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What is it?
It’s the individual we’ve waited a long, extensive time for. Ferrari’s successor to the Enzo, its extreme distillation of speed, its magnum opus. LaFerrari.
Easy to have your hands on, then?
Not thus much. With a price tag of from one side of to the other £1m apiece, all 499 LaFerraris were sold ahead of the car was first unveiled at the Geneva Motorshow after all the rest year. This despite the fact that to of itself be considered LaFerrari ownership momentous, you needed (a) at least five Ferraris in your assemblage and (b) a first-name-stipulations relationship with Ferrari Chairman Luca Di Montezemolo, who personally approved wholly 499 owners. And thankfully let us be delivered of a shot, too.
So how does it labor?
Ferrari heralds its creation as a rolling showcase of the limits of lane-going possibility. Having sat through a three-sixty minutes technical presentation in which Ferrari’s finest engineers attempted to make intelligible degree-level theorems involving complex maths, dynamics, chemistry, aerodynamics and materials science, Top Gear has to agree through this assessment.
So here’s the shorthand translation. At LaFerrari’s heart lies a 6.3-litre V12, which fires 789bhp through a seven-hasten dual clutch gearbox to the bring up wheels. And what an engine: arguably the greatest V12 in Maranello narration, a twelve-cylinder heart that revs to a staggering 9250rpm redline.
In a single one normal game of supercar Top Trumps, 789bhp would subsist sufficient for victory, but in the hypercar stratosphere defined by the P1 and 918, that’s absolutely the down-payment. Pinching tech from its F1 outfit, Ferrari has added a Hy-Kers mule system to the V12, not pure to improve its green credentials limit to make an already ballistically quickly car even faster.
Tell me near the electric bits.
The Hy-Kers system provides an additional 161bhp – or exceedingly nearly a Fiesta ST’s desert – of instant power through the electric motor mounted to the back of the gearbox. Unlike the 918 and P1, you cannot stopple LaFerrari into a wall, nor cruise silently in all-electric mode – the e-motor is there to add punch to the petrol engine, not replace it.
Read Clarkson’s decision on the McLaren P1
And the sort of punch it adds. The Hy-Kers fills out the found end of the torque curve of the viciously occult-spinning V12, meaning an utterly stable, stupefying surge of power from anywhere in the rev line to literally anywhere else.
Stats? With a whole combined output of 950bhp, LaFerrari volition get from 0-62mph in 2.9 seconds, lucky venture 124mph four seconds later, and highest out ‘in excess’ of 218 miles some hour.
OK, got it. It’s extremely exclusive, very complicated and very cogent. But what’s it actually like?
As you liberalize the front hinged swan doors and globule into a cockpit decked wall-to-wall in carbon pile and leather, the first thing you intelligence is the seat adjustment. Or, more, the lack of it.
The set firm forms an integral part of the LaFerrari’s tub, such each owner will have their acknowledge set of seat pads tailored notwithstanding them before delivery. To get comfy, you shake a lever below your right thigh to discharge the pedal box and adjust the pedals to the finish distance, race car style. Shut the means of approach with a hefty thud, adjust the steering wheel, set in the key – yes, it still has individual of those -and watch the TFT screens gloss over into life. Thumb the ‘Engine Start’ button. Instantly, the V12 disembodied spirit of LaFerrari barks into life, a reasonable that talks of pedigree, potential, and troop. This is it.
Truth is, verily if you’re lucky enough to require driven supercars before, nothing quite prepares you during a moment like this. Emotions? Excitement, not at all question. Privilege, too. But mostly be solicitous. Quite a lot of fear.
So it’s scary to go furiously, then?
No. Strangely, it doesn’t take numerous company minutes on the road before the apprehend melts away. Supercar rules dictate that bulk matters, so you expect it to be vast, but LaFerrari despite its composite drivetrain is actually 40mm narrower than the Enzo. Which is a benefit thing, given we’re trying to search into the ultimate Ferrari’s road car possible on a narrow ribbon of rutted, hairpin-riddled Italian B-passage.
But rather than a hair-raising, sweary labor-fest, the LaFerrari is surprisingly… submissive. The seating position, visibility and mount of the car allow you to opportunity it neatly on the road – every unusual sensation in any hypercar. The steering serves up full-definition feedback without ever turning hyperactive, in which case there’s a suppleness to the temporary deprivation that allows the LaFerrari to slip from one to another the worst the broken Italian highway can throw at it.
And while you put your foot down?
Forget everything you know about fast: this is a well new stratosphere of performance, a merciless accumulation of speed accompanied by the greatest automotive soundtrack in the world. You don’t so much urge on in LaFerrari as warp scenery. As the V12 screams its advance to the 9250rpm redline, the Italian countryside is hauled back and fired out of the rearview archetype.
Read our in-depth Porsche 918 go over again
As the LaFerrari pours down this tight and imperfect strand of tarmac, there’s a hypnotic violence to proceedings: second, third, fourth, brake hard, down two gears, dual snatch box firing ratios faster than you be possible to process, accelerate, third, fourth, repeat…
It’s impetuous, visceral, synapse snapping, and utterly, utterly addictive.
Does the cross-stuff work?
Seamlessly. Some worried that the integration of cross technology would blunt the Ferrari actual presentation, but the Hy-Kers system dovetails immaculately into the drivetrain, simply adding yet more sharpness to the full V12. It’s so seamless that you’re heedless of the e-motor even doing its body, your senses overloaded by your as it should be foot’s connection to what feels like the most instantly responsive V12 in history.
And what about on track?
Again, not moiety so scary as you might anticipate. Yes, the LaFerrari will do sideways if you’ve got the turn – not to mention a wallet big enough to cover the repair toy should things go wrong – but preserve it pointing forwards and you’ll espy a massively fast, surprisingly accessible wake car. Within just a couple of laps, it’s light LaFerrari has a depth of aptitude you would never grow tired of discovering, encouraging you to push aye faster and exploit its genius to the excessively limit.
So it’s a iota good, then?
More than a mite good. LaFerrari is an intoxicating intermingle of earth-shattering performance and self-reliance-inspiring technology.
A 950bhp hypercar shouldn’t be easy to drive, but this some is. That’s the genius of LaFerrari, that takes the concept of driver aids that raise rather than blunt the experience and propels it into a strange dimension, which grafts F1 tech to a stupendous, traditional V12 to showcase the real best of Maranello old and new.
Put it this way. Christening this car ‘The Ferrari’ was a violent level gamble that could have backfired horribly. But positively, the LaFerrari is just that. The Ferrari.
Issues?
Just human being. So exhilarating, so extreme is the LaFerrari that it feels added an end rather than a start. With legislation strangling the upper reaches of the automotive execution envelope, are we living in the conclusive, ultimate age of hypercars? Where can fast possibly go from here?
Get shining LaFerrari wallpapers here
To read the full LaFerrari feature, and revel in our illiberal photos and videos, pick up the of recent origin issue of Top Gear magazine in iPad fashion here, or in all good newsagents it being so that
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