Ferrari is a cheater?

[Dark]

How Ferrari spins

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 fucking 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 ****. 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.

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.

Link: http://jalopnik.com/5760248/how-ferrari-spins

[SUB-FT86]

Wow!!!! What a rant.

[ZetaVI]

Damn that is quite a rant indeed.

[Harinjo]

I can only agree that because i drive so many different cars (also supercars) every day.

[Hasjwandje]

He's right about what he is saying.

BUT and it's a big BUT ! im pretty convinced that the majority of manufactorers do this... I've worked for a company which made power supplies and when it was time to ship out samples to the magazines we had to test thousends of them and pick the ones out with the best test results.. but wait there is more! after cherry picking the PSU they would open it up and fit a better fan and various other components.

So in defense of Ferrari.. almost everyone does it.

dont you wonder why you never get the mpg stated in the brochure?

[Ryephile]

Chris Harris is the worst addition to EVO since I've been reading it. His hideous bias for anything Porsche and against everything that's not is against what being a journalist is about. He needs to be welded to an editorial desk and should be banned from car reviews.

Virtually the entire auto industry provides hand-selected and "juiced up" examples of their production cars to be used as media cars. They are NOT simply straight off the production line. The higher the stakes, the more juiced-up the car will be. Ferrari is notorious for that, but only because they're very militaristic in their surveillance of the media while their cars are being reviewed. Almost everyone else just provides a hot version of the production car and doesn't usually interfere with the review. There are a couple manufacturers that literally provide production cars w/out tweaking them, but they're usually low-cost entry-level cars from up-and-coming countries.

Something that's really funny is having a media reviewer recall their full test of a manufacturer-provided car, and then have them drive a standard production car. Their reactions are hilarious, because it's like they're driving a totally different car.

What gets changed? Engines are blueprinted, ECU mapping is tweaked for better response and power at the expense of emissions, hot cams and special prototype intake and exhaust parts for the best sound and torque. Suspension dampers are dynoed and custom, springs, swaybars, bushings all improved for maximum handling. The interiors are hand assembled and any and all rattles and shimmies are damped and fixed. Higher performance brake pads to handle track-use and repeated brake tests are installed. The paint will be wheeled out to reduce the factory orange peel, and panel gaps will be perfected tighter than factory tolerances.

In all, they get not just a perfect example of the car, they get the tuned up example that you can't buy.

[Matador]

Wow, welcome to a few months ago.

[Dimman]

Didn't this start way back with the F50? Because they were trying to hide the fact that it sucked.

[RRnold]

Slightly off topic but has anybody seen the documentary, The Snake & The Stallion?

Can't say Enzo Ferrari was a clean player back in his hay-days so not really surprised that has behavior has trickled down throughout the decades.

[blur]

Can't the major player get sued for false advertising?

And what's the problem with renting supercars and testing them without the knowledge of the company?

[Mr.Jay]

most car companies do this. this is the norm in the industry

I mean nissan has had amazing ring times through the gtr line up that when independently tested had massive lap difference

not picking on nissan just 1st one on the top of my head

[Dark]

Yup, more mainstream performance automakers do this, especially, but this article just shows what Ferrari does is stricter than other brands.

[Dimman]

The big issue isn't whether or not other companies do it, but how heavy handed Ferrari is. As I mentioned it started with the F50, lease-only, if people let the press test it, the caretakers (can't really say owners) lost their favourable position with Ferrari which allowed them to jump the wait-list and stuff like that.

The fact that Ferrari will now remove press access to future vehicles for tests that they don't authorize is draconian.

[Neutral_Eyes]

I bought a 458 in GT5 because all the magazines were going crazy for it, then I took it online and got schooled by some bloke in an Elise. What a crock of shit! So I've decided to not buy the 458 in real life. Ferrari, I am disappoint.