GTO, F40, F50, Enzo and LaFerrari – Ferrari’s Most Spectacular Horses

While Ferrari’s regular cars are everything but boring the company occasionally puts their prancing horse on a car that is just a little faster, a little louder, a little more powerful and a little more extreme than the others.
And somehow, those cars are still road legal.

Ferrari 288 GTO - A Group B Rally Ferrari With A License Plate

Development on the Ferrari 288 GTO (at that point called “Project GTO”) started all the way back in 1975 when the Ferrari 308 GTB premiered and Ferrari decided to use the car as a base for motorsport.
The decision was made to participate in the Group B Rally, and a 308 was supposed to be adapted.
However, before a single 308 rally car was made the rules of the Group B were changed, limiting how drastically the rally car and the road-going counterpart were allowed to differ.
Ferrari completely reworked the car, leaving barely the general shape from the 308 when the 288 GTO was ready.

The first 288 GTO premiered at the Geneva Motor Show in March of 1984, and was the fastest and most powerful road-going car Ferrari had ever made.
The car’s 4.290mm long body is mostly made of fiberglass, except for the rear section which is made of Kevlar-reinforced Nomex-fiber (a heat-resistant synthetic fiber), while the front hood is a mixture of fiberglass and Nomex.
That body is attached to a steel space-frame chassis which holds the interior and the drive-train.
The 288 GTO has a 110mm longer wheelbase than the 308 and clearly wider fenders to accommodate the much wider tires.
Pop-up headlights ensure good aerodynamics during daytime drives, with four lights below the main headlights providing some alternative illumination.

Due to the limited displacement allowed for the rally cars the 288 GTO received a completely new engine.
The 2855ccm DOHC 90-degree 16-valve V8-engine was made completely out of aluminium, and was supplied with air through two IHI turbochargers with Behr Turbochargers (standard boost-pressure 0,8 bar) while a Weber-Marelli injection-system got the fuel from the 120 liter tank to the cylinders.
The engine produced 294kw at 7.000rpm and 496nm of torque at 3.800 rpm, which was sent through a synchronized manual five-speed gearbox mounted behind the engine which was mated with a two-disc clutch and sent the power a locking differential at the rear wheels.
The engine was powerful enough to propel the 1.160kg light car from a standstill to 100kph in just 4,9 seconds and onwards to a top speed of 305kph.
That makes the 288 GTO the first road-legal car to pass the 300kph-mark.
The 288 GTO rolled on 16-inch alloy wheels wrapped in Goodyear NCT-tires, which were 225mm wide in the front and 265mm wide in the rear.
To come to a stop from high speeds the 288 GTO was equipped with vented discs all around, measuring 306mm in the front and 310mm in the rear.
A dangerous construction-fault of the 288 GTO are the fuel-lines, which evidently can’t handle the high fuel-pressure very good.
Already in 1989 Ferrari admitted that weakness, including a change of all fuel- and oil-lines in the regular service.
This hardly improved the situation, since the new lines were exactly identical to the removed ones, rather than installing stronger ones.
Even while the first 288 was in Geneva Ferrari set to work on the 200 GTO’s they had to make in order to be allowed to participate in the rally.
They actually made 272 GTO’s until the end of 1985, due to overwhelming customer demand (despite the price of 265.000 German Mark/150.329 US-Dollar).

However, when Henri Toivonen passed away after crashing his Lancia Delta S4 during the Tour de Corse-Rally (Corsica) on the 2nd of May 1985, the Group B was disestablished and Ferrari immediately stopped work on the 288 GTO.
The 272 GTO’s made at that point were sold to selected customers, with the official reason being that Ferrari was aware of how difficult the car would be to control for a person who never drove a high-power car.
The car was only delivered in Rosso Corsa, although at least 4 cars were resprayed at a later point, creating 3 black and one white 288 GTO.
The 288 GTO was also the first road-going Ferrari to carry the “Cavallino Rampante” on the front fender.
70 of the 272 cars made are known to have burned down (with only one known case of a car having been torched), all of which were rebuilt.
Meanwhile one 288 GTO was destroyed in a crash, dropping the number of surviving cars to 271.
The surviving 288 GTO’s don’t get sold the conventional way but practically only at auctions, with prices recently breaching the 2 Million Dollar “sound barrier”.

In 1987 Ferrari built what can be considered the 288 GTO’s “Final Edition”, the Ferrari 288 GTO Evoluzione.
5 Evoluzione were made, featuring upgraded aerodynamics including fixed headlights in a new front bumper.
The engine was tuned up to 480kw while the weight dropped to 940kg allowing the top speed to increase to 362kph.
However, the cars are not road-legal anymore due to the modifications done.
One of the three surviving cars is owned by Ferrari, while the other two are owned by collectors in Japan and France.
Two more are reported to have been used as testing-mules for the upcoming F40’s technology.

Ferrari F40 – Ferrari Makes A Birthday Present To Themselves

Ferrari presented the F40 in 1987, celebrating their 40th birthday.
The car, which is based off the 288 GTO Evoluzione, would become the last car Enzo Ferrari worked on in person.

The F40’s body consisted of an innovative carbon fiber monocoque, with body panels made of carbon fiber (sometimes reinforced with Kevlar) and aluminium subframes making up the rear section (the carbon fiber monocoque essentially ends behind the seats) and part of the front.
The weight was further minimized through the use of plastic rather than glass, with the first 50 cars being fitted with sliding Lexan-windows rather than conventional wind-down windows.

The front of the car features pop-up headlights for the main lights, but high-beams and indicators are located in front of the pop-ups under an aerodynamic cover.
This was done to improve aerodynamics, but removed from the race-cars for reliability-reasons.

The cars were fitted with air conditioning (which could be optionally removed), but had no sound system, door handles (a long string did their job), glove box, leather trim, carpets or door-panels, generating a race-car feeling few cars can match.
Ferrari got a lot of criticism for their most expensive car having the least equipment, and eventually commented that their cars were about sportive driving, and if someone wasn’t happy with their offer he wouldn’t have to buy their cars.
Some rumors speculate that another reason is that Ferrari wanted to set themselves apart from the super-luxurious Porsche 959.

The F40’s engine was based off the aluminium engine from the 288 GTO, which first of all was enlarged to 2.936ccm and upgraded to 32 Valves.
The new engine was coded “F120 A000”, and featured dry-sump lubrication and two IHI-turbochargers in a “hot V”-configuration.
If one looks at the rear of an F40 he sees what appear to be three exhaust-pipes, but actually only the two outside pipes are carrying the exhaust-gasses.
The smaller pipe in the center guides gasses released from the wastegate-valves out of the engine-bay.
The engine is supplied with fuel through Marelli-Weber fuel injection, while the short monocoque allows air to flow up from underneath the car towards the engine which not only makes the whole front two thirds of the car a spoiler but also provides the engine with an amount of air for cooling only comparable to formula-race-cars.
The engine delivers 352kw and 577nm at 7.000rpm to a manual five-speed gearbox which drives the rear wheels.
That is enough power to let the 4.430mm long, 1.130mm low and 1.100kg light car reach 100kph from a standstill in just 4,1 seconds, and onwards to a top speed of 324kph.
The F40 rolls on 17-inch wheels all around, with a width of 245mm at the front and 335mm in the rear.
The wheels are attached to the car via a double-wishbone suspension with adaptable dampers, allowing the driver to raise the ground-clearance to a more practical level if needed.
Behind the wheels of the F40 one can find 330mm ventilated discs all around, ensuring adequate deceleration.

The F40 was originally produced without catalytic converters, when US-laws demanded them in 1990 customers could order them along with changes to the turbocharger, leading to no performance-disadvantage worth mentioning.
The cars ordered with that kit can be identified by the engine-code having been changed to “F120D”.

The F40 was offered to customers starting in 1987 at a price of about 380.000 Euros (adapted for inflation), but not everyone could buy them.
Customers could apply for a car, along with paying a 100.000€ “fee”.
Most of the cars were sold to Ferrari-collectors or racing-drivers, with a handful of cars also being sold to celebrities with no prior connection to the brand.
Originally Ferrari planned to build 450 cars, but eventually built 900 cars in 1987 alone and 1.315 until production stopped in 1992.
1.304 cars were painted in Rosso Corsa, while two were delivered in black, 8 in yellow (one of which remained with Ferrari), and a white one went to the Sultan of Brunei, which is reported to have not been driven until the early 2.000.
As usual with high-performance limited production cars prices for the F40 never dropped, but increased from day one instead.
When Enzo Ferrari passed away in 1988 prices for the F40 made a huge jump, leading to the common assumption that no more than 10 percent of all F40s were actually driven on a regular basis.
Nowadays an F40 costs at least 950.000 Euros, with the early “slider”-version (with the sliding window) costing upwards of 1,3 Million Euros.

In between 1989 and 1994 19 F40s were converted into race-cars named the F40LM.
The cars lost weight leaving them at just 1.050kg and the engine was modified to deliver 537kw which could briefly be boosted to 669kw by temporarily raising the boost-pressure of the turbochargers.
It should be noted that all 19 cars still exist, and that the F40LM never had the backing of Ferrari but was converted after the purchase.
A large part of what makes the F40 so special today is what caused criticism back in the day, the classic (and somewhat unsafe) character of the car which will never be able to appear in a street-legal car again.

In 2013 a Japanese F40-owner has sparked criticism after presenting his reworked F40 featuring a new, extremely thin white paintjob, new wheels, a new suspension, new headlights and a Liberty Walk bodykit including a new rear spoiler.
While some praised the unusual project car and the good looks of the result others called it an outright crime to modify a car as special as the F40.

Ferrari F50 - Roofless V12-Powered Insanity

Ferrari followed up the legendary F40 with the presentation of the F50 in 1996, celebrating, as the name suggests, the company’s 50th birthday.
The F50 is a two-seater roadster (via a removable hardtop) whose main part is a 1.050kg light carbon fiber tub, which uses honeycomb-core structures to reduce weight, with light-alloy suspension-attachment points and a subframe at the rear connecting the tub to the engine-gearbox-assembly.
The complete, fueled (105 liters) car weights just 1.397kg, and is 4.480mm long at a width of 1.986mm (plus the side-mirrors) and a height of 1.120mm.
The F50 made the step from V8s to V12s, using an engine previously used in the Ferrari 333 SP mounted in front of the rear wheels.

In the F50 it was a naturally aspirated 4.698ccm DOHC-engine with an angle of 65 degrees and five valves per cylinder (3 intake valves, 2 exhaust valves).
The engine consisted of a variable carbon fiber intake manifold mounted to a aluminium head and a cast iron block, with a dry-sump system providing needed lubrication.
The cylinders were filled with forged Mahle-pistons on forged titanium connecting rods, spinning a steel crankshaft.
The engine was controlled by a Bosch Motronic 2.7-system, with Bosch also supplying the ignition-system.
The engine, which weighted 198kg, delivered 382kw at 8.000rpm and 470nm at 6.500rpm, with the ECU cutting off the fuel-supply at 8.640rpm, 140rpm past the redline.
The engine was mounted to a twin-plate clutch connected to a longitudinal 6-speed manual gearbox driving the rear wheels.
The car rolled on 18-inch magnesium-alloy wheels with titanium hubs made by Speedline, wrapped in Goodyear Eagle F1 GS Fiorano-tires (335mm at the rear, 245mm at the front).
The wheels hung on unequal-length wishbones with push-rods and Bilstein-made gas-pressurized dampers which could be electronically adapted to alter the ground-clearance by 40mm depending on the steering-angle and velocity as well as the car’s longitudinal and vertical motion as well as the car’s speed.
Furthermore, the front wheels were cambered at -0,7 degrees at the front and -1 degree in the rear.
Deceleration was taken care off by cross-drilled and ventilated iron discs provided by Brembo (356mm at the front, 335mm at the rear) with 4-piston aluminium calipers (also made by Brembo) equipped with Pagid brake pads.
However, the F50 did not offer an ABS-system, although there are two cars who are said to have been fitted with an ABS-system by an unknown manufacturer since they were delivered.
With all that the F50 could accelerate from a standstill to 100kph in just 3,7 seconds and onwards to a top speed of 325kph.

Ferrari made 349 F50 (plus one with the number “000” for their museum) at a price of (in today’s money) 380.000 Euros.
However, once again you had to apply for the car, and you could only get it if you were “a valued customer” (meaning: either a collector or very famous or both), owned at least two other Ferraris and if Ferrari assumed that you were “the right person” for a car like that.
Customers also had to sign a contract saying they wouldn’t sell the car for two years.
While 302 cars were ordered in the classic Rosso Corsa other colours were chosen as well, those being:
-Giallo Modena (Yellow): 31 cars
-Rosso Barchetta (Dark red): 8 cars
-Argento Nurburgring (Silver): 4 cars
-Nero Daytona (Black): 4 cars
By now (November 2016) an F50, if one ever comes up for sale, costs upwards of 1.5 Million Euros depending on the condition.

Apart from owning one standard F50 the Sultan of Brunei had one F50 converted to right hand drive (now owned by an Irish collector) and a third one was completely redesigned into a more conventionally looking coupé called the “Bolide” in 1998.

Ferrari Enzo Ferrari - Paying Homage To The Founder

It only took Ferrari four years to find a reason to build another supercar, which was named the Ferrari Enzo Ferrari and was presented in 2002.
The official reason was to express respect to the founder of the company, while also showing where Ferrari was headed for the new millennium.
The 4.702mm long, 2.035mm wide and 1.147mm low car was designed by Ken Okuyama, Pininfarina’s former head designer.
The car consisted of a carbon fiber monocoque, which held the engine, suspension, interior and an integrated rollcage.

The Enzo is powered by a 65-degree 5.998ccm DOHC V12-engine with 4 valves per cylinder (coded the F140B) and variable valve timing.
As usual with Ferrari’s of the time the engine is naturally aspirated, while a Bosch Motronic ME7 fuel injection system gets the fuel from the 110 liter tank to the cylinder.
The engine delivers 485kw at 7.800rpm and 657nm at 5.500rpm (with an 8.200rpm redline), to a semi-automatic “F1”-gearbox operated via paddles behind the steering wheel (if the driver choses to interfere), assisted with LED-lights at the top of the steering-wheel telling the driver when it’s time to shift.
While many fans grieved the end of a manual gearbox in the “super-Ferraris” the advantages of a gearbox that changes the gear and re-establishes the power-flow to the rear wheels in 150 milliseconds can’t be denied.
The suspension-setup is similar to that of the F50, with 4 independent push-rod actuated shock-absorbers which now could be adjusted from within the car.
The Enzo carries 381mm drilled and ventilated disc-brakes all around, while rolling on 19-inch wheels held on by a single lug nut and wrapped in Bridgestone Potenza Scuderia RE050A-tires.
All that allows the Enzo to reach 100kph from a standstill in 3,2 seconds, before topping out at 355kph.

The Enzo was developed in secrecy, with three test-mules (named M1, M2 and M3) were fitted with custom-made bodies resembling the Ferrari 348.
The surviving mule was auctioned off in 2005 and sold for 195.500 Euros.

Less than 48 hours before the only existing Enzo was supposed to be unveiled at the Paris Motor Show in 2002 the car was flown to the USA where it was used for the filming of the movie “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle”, spending about two hours on set before being loaded back into the plane and flying back to Paris, arriving just in time to be cleaned up (it had been driving on a beach for the movie) and then presented to the world.
Originally Ferrari announced that 349 Enzos were going to be made, at a starting price of 659.330 US-Dollars.
Apart from applying customers could now also hope to be invited to buy one, with those invited being owners of F40s and/or F50s.
When the demands far outnumbered the planned production, with customers starting to offer a lot more money than Ferrari demanded, Ferrari raised the number to 399.

In January of 2005, long after production ended, Ferrari built a 400th Enzo and gave it to Pope John Paul II on the 17th of January of that year.
The Pope decided that it should be auctioned off for charity, leading to the Vatican contracting Sotheby’s for the job.
The auction of the car (VIN 141920) took place on the 28th of June 2005 (along with that of the mule mentioned above), and the car sold for 1.055.000 Euros which were donated entirely to the survivors of the tsunami that had struck the eastern Indian ocean in December of 2004.

Another notable Enzo was owned by the American collector James Glickenhaus, who gave his brand-new Enzo (which he hadn’t even registered at that point) to Pininfarina in 2005.
The car kept its stock drivetrain, but received a completely new and unique body reminiscent of the 1960’s “P-Series” race cars.
The project, which is said to have cost about 4 million US-Dollars, took almost a year before the car was presented at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elégance in August of 2006, now being called the Glickenhaus P4/5 by Pininfarina.
Luca di Montezemolo saw the car there, and decided that it would be allowed to be called a Ferrari, changing the name to “Ferrari P4/5 by Pininfarina”.

The Ferrari Enzo Ferrari was sold with an additional contract similar to that F50-customers had to sign, saying they would keep the car for a while (the time-span varies between two and four years, depending on the source).
By now, of course, they are being traded, with prices starting at an average 2 Million Euros, and it’s assumed that they will keep climbing.
Maserati used the chassis and engine of the Enzo to build the MC12 from 2004 to 2005 (62 units), although the resulting car is much larger than the Enzo.

The Enzo is also the base used for the Ferrari FXX, non-road-legal car made in between 2005 and 2007 in 38 units for 1,8 Million Euros each.
What makes the FXX even more special is that customers don’t receive the car, but Ferrari stores it and owners can drive it at especially organized track-days around the world.

Ferrari LaFerrari - The First Hybrid-Ferrari

In 2011 Ferrari started a two years long campaign leading up to their next supercar, at that point called the “Project Ferrari F150” since Ferrari didn’t publish a name.
Over a time-span of two years Ferrari presented 2 Pininfarina Concept Cars (Ferrari Concept Manta, Ferrari Concept Tensostruttura) along with photos showing small details of the new car.

The finished car was unveiled at 2013 Geneva Auto Show, which is also when the official name was published.
The new supercar was named the Ferrari LaFerrari, translating to “The Ferrari” in most romance languages.
This was done to symbolize that the LaFerrari is the “ultimate” Ferrari.

The LaFerrari is a 4.702mm long, 1.992mm wide and 1.116mm low two-seater coupé mainly consisting of a carbon fiber monocoque the development of which was headed by Ferrari’s F1 technical director Rory Byrne.
The only visible aerodynamic aid is a small splitter in the front as well as a small rear wing which deploys at higher speeds, with most of the downforce being created with the help of the specially shaped underside-cover.
It should be noted that, while Pininfarina made the two concept-cars presented leading up to the LaFerrari, the car itself is designed by Ferrari’s own styling-center.

The LaFerrari’s main engine is the “F140”-engine, a naturally aspirated 65-degree 6.262ccm DOHC V12 mounted in a mid-rear position producing 588kw at 9.000rpm and 700nm at 6.750rpm.
In addition to that the LaFerrari carries a mild-hybrid-system called “HY-Kers” developed off the system known from the Formula1 racing series.
The system consists of two electric motors, one of which is mounted to the opposite side of the gearbox and can provide a temporary power-boost of 120kw, while another one drives different units (such as the air conditioning compressor) and replaces the alternator, taking stress off the combustion engine.
The electric motors are powered by a 60kg battery pack in the bottom of the car which is charged during normal driving and when the car decelerates.
If the driver applies full throttle the car’s engines deliver a combined 708kw at 9.000rpm and 970nm at 6.750rpm (with the electric motor’s 270nm being available from 0rpm, improving acceleration).
With that sort of power and the help of a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox the LaFerrari can reach 100kph after a start from a standstill in in 2.8 seconds, with Ferrari listing the top speed as “upwards of 350”, with claims varying as widely as 360 to 380kph.
The additional power also easily makes up for the additional weight of the hybrid-system, which raises the weight of a LaFerrari with an empty fuel-tank to 1.430kg.
The LaFerrari rolls on 345mm wide 20-inch wheels at the rear and 265mm wide 19-inch wheels in the front, wrapped in Pirelli P Zero Corsa-tires.
The wheels hang on a double-wishbone suspension (front) and a multi-link suspension in the rear, with electro-magnetic adaptable dampers all around.
Brembo-supplied drilled and vented disc-brakes made of a carbon-ceramic-mixture take care of deceleration, measuring 398mm (front) and 380mm (rear).

The LaFerrari also features a lot of electronic helpers, including (but not limited to):
-ESC (electronic stability control)
-High Performance ABS (a sophisticated anti-lock brake system, allowing adjustable sensitivity)
-EBD (electronic brake distribution, varying how much brake-pressure is applied to each wheel for maximized stability and deceleration)
-EF1-Trac (adjustable electronic traction control integrated into the hybrid system)
-E-Diff 3 (an electronically adjustable differential)

499 LaFerrari were made in between 2013 and 2015, and other than for his predecessor you didn’t have to own a Ferrari-supercar to be allowed to buy this.
Customers still weren’t allow to sell their car within a year, and some say that there were also rules in the contract regarding giving your LaFerrari to journalists/TV-crews.
499 LaFerrari were made, at a starting price of 1 Million US-Dollars (899.500 Euros), and all eventual owners had signed the contract before production had started.

Less than two months after the first LaFerrari had been delivered Ferrari advised owners to let their local dealership examine the car, since “an issue with the adhesion of the paint on the fuel tank” was found to pose a risk of self-combustion.
In early 2015 85 LaFerraris were recalled after tests showed that the Lear-made seats’ headrests failed to absorb the required amount of energy in the event of a crash, along with the tire pressure monitoring system failing to display a warning-message when a tire is punctured.
It is assumed that these problems will have a lasting impact on Ferrari’s future supercars.

On the 31st of August 2016 Ferrari announced that a 600th LaFerrari had been made to be sold at auction, with the price benefiting the survivors of the Central Italy Earthquake that took place seven days prior to the announcement.

At the 2016 Paris Auto Show Ferrari unveiled the LaFerrari Aperta, a LaFerrari with both a removable carbon fiber hard top and a removable soft top.
The car looks just like the LaFerrari (save for the removable roof, of course), but features a few modifications including re-angled radiators to direct more air along underneath the underbody, an L-shaped flap on the upper end of each windscreen-pillar to reduce compression on the rear of the cabin, a different opening-able of the butterfly-door with changed front wheel arches and new hinges.
The monocoque was also redesigned to raise the stiffness without increasing the weight of the car, while updated electronics are supposed to make the car more efficient.

209 Apertas are supposed to be made, with an announcement by Ferrari during the presentation in Paris claiming that all the cars were already sold out after an invitation-only event a week prior to the Paris Auto Show.
LaFerraris are currently sold for around 3,5 Million Euros, with spots on the waiting list for a LaFerrari Aperta (customers can’t sell the car for a year after taking delivery) going for upwards of 5 Million Euros.

All given information was researched to the best of my knowledge, if you find mistakes please let me know.

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