Ferrari F80

I’m not exactly sure what people who are criticising F80 for not having a V12 are wanting to get out of this conversation. We have known for a long time that it wouldn’t have a V12. It’s also clear that Ferrari’s racing line has used all different powertrain variants, and that Enzo would have no problem with using them to win.

Are people wanting Ferrari to apologise, are they wanting them to fail, are they wanting to stop people who like the car from buying it, maybe it’s just venting frustration? Nobody can criticise it for how it drives because nobody has driven it. Looks, everyone makes up their pwn mind and that will be what it is. But discussing the lack of a V12 seems like an old conversation to me.

We also know that the hyper car line has always had links to racing of some kind, either through participation or technology transfer. And because of that, the model line has not been only about V12 engines but hyper performance and racing tech - GTO and F40 both raced, F50 used an ex-F1 V12 which was a stressed chassis member, Enzo introduced flappy paddle gearbox (and actually started an engine line that had nothing to do with racing), LaFerrari was the first hybrid and used hybrid-era race technology such as KERS. Now F80 uses the current race engine format and for the first time employs huge aero.

This is going to be a brilliant, exciting and especially interesting car to drive. Even in a 992 RS you can feel the aero at road speeds. This thing is going to hold much for the interested enthusiast to discover and come to terms with. And the tech is off the scale really. How all this stuff interacts and works together will be really great to hear about and feel for those who are able to get a drive in one.

 

Simple. Cause it's just a maketing gimmy to hide their greed. They could have designed a new NA V12 . Cosworth has been doing incredible engines lately and Ferrari more than have the capability to match them.
And Ferrari could have exceeded everyone by a mile if they designed a brand new 5 liter NA V10 pumping out 900 HP, combined with a chasis that weighed 1000 kg tops. And a central driving position.
No manufacturer could have matched that.
And it would have also diferentiated the F80 from previous HALO cars.

NO IT DOESN'T.
You yourself stated that the F40 had "a stripped-out interior", and that it was "light weight and ‘race-bred’".
By contrast, the F80 is a porker.

Of couse we hate it, it's a piece of **** compared to its predecesors.

Next joke. It won't.

Everyday usability is not relevant, the F40 didn't have that either.

The Valkyrie certainly does, it is the true succesor to the F40. They share the same philosophy, they aren't cars to be used everyday. Instead, they are stripped out, uncompromised race cars for the road.

Those engineers were forced to listed to stupid and greedy CEO's.

Yes it is. The Valkyrie and T50 prove that.

I would.

It sure as hell isn't.

No it isn't, the Valkyrie is.

 

I completely agree. In other classes and other models it is perfectly legitimate to discuss what we would like the engines to be. As already said, in this group of six supercars that started with the GTO, the engines are what they had to be, the maximum exponent of technology in each era. The same will certainly happen with the successor to the F80.

 

While i understand the Supercar honoring the Le Mans car by using a similar engine, it does suck when you see all these high revving engines that are outsinging Ferrari.

Huayra R
Zonda F
Valkyrie
De Tomaso P72
GMA 50
Even a Jesko sounds better.

I hope the next Icona bridges this gap. Lightweight and High Revving V12.

 

Thought experiment:

What will the F80's legacy be if the W1 ends up being faster on the track and also a more usable road car? It's not out of the realm of possibilities...

 

It will be a product of its time. It may well be similar pace to W1, even if F80 is slightly slower (generally the P1 was seen as quicker around many tracks compared to the LaF) they will likely be in a similar ball park. W1 is the only other car that you would think it reasonable to be similar pace to the F80, given the Porsche is not on the horizon with confirmed spec yet. Valkyrie and AMG One are harder to use on the road - we’re not talking ‘daily driving’ here, none of them do that. But, for example, on a road trip, where I have seen LaFs and the like used. Any car that you need headphones for is not really a road trip car in the same way as a 918, LaF or P1.

So its legacy will be ‘how Ferrari used 2020’s racing technology to make its halo car drive fast like a hyper-Ferrari and feel like a hyper-Ferrari’. If you use 2020’s racing technology and know-how to build a Ferrari, this is how you do it. In a future with lots of high power EVs running around (Tesla and others), that may have 1,200hp but will also be much heavier, with less aero and less race-style tech, the F80 will always be properly fast and properly track-capable. And probably very intimidating to drive. Just sitting in it gives you that feeling.

In the context of what else will be available, the F80 in the future will be as dramatic as an F40 is today compared with what most people will be driving. At that time, say 10 or 20 years from now, F40 will be 50 to 60 years old and seem old indeed. When I was a lad, a 50-year-old car was from the 1930’s. I have never been interested in driving a car from the 1930’s. The 1950’s-60’s is where it would have started for me. Though not everyone agrees, I believe the F80 will carry the F40 spirit into the future. My son will see it quite similarly to how I saw the F40 at his age. And while I have seen cars develop and change so significantly in the years since, for me the F40 has always been the F40 - beautiful, focused, needing skill to drive quickly, rewarding those who can and spitting out those who don’t. In 2040, the F80 will very likely be the same in the context of the car world of that time.

 

turbo ever ...
Jesko is best sounding turbo ever ....

 

All good points. The F40 had a different philosophy to its competitor at the time (959) with a less complex, more traditional approach. It resulted in a car that was unquestionably more exciting and engaging to drive - in part due to being RWD, lighter and much more visceral exhaust note.

I personally see the W1 as being closer in spirit to the F40 while the F80 is pursuing extreme technological innovation - so similar the the 959/918 approach.

 

The soul of the brand can't be distilled into one factor imo. Everyone gets into Ferrari for different reason. For some, its the way they drive, others grew up around them, others had a poster on the wall of their childhood bedroom, for many it's the status/image. My family never understood the point of sports cars but watching my neighbor pull up in his DB9 or F1 back in the day was my spark, and I only developed an appreciation for Ferrari later. Obviously to maintain the appeal of the brand Ferrari needs to participate in racing, but the emotional connection is much more complex and deeper than just that. Perhaps I should have used appeal instead of soul.

 

To be clear, I am not saying that the F80 should have V12 (I have the Johnny_Bravo guy blocked). In fact, my previous post about Adrian Newey's comments underscore that. He decided on a V12 over a turbo V6 because it could be a stressed member and the narrower V angle allows for the crazy diffuser tunnels.
If you think about
1. F80 is a road car (and the stressed member was a miscalculation on Newey's part)
2. F80 does not need to have as huge aero tunnels
the V6 is a better engine for the F80 than a V12.

I was trying to make the point that there is no good reason why Ferrari shouldn't make the investment in a new NA V12 (and wistfully dream of what could have been if Newey had joined Ferrari). They have no shortage of cash and the F80 alone will probably net them $1 billion>. IMO they are following the public company path of chasing short term profits and growth over long term stability and measured growth. Currently their strategy is more LVMH when it should be like Hermes if you get my drift.

 

Hmm the Valkyrie was assembled by AM at Gaydon though. And developed by AM engineers. What is stopping Ferrari from doing a bit of financial engineering and making a new entity for every new SP model, putting the deposits into that entity, and then contracting out their engineers to develop the car for this so called entity. Do you know how Aston handled it with Nebula?

Also re GMA. GMT, the entity which holds the IP behind iStream and the lightweight EVs, was sold off to the Saudi fund. Considering they are supposedly buying Mclaren from Bahrain, maybe they will also buy GMA. But to me selling off GMT was a move to protect the independence of GMA. Also I recall Murray stating that after T33 he had planned to do a hybrid but with the low volume exemption he was now reconsidering his product planning.

 

THIS.
And thank you.

Marcel Massini

 

Wait, your neighbor had an F1? You're just going to quietly slip that in there?

 

Agree completely.

To your point of "should be like Hermes" - yes, exactly

I think that as the electric cars continue to dominate all the magazine performance metrics.... Ferrari as a brand should lean more into heritage and customer experience.... More personalization by default, better delivery experiences, the highest possible level of quality for all metrics to set the bar that all the other makers aspire to.... they are not selling a "car".... they are selling the identity of Ferrari ownership

 

f80 is amazing car. Full stop.
Doubt it will genuinely ever be considered beautiful from vast majority,(maybe by some) like F40 ,or LaFerrari are.

 

You must be very young.

Also you don't know what you are talking about when it comes to regulations of all of this stuff.
.it's ok you just aren't educated on the topic and believe that your view is the only view.

 

I see the point but don’t you think they do that? Our experience has been absolutely excellent. Perhaps buying a Bugatti might top it (no idea because I never bought one) but aside from that, Ferrari invested in the TM experience heavily and there is an insane level of personalisation possible, the dealer experience we have had has been brilliant, the products have been fantastic to drive and the community element has been memorable. It can get expensive but it’s a super-premium product. Sometimes the cars have things go wrong but that’s true of Bugatti and all the others too. Overall, I’ve never been left stranded in 15 years doing about 6-8k miles pa. Is that more Hermes than LV? Truthfully, the product positioning they have grown to was more LV, even before RACE. They have been ‘mainstream’ super quality (like LV) for years, and have long met the needs of a wide range of premium customers. Bugatti on the other hand, has a very narrow bandwidth and is uber-premium.

 

Except that if there was money in it, it must be safe to assume they would do it (everyone keeps criticising them for the RACE stock market thing and being too quick to chase profit so you can’t have it both ways). I think the risk to develop a new V12 is just too high with such little visibility on how all these regulations play out. Ferrari is about passion, but it can (and should) never stop being a proper business.

 

The Huayra R is a track car.
The Zonda F (a slow car by today's standards) is from an era when Ferrari also had such an engine.
The Valkyrie is an amazing machine, but doesn't have to abide by the same rules and is way too compromised as a road car.
The De Tomasso doesn't even exist and it will have a Ford V8, for crying out loud.
The GMA cars are more akin to the Icona series. They cannot compete in terms or performance with the latest breed of hypercars.
The Jesko would have to comply with the same sound regulations if it went into production at the same time as the F80, unless it falls under the very small manufacturer rules.

Regarding the Iconas, they are based onproduction Ferraris, so don't expect anything different.

Not really. The engine is Cosworth and the chassis and aero are Adrian Newey / Red Bull. Aston just did the homologation stuff.

That would never fly with the legislators and Ferrari also takes pride in building its own cars and not being into partnerships.

Respectfully disagree. They are linking racing technology with their road vehicles, as they have always done. Does anyone think that those electric turbos, with the MGU-H system and the 300 CV/litre, come cheaply?

True. Bugatti builds only F80 type of vehicles and not lesser models. That said, no one ever said that a Bugatti drives amazingly, other than the insane straight line speed.

 

Indeed, road expérience and emotions will be key with this car.
Usually Ferrari engineers are the best to integrate electronics systems without altering driving experience.
With the amount of technology this car has, I guess this will be their trump card against all the opponents when released.

 

Could not agree more, brand dilution to its max. Ferrari in the last 10 years have made way too many cars, I never thought I would see the day when I've owned a Ferrari (296) for 8 months and lost £10k a month for the privilege. I give in. IMO it will only get worse as a PLC now.

 

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION has been the formula applied by Ferrari in the exterior design of the 6 models in this group ever since the release of the 288 GTO in 1984. Sometimes, by chance or perhaps not, this formula has turned out better or worst in aesthetic terms, however there has always been controversy after the cars were presented.

The 288 GTO was perhaps the only one of the six that was consensually acknowledge as being one of the most beautiful Ferraris ever made. However, to some diehard Ferrari enthusiasts, its greatest sin was the inclusion of the twin-turbocharged V8 engine.

It is known that the main purpose of the F40 was to be the fastest and most exiting car on the public road to restore Ferrari’s pride over the Porsche 959, which upgraded the 288GTO. Even so, the design was divisive from the moment the F40 was unveiled to the public. Was too Spartan for some journalists and collectors, who felt that Ferrari was mocking its customers by charging more money for fewer options.

The F50 was labeled as being an F1 car for the road and from the side, its proportions look awkward - It's the shape of an F1 racer.
As expected, the F50 design was also controversial and some have even stated that “it looks like a permanently baffled code”. As the F40 has a torque advantage over the F50, there are also those who say that it can be faster.

With the Enzo Pininfarina wanted to create an uncompromising car that would break away from the approach used for the GTO, F40 and F50 that preceded it developing a new formal language that looked to the future. The engineers tried to create visual links with the world of Formula 1, to which the Enzo owes its technology, while highlighting its compactness and lightness. The result is a complex, sculpted form. However, the Ferrari Enzo was described as one of the "Fifty Ugliest Cars of the Past 50 Years", by Bloomberg Businessweek.

The LaFerrari was the first production car to ever be equipped with an F1-derived hybrid solution and combines a powerful electric motor with the classic Ferrari V12 engine. The aerodynamic design of the LaFerrari is also evocative of Formula 1 cars. To further improve the car's dynamic capabilities active aerodynamics were added. The LaFerrari's design is probably one of the least controversial and it was well received by everyone.

The F80's powertrain was inspired by the two-time Le Mans 24 Hours-winning 499P prototype. The F80 is Ferrari’s first AWD Hypercar. In terms of design it looks like a race machine but it also shares some controversial design features with the 12 Cilindri. There is a journalist who defined the F80 as follows “I’ve seen cheese wedges that look nicer. But undoubtedly, it’s going to wow with performance.”

For an easier comparison, the following table contains information about these six models.





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Lots of interesting and differing perspectives on the powertrain choice.

The decision to use the V6 happened before the 499P won 2x LeMans. It ended up being a great marketing opportunity but it could have also gone the other way if the 499 proved uncompetitive.

 

288 loved by everyone regarding looks, topic is the engine choice.
F40 vas labeled as Spartan, not ugly anything similar. So controversial part is not related for looks,
Some controversy regarding F50, me personally find it extremely beautiful .
Enzo vas controversial regarding the looks, noone questioned engine and tech used.
Regarding LaFerrari , as you said "was well received by averyone, so nothing to add there.
F80 is spectacular and we are yet to find out how capable it really is, people will be positively surprised.
But the difference is it's the only one of the the group that causes controversy with both the way it looks, and engine choise.

 

Well main differences right now are that social networks are omnipresent.
I can assure you that if the F40 was launched with them already existing then we would have witnessed a bashing competition online ..