When writer's block hits
We return to Dan Neil. Who's been a little straight-forward as of late but returns to form reviewing Ferrari's 2007 599 GTB Fiorano.
Put it all together and you have a sports car that operates in a wholly different graviton wave field. It's not simply that it is fast — after all, the Corvette Z06 is fast, plus it's a quarter-million dollars cheaper — it's just that the 599 is so benevolently easy to drive fast. It might, actually, be too easy to drive, because the 599 hardly gives any clues that it's working hard. Crank the wheels at 100 mph and the car just darts wherever you point it. Hit your apex and hammer the throttle: The car puts its carbide claws in the asphalt and bolts. This car blows your mind to spumy flinders. New from Kellogg! Spumy Flinders!
Sorry. I'm not right yet.
Wait. Go back a minute. Did I say $320,000? Yup. At that price, Ferrari can afford to focus on details. For example, the sound quality. Unlike the brassy, biting, to-the-marrow shriek of the F430's flat-crank V8, the 599's V12 vocalizes in richer, darker, bourbon-y tones — around downtown, a warm flutter; on the track, a thrilling chordal note to shake Mormon Tabernacle Choir members down to their temple garments. Ferrari tuned this car like a pipe organ, from the air intake to the exhaust silencer, paying particular attention to the engine's third and sixth harmonics, the latter — says the company — giving the car its "pleasant timbre." Pleasant, that is, unless it's on your back bumper.
All that money also buys you the world's most famous V12 — famous because pictures of it, sitting cold and unaccommodated on the Pacific Coast Highway, were beamed around the world last year. This is the same low-profile, lightweight 65-degree V12 (block, heads and sump) with chain-driven cams and variable intake geometry and valve timing. With a screaming top speed of 8,400 rpm, the V12 generates 102 hp per liter, and 448 pound-feet of torque, 90% of which is on tap at just 3,500 rpm. Every gear offers a gag-on-your-tongue burst of accelleration. Let the rpm die off and savor the delirious popping overruns. Zing! Zing! Spumy Flinders!
