From the archives: How’s 3.5 seconds to 60? And a sizzling 11.7-sec. quarter mile at 120.1 mph? Fantastico!
First impressions are telling, and lasting. Twist the F430’s key, thumb the red steering-wheel-mounted button with your left hand, and its engine doesn’t just start—it erupts, Vesuvius-like, to life. Staccato bursts of acoustic energy hammer off pastel-painted stucco buildings and shatter the silence, until the 483-bhp 4.3-liter V-8 quickly settles into a fat, hollow idle. Small animals scurry for cover and you now have the attention of everyone within two Modenese city blocks, without even engaging 1st gear with a flick of the F430’s paddle shift. Of course, it only gets better as you climb the rev scale.
The huge sonic promise of this engine isn’t empty, as we’re about to find out with this successor to the 360 Modena, which itself is the most volume-produced and profitable car Ferrari has ever made…since 1999, more than 17,000 berlinettas, spiders and Challenge Stradales have rolled off the Maranello assembly line. So the F430, whose first-year worldwide production of 2000 cars is already spoken for, has some big Italian loafers to fill. Which it does brilliantly.
This story originally appeared in the January 2005 issue of Road & Track.
Indeed, the F430 is based on the 360, yet 70 percent of its parts are new. That’s obvious from the outside, where the profile is familiar but nearly everything else is different, the result of a collaboration between Pininfarina and Ferrari’s Head of Design, Frank Stephenson. With more power comes the necessity of shedding more heat, and every duct, vent and scoop has been enlarged and reshaped to this end. Especially noticeable are the front air intakes, whose twin-nostril outline pays homage to Ferrari’s shark-nose 156 Grand Prix cars of the early 1960s. There’s more history here, as high atop the rear haunches are scoops that recall the legendary 250 LM that channel air into the engine compartment. At the rear, a tasteful adaptation of the Enzo’s taillight treatment is evident, where the round lamps protrude from the bodywork as prominently as the four anodized exhaust tips. Its look is meaner and more powerful, and not quite as elegant as the car it replaces.
A peek underneath will reveal evolution in underbody aerodynamics continued from the 360, a true case of technology transfer from Ferrari’s Formula 1 effort. The rear diffuser is enormous, with strakes within its venturis straightening the airflow for greater effectiveness. Up front, a central spoiler slot cleaves the “clean” air and routes it over an airfoil element and then beneath the car; in conjunction with venturis ahead of each front wheel, the F430 can produce as much as 287 lb. of front downforce, and as much as 617 lb. overall at 186 mph— an increase of 50 percent from the 360— all without resorting to external wings.
As before, the F430’s chassis is an aluminum space frame, with extrusions welded to elaborate castings that serve as pick-up points for the forged-aluminum double wishbone suspension. Weight of the chassis itself is up by 10 percent, a result of stiffening elements to handle the engine’s increased torque, and additional structure to cope with more stringent crash standards.
And what an engine it is, both as a static objet d’art (look at those red crackle-finish intake plenums and cam covers) and as a dynamic force: Its 112.1 bhp/liter tops even the mighty Enzo for specific output. It starts with the raw casting of the Maserati Quattroporte’s block, though the similarities (and shared parts) end there. The F430 has a flat-plane crankshaft with its distinct firing order, along with proprietary 4-valve heads, induction and exhaust systems. Quite compact for its size and only 9 lb. heavier than the 360’s engine, the F430’s 90-degree V-8 sits 0.6 in. lower in the car, thanks to a slimmer dry-sump casting incorporating the main bearing saddles and a new small-diameter, twin-disc clutch. The intake plenums sit atop long vertical runners; a rotating barrel valve between them allows variable intake volume that, coupled with variable cam timing on both intake and exhaust, sees that 80 percent of peak torque (343 lb.-ft. at 5250 rpm) is available at just 3500 rpm. Remember that there are 5000 more revs till redline, which is also where the engine’s full 483 bhp are made.
Our test car was fitted with the F 1 paddle-shift gearbox (a traditional manual 6-speed is also offered), with shifts now taking place in as little as 150 milliseconds. Ferrari stresses that this is the time for the complete shift, including the clutch-in/clutch-out time, and we found its operation to be greatly improved, from the smoothness of clutch take-up to the nearly hitch-free flow of power in the automatic mode. Incidentally, “auto” is now engaged through a center-console pushbutton that’s angled toward the driver, replacing the 360’s tiny and fiddly T-handle.
Smooth is good, but we had Fiorano’s main straight at the ready for acceleration testing, and our radar gun was dazzled with near-Enzo levels of acceleration. How’s 3.5 seconds to 60? And a sizzling 11.7-sec. quarter mile at 120.1 mph? Fantastico! The F430 is one of the rare cars that digs hard enough to squeeze the breath from your lungs and virtually ignores air resistance as each higher gear seems to pull just as hard. Bellissimo! And the sounds…as the tach needle blurs to the 8500-rpm peak, the V-8’s mechanical cry becomes increasingly metallic and high-pitched. Angry, in the best sense of the word.
Brakes are easily a match, our test car fitted with the ludicrously expensive ($14,300) carbon-ceramic discs that float on aluminum centers and are squeezed by Brembo calipers (6-piston front, 4-piston rear). Ferrari claims that its test drivers were able to complete 350 laps of Fiorano at racing speeds without a degradation in performance, and these brakes handled our own abuse without a hint of fade or increased pedal travel. Our stopping distances from both 60 and 80 mph were within 5 ft. of the Enzo’s at 113 and 192 ft., respectively.
We haven’t even touched on another link to F1 technology, a small rotary switch on the steering wheel called the manettino that aces Schumacher and Barrichello would find familiar. Select one of its five detents according to available traction and/or bravery (Snow, Low Traction, Sport, Race or CST— the last turning off both yaw and traction controls) and several systems adapt to suit. The manettino controls shift quickness of the F1 gearbox, shock valving, degree of traction- and yaw-control intervention, the rpm at which the twin exhaust bypass valves open (for more power and yet another rich tonal layer of exhaust pulsations) and the degree to which the E-Diff comes into play. This last piece, developed in the crucible of Formula 1 but now banned in racing, is a limited-slip differential whose clutch pack is hydraulically modulated and electronically controlled. Cleverly, it uses the same engine-driven hydraulic pump and accumulator as the F1 gearbox.
The proof is in the driving, and the F430 again took our breath away through the foothills south of the factory, culminating in a few glorious laps around the Fiorano circuit. Race mode on the manettino seemed ideal, with the quickest shifts enabled, electronic helpers reduced to a minimum and the E-Diff set for a little throttle-induced oversteer. Here, the F430 offers a driving experience that is quintessentially pure and direct, as much an extension of your will as any street-tire-equipped production car can be. Steering feels ideally weighted and is rich in road feedback, and the downforce that builds through high-speed sweepers makes the most of tires that seem slightly narrow for a car of such Herculean performance—225/35ZR-19s in front, 285/35ZR-19 rear. Brakes shrug off speed effortlessly, with only a few millimeters of pedal free play and a rock-hard feel past that. And the F1 gearbox delivers perfectly rev-matched downshifts—thanks to the V-8’s twin motorized throttles— even in the automatic mode. In short, it’s easy and rewarding to drive quickly, puts its power down extremely well, and is not nearly as intimidating as the track numbers might suggest.
Our afternoon drive is all too brief, and Ferrari personnel have to practically pry our fingers off the F430’s impeccably stitched, leather-covered wheel. It’s quite a car, one that’s risen to the challenge of adversaries like the Ford GT and Lamborghini Gallardo, and then some. And with a starting price of about $171,000 (actual figures have yet to be set), the F430 seems a relative bargain when compared with the thrice-more-expensive Enzo. Yes, it seems certain the F430 production line will be kept humming for quite some time.
Keyword: The Ferrari F430 Is Angry in the Best Sense of the Word