night…
TONY DAVIS
August 6, 2010
We ‘spend’ a million dollars in a supercar showroom experience.
It’s the little things that make it such a pleasure to spend several hundred thousand dollars. Like when the concierge greets you by name - he’s been expecting you - and parks your expensive luxury car.
You know, the $330,000 sedan that’s already several months old and is starting to bore you. It’s not in need of replacing; it just needs supplementing with something a little faster, flasher … redder.
In my case, the luxury sedan is someone else’s and the Ferrari I’m about to “buy” will never really be mine. But I’ve been sent to the country’s biggest and newest Ferrari showroom - at Waterloo in Sydney - to go through the process.
The salesman is waiting for me, too, coffee and fresh pastries at the ready. His name is Richard James, an Englishman on the youngish side (well, the average buyer is 50-plus and he’s not that), perfectly groomed with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the brand - and of the all-important option codes. “We make a lot of the Italianness,” he says, leading me to a leather lounge in a room lined with historic Ferrari photos. “It’s about the overall experience, the technology, the heritage, the performance.”
He would say that, wouldn’t he? But looking out on half a dozen beautiful spotlit Italian thoroughbreds in the adjacent showroom and with Enzo Ferrari, Niki Lauda and others looking down on us, it’s not hard to see the lure of joining this exclusive society.
Most buyers in this part of the market, James says, know exactly what they want. Me, too. I have my heart set on the 599 GTB Fiorano. Why? It has all the hallmarks of a classic Ferrari GT: a V12 engine in the front (but between the axle lines), a wonderfully laid-out two-seater cockpit and performance and handling that are simply stunning.
It also has delectable Pininfarina styling, with distinctive flying buttresses at the rear that would make anyone want to part with, ahem, $718,000. This includes on-road costs and a $7000 "pre-delivery" said to take 18 hours.
“The 599 - a fine choice,” James says. But he would say that, too. He talks about the romance of the 599 model, the immediate roar of the V12 and the tactile nature of the driving experience.
A potential buyer can expect a lot more of this talk and some polite questions before the road test vehicle is produced.
Several salesmen of exotic sports cars admitted to us that when someone requests a test drive, they immediately Google who they are before ringing back to confirm the appointment. James says the 599 is “an artisan product, still crafted partly by hand to the exact specifications of each customer”. I’m only half listening. I’m too busy trying to decide whether to go the whole hog and tick the HTGE box.
HGTE, or “Handling Gran Turismo Evoluzione”, is a $65,000 package that brings together various suspension and gearbox modifications to further sharpen the driving experience. Little cosmetic tweaks - including a matt-finish prancing horse on the boot lid - are included so that the other 150 or so 599 owners in Australia will know your car has the works.
James is soon waxing lyrical about the F1 transmission and the carbon-composite brakes but he’s wasting his breath. It’s not me who has to be convinced. My thoughts are now concentrating on how I sell this decision at home, where the front gutters still need fixing.
Let’s call that a minor detail. There are more immediate things to attend to, such as which seats I want, the choice of steering wheel and, of course, the exterior colour.
I started out thinking my car should be classic Ferrari red (Rosso Corsa) but there’s also Rosso Scuderia, seen on the formula one race cars and not quite the same as the road-car red.
We move to the Ferrari Atelier, the side room with rows of wheels, seats, brake rotors, painted metal panels and leather samples.
A large plasma screen displays the various combinations so you can see what your car will look like.
For what seems like hours we discuss my needs, which are great, and James’s interest in haggling over the price, which is minuscule.
“I have one slot left for a 2010-build car,” he says.
“It’s for December.”
So what does it take to nail down that spot? Twenty thousand dollars, apparently. I tear an imaginary cheque from an imaginary butt against a promise of a March or April delivery. That’s good going - if I wanted the new 458 Italia coupe, I’d be waiting up to two years.
To complete the deal, I must nail down the exact specifications over the next week or two and front up with a non-refundable deposit for 10 per cent of the total value. I’ve announced myself as a journalist, so I’ll never find out how much real haggling can be done over the price of the car (or more likely the value of a trade), so we’ll work off the official price list.
I’m going to go with the HGTE option. It’s going to lift the drive-away price to $783,000 but will help me extract the most from my 456kW and 608Nm.
I’ll stick with the standard HGTE rims - rather fetching cross-bolted five-spokers - and forgo the rather gauche Scuderia Ferrari shields on the front guards ($4277). However, I’m not missing out on yellow brake calipers ($2500).
Exterior finish? I’m still agonising. An almost-unlimited range makes choosing harder not easier. Furthermore, James says the company is now offering matt finishes, though these have to be washed in demineralised water. I don’t want to be right out there on the edge of fashion and there’s the question of resale, too.
The only major no-no is pink - Ferrari apparently doesn’t do pink. And it must be a colour found in the near-universal Pantone Colour Matching system. The reason is obvious: if you invent your own shade - matching your favourite faded crockery, for example - when you cop a trolley scratch in the supermarket car park, no one will be able to do a perfect match.
The standard palette includes Grigio Ingrid, the silvery-tan-grey developed for the bespoke Ferrari coupe that film director Roberto Rossellini commissioned for his actor wife, Ingrid Bergman.
But the one that has grabbed me is Rosso Monza, which is a maroon, and represents a $45,000 special order.
Now, $45K for a special paint sounds like a lot, until you consider … no, it is a lot.
But if you’re at this end of the market, why quibble? I tick the box, feeling the car will look terrific with tan or grey leather trim. It may take me a few visits back to the Atelier, however, to work out which particular tan or grey and the colour of the stitching ($1017 for a contrasting thread).
The test car had the Carbon Fibre Pack 2, which included various carbon-fibre interior panels and parts (such as gear-shifting paddles) and a carbon-fibre top section to the steering wheel with an LED panel that lit up at the optimum gear-change points. It’s $16,060 but, hell, I’ll probably only ever buy one 599.
I’m also having the seatbelts coloured to match the leather stitching ($2098) and, for practical reasons, opting for parking sensors at $2783.
There is the chance to spend about $18,000 having various parts of the interior lined with Alcantara but I’ll stick with standard (mostly leather).
That saves almost enough to buy the luggage set to maximise the cargo space for those weekends away. It’s $16,118 for the boot bags but the additional luggage for the shelf behind the two beautifully sculptured seats looks even more terrific. Yes, it’s $7447 more but everything about it can be matched to go with my cockpit.
I want the top of the dashboard coloured to my taste ($3025) and some extra leather panels on the rear bench and under the doors ($5931).
Total price: just under $885,000. Abstemious, or what?
I now just have to finalise a few of the other smaller details (and they can be changed up to a certain point before the build date) and write another cheque to make up 10 per cent of the grand total. There’s also the small matter of coming up with the other $800K or so before delivery. But that’s months away.
So I’m now on the waiting list, which comes with a string of customer benefits, such as the right to participate (at extra cost) in a range of owner-only events at grands prix. There are drive days at racetracks (including Ferrari’s Fiorano test circuit, after which the car is named). I can visit the factory, too. So that’s how you do it. There’s nothing difficult at all about buying a Ferrari. The wonder, in fact, is that everyone doesn’t do it.
$4277 Scuderia Ferrari shields on front guards. $45,000 Special-order Rosso Monza paint. $16,118 Matching boot luggage bag.
Caboose
#731
:blink: DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANT, Koiseoigeioieoiosioivoefisoioesifoisofnakoeiog are my favourite super cars
nipper575
#733
Bit of footage showing the Porsche 918. I guess I could forget about it being a ****** after hearing that sweet sound, though it still made me die a little inside.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h48Gi5-CNQc&feature=topvideos[/ame]
johnnywazza
#738
Be curious to see how much this sucker goes for (think new it’s around the $100K mark)
Also - “Engine: 989 ltr”. That’s one hell of an engine! :laugh:
nipper575
#740