TopGear review of Scud 16M - "most exciting Ferrari ever"

TopGear Magazine just reviewed the Scuderia Spider 16M, stating that it is the "most exciting Ferrari road car ever made"...enjoy:

How do you describe a noise using only words? Blast, rip, scream, shriek, roar, howl,yell, raaah. they're just not enough in this case, because the noise this Ferrari Scuderia Spider 16M emits is w-a-y- too much for words, no matter how considered and eloquent and poetic. Roll out your assonance, roll out your onomatopoeia, get your big starburst Batman comic "POW" captions ready, but with the 16M, words won't be enough. Nevertheless, lets try...

Perhaps it is the human reaction to the noise the Scud 16M makes - say, through a long tunnel - that matters more. First, every hair on your neck and everywhere else stands on end. Then the hairs duck for cover as you go into slight shock. Slight shock becomes fairly intense shock soon after, when you get a full idea of how loud this car is at maximum revs, with the exhaust baffle fully open and the V8 really screaming. Your eyes narrow and your jaw clinches. You burn through it and come out the other side.

The sound isn't beautiful. It's sharp and hard and purposeful and anti-social, a scream. It's almost as if the 16M doesn't care what noise it makes, it just does it, like racing cars just do it. It's a result of function, not a factor of endless tuning and mess-aboutery. It's a noise that is almost - but not quite - too much, like a ride on the most extreme roller coaster you can think of. It won't kill you, you're almost sure of that, but your heart rate will go through the roof. And you'll know you've been on a ride.

It's such an extreme sensation, it brings up the question of whether or not cars can be too extreme, and whether pushing the boundaries of what a person can handle is a good or bad thing. In this case, it's all good, because the people driving this car - people like you, people who love cars - will understand that its ferocity is there to be used in the correct way, and it's there to be tamed. Everything about the way this car handles will help you tame it. It's on your side, no matter what your level of driving skill.

Conventional wisdom says this Ferrari does not make sense. Well, sod conventional wisdom. The conventional-wisdomists' thinking goes something like this: the Ferrari Scuderia (the coupe, the one with the roof) is a track focused, lightweight, carbon braked, high-performance, downforce-generating Ferrari F430. No carpets, carbon-fibre everywhere, more power, a trick differential and gearbox, all very much honed for the track, like a Porsche 911 GT3 but even more hardcore and high-tech and uncompromising. So, it doesn't make sense to chop off the roof, because 'cabrios' can never be truly hardcore track cars - they don't have the requisite torsional rigidity to handle well enough and they're heavier too, because of the need for extra strengthening bits to make the chassis stiff and all the electric gubbins used to fold the roof. So, this car, the Ferrari 16M Spider, doesn't make sense. Should never have been built, say the conventional- wisdomists.

Bollocks. Show me a driver who can feel the difference in torsional rigidity between the coupe Scud and this roofless 16M Scud and then articulate how the reduction in stiffness is upsetting the way the suspension works and I'll show you a highly experienced racing driver or a liar. And the extra 90kg of bulk over the coupe would be difficult to feel too. The 0-62mph is dispatched in 3.7secs, a tenth slower than the coupe. There's nothing in it. All 499 of the 16Ms that will be built have been sold.

I'm going to go out on a limb right here and now, and say that the 16M you see on these pages is not only the greatest Ferrari in the range today, but also the most exciting Ferrari road car ever made, but it's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. I'm not one for sentimentality or harking back to the past - for me, older cars are inferior, so every Ferrari bows down to this one for drama, including the Enzo, which isn't as quick around Ferrari's Fiorano test track anyway.

For me, the coupe Scuderia bows down to the roofless 16M too, for the simple reason that you can't take the roof off. You can't let the dervish scream of that magnificent 503bhp 4.3-litre V8, revving to 8,500rpm in a heartbeat, hit your ear holes directly, envelope your entire head when you rip through a tunnel. You can't get that feeling of wind rushing by your face as you accelerate. you can't smell the countryside as it flashed by, you can't get that blasted, desperate super-intense, super-elated and utterly drained feeling of surviving a long, high-speed drive in an open-top car. You can't look up at the sky. With the 16M, you get all of that stuff, and it's a Scud too. Any arguments about whether or not this car should exist are extinguished when you drive it - it would have been a terrible shame if Ferrari had not built it.

Tim