
Ferrari F40 – Better Than Mother Nature
FERRARI F40
BETTER THAN MOTHER NATURE
Words: Alessandro Marrone
Photography: Giorgia Rossi and Alessandro Marrone
The last daughter Commendatore Enzo Ferrari saw its birth is the one that even today, 30 years later, can make you end up gasp. It was 1987 and the Ferrari F40 has stunned the automotive world we knew, turning it into a pit of emotions, making feel true terror to those who dared to press the throttle more than their own common sense allow. The F40 had come and its presence would have been felt forever, resulting to be the mother of a whole generation of supercars and the progenitor of all hypercars – so unique as to have displaced even their creators, who had increase the hypothesized production numbers, thanks to a request that was unwittingly paving its way to the Olympus.
To celebrate its 30th anniversary we decided to spend a day with one of the best F40 around, one that does not want to be a garage queen, but which wants to blow its tires and run the needle up to the red line. For this reason we arranged with our dear friend Raul Marchisio, owner of RM Autosport, well-known supercars collector and dealer based in the Principality of Monaco. Going to find him is a little ‘how to bring a group of greedy children in a candy store – there’s always something that knows how to capture our attention and make us spending hours and hours listening in silence his awesome stories. Yes, because he has to tell quite a lot, having achieved successes in motorsport and being among the few who are capable of dealing with the most fearsome supercars, almost wanting you to tease and make it look like a child’s game. But it is not, do not imitate him because you’re not a racing driver. The F40 saw the light to celebrate the first 40 years of Ferrari at the time and the basic idea was to present a whole new car able to represent the ultimate excellence in design and performance; so Ferrari put body and soul into a project that marked indelibly its own path in this world. On the basis of the 288 GTO, what is now regarded as the starting point of the “big 5” (together with F40, F50, Enzo and LaFerrari), Maranello’s guys came up with a cutting edge project that for the first time on a road car saw the use of composite materials such as kevlar, fiberglass and aeronautical resins. The F40 lines were and still are incomparable and bear resemblance to those that at the time were the shapes of Formula 1 cars: wide, hugging the ground and with a huge rear spoiler integrated with the engine cover. At the center, a loud exhaust system with 3 tailpipes that would act as a liaison between the V8 and the outside world – the rest would be literally blown away by the fury and violence of a supercar with no filters and no frills, ready to kill you as soon as you were about to lose your focus.
And while Raul warms up the engine we decide where to go for today’s shooting, remaining fascinated by those edges, those blacks OZ magnesium wheels that give it an even more menacing look. And then plexiglass panels instead of the classic windows, just to remind you that you will have to keep in mind that you’re not driving, but it’s the F40 that is letting you to sit at the wheel – it’s going to be white or black, the drive or your life or the most disastrous day ever. The huge and heavy rear hood that conceals the soul of this iconic Ferrari opens and appears to be the toughest physical training of my last months, but the show that appears in front of my eyes is the perfect reward for years of hard work. A 2.936cc V8 with two IHI turbochargers and 478 horsepower – you can’t see them, but you hear them breathe. They look at you with a sadistic smile, ready to kill you and mark yet another notch in their favor in the eternal battle between man and machine. We drive for a few kilometers, with the eyes of the whole Principality on us, almost as if even supercars Heaven isn’t accustomed to the stark beauty of the Red Queen. Every hole, every asphalt disconnection is perceived as an uppercut straight to the chin and while you hold the steering wheel as if you were facing the most difficult part on a roller coaster, you feel like your ears start bleeding for the incessant roar that the 8-cylinder emits a few centimeters from your head. A slight gas pressure highs the revs of the beast, but when the tacho reaches 3,500/4,000 rpm the real magic happens. The two turbochargers wake up angry, a deaf pain in the back tells you that the Queen has decided to make you become a man pressing itself to the floor with the stiffness of a wooden board, trying to find the right concentration to keep the front wheels straight and allow the rear ones to bite the asphalt just enough to experience an indescribable feeling.
The Queen does not want to be tamed, but Raul knows her well and knows what she wants – she asks to be treated with a certain confidence but at the same time you need to respect it and that cohabitation game will become like a tug of war, where you always have to be one step ahead, to prevent its sudden behavior, its nervousness and the hysteria of a twin-turbo engine born 30 years ago that just in its lag marries that cruel and rude nature we appreciate today, where all supercars know how to be precise and perfect. Thanks to the use of a frame made of kevlar and lightweight body panels, the total weight stops at about 1.155kg, which coupled to the 478 horsepower and 577Nm of torque can make you imagine how neurotic the steering wheel is. Then add that there is no type of electronic controls and that the only way to save your life from certain death is to dare, to launch yourself into the unknown. Driving it at 20 kph would make sense how to do bungee jumping from the first step of the ladder and then the only way to fully experience it will be to turn off the brain and play like a kamikaze. 0-100 kph declared at the time is 4.1 seconds and this figure was often replaced by lower numbers, but what shocks most is the way you reach speeds of primal fear. The sudden push, the kick in the back and the ears that bleed – it’s a workout for the whole body, an experience that is part of the list of things to do before you die. An experience you need to do, check that bloody list, because your idea of speed will change dramatically once you get off with your legs still trembling and your eyes coming back to behold it, following its unique lines, retracing the screams in the head entering the cockpit at every gear, the mechanical sound of the gearbox and the heavy smell of oil and petrol that for at least two days will not leave your nostrils.
The racing seats and the interior reduced to the bone would have been a warning, but I never expected such a thing – it’s definitely the closest feeling to being hit in the chest by a shotgun. And while I thought I was in the middle of the end of the world, Raul – good old devil – he was laughing hard. That man must have made a pact with Beelzebub – tamer of the most violent supercars in history – this is serious stuff. And there she is, our real Queen, in a perfect red dress designed by Leonardo Fioravanti of studio Pininfarina, and destined to live forever in eternal glory. I wonder if Enzo Ferrari, that distant day in 1987, was aware that once again was about to change the automotive world. In the year of Ferrari’s 70th birthday, we sing happy birthday to the F40 too and thank the Prancing Horse for sharing with us its first years. Turn off your thirty candles with the same grace that marks you and inflame our hearts as only a queen can do.
FERRARI F40 (1987-1992)
Layout – mid-engined, rear wheel drive
Engine – V8 cylinder 2.936 – twin-turbo
Transmission – 5-speed manual gearbox
Power – 478 hp @ 7.000 rpm
577 Nm @ 4.000 rpm
Weight – 1.155 kg
Acceleration – 4,1 sec.
Top Speed – 326 kph