Rossi:
You better learn to read properly, learn to write decently, else you should better shut up.
Snap Snap, the gloves are coming off
Poor guy!! Most probably the dumbest Ferrari question ever!!
just stop arguing and take it it as man.
Weeks ago I wrote that I believed Berfes was having fun with us. I doubt very much he is an adult and a serious car person. It may well be that there is a language barrier. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, his posts are border line comical and I have difficulty accepting him as a car enthusiast let alone a Ferrari prospective buyer.
Berfes, you need to prove your gravitas or many of us will put you on our ignore list.
nberry:
Weeks ago I wrote that I believed Berfes was having fun with us. I doubt very much he is an adult and a serious car person. It may well be that there is a language barrier. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, his posts are border line comical and I have difficulty accepting him as a car enthusiast let alone a Ferrari prospective buyer.
Berfes, you need to prove your gravitas or many of us will put you on our ignore list.
what did nberry say?
i have him on ignore.
scud:
nberry:
Weeks ago I wrote that I believed Berfes was having fun with us. I doubt very much he is an adult and a serious car person. It may well be that there is a language barrier. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, his posts are border line comical and I have difficulty accepting him as a car enthusiast let alone a Ferrari prospective buyer.
Berfes, you need to prove your gravitas or many of us will put you on our ignore list.
what did nberry say?i have him on ignore.
Pity. You might otherwise have been inclined to agree with him for a change.
fritz
Apr 28, 2010 7:45:45 PM
Ferrari 458 Italia first-drive...
Ferrari-458-Italia_Focus-DE-article
Ferrari-458-Italia_Focus_EN-translation
Apr 29, 2010 9:24:35 AM
Apr 29, 2010 1:29:42 PM
Apr 29, 2010 3:01:50 PM
Apr 29, 2010 4:01:07 PM
Apr 29, 2010 4:08:22 PM
Apr 29, 2010 4:16:47 PM
Clarkson on the Ferrari 458 Italia...
Jeremy takes the Ferrari to the very limits of grip... at 37mph...
Writers on car magazines like to say that they've driven new cars ‘at the limit'. When the truth is they have been round the block a few times and maybe to the pub.
Well, this time, I really can say, hand on heart, that I have driven the new Ferrari 458 ‘at the raggedy edge of what's possible'. Not just for a brief moment. But for hour after hour after hour. And at no point did I exceed 37mph.
As I said on the television recently, the Italia is the only car I was really looking forward to this year. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, Pininfarina has pulled its finger out this time and produced the first properly pretty Ferrari since the 308, 30 years ago.
Yes I know it's all very smooth and so on, and that its front end is made from a deformable plastic that changes shape as you go faster. But I don't really care about any of that. In the same way that I don't care about Keira Knightley's eating habits.
Mostly though, I was looking forward to this car because of the power. The old 430 - which was by no means a slouch - produced 483bhp. The 458 wades into battle with an incredible 562 and an engine that revs to a stratospheric 9,000. Apparently. As a result, 0 to 62 is dealt with in 3.4 seconds. The top speed is 202mph, and the chaps down the road at Lamborghini must now be wondering how to respond with the forthcoming Gallardo replacement. Make a bet: it won't produce 561.
Sadly, there is a price for the extra oomph and all the attendant electro-trickery needed to remind customers that Ferrari has a Formula One team as well. The 458 Italia is £169,545. That's 30 grand more than the car it replaces and means that for the first time in a while, the baby mid-engined car in Ferrari's range is not the cheapest. You want a Fezza on a shoestring now, you buy the California.
I suspect, however, that if you want the best, you buy the Italia. That's why I was so looking forward to driving it, and that's why I was so disappointed to find, on the day it was due to be delivered to my house, that the weather was having a period.
Most of the snow had gone in most of the country. But not where I live. Where I live, it had been converted into a giant ice cube, and because where I live is Oxfordshire where the council will only grit bus lanes and cycle paths, the roads were more slippery than a pensioner's shoes.
I was assured by the man from Ferrari that such things would not trouble the new supercar; that while the headline figures suggest a rip-snorting monster with water-boatman agility, it is mainly about refinement and ease of use and that no matter what weather conditions happened to be prevailing at the time, he'd have no trouble getting it up my drive.
This turned out to be somewhat wide of the mark. The Fezza made it through the gates, skidded about a bit and that was that. So for two days, it looked like Cheshire round here, like I'd parked my flash new motor near the road so it could be seen by neighbours, and then walked to the house.
On the final day of its visit to the Cotswolds, I thought the weather had improved enough for me to go for a drive. But I was wrong. It hadn't - a point that became blindingly obvious on the first bend I encountered.
A BMW coming the other way slithered into a massive tank-slapper and as I braked to give the poor bastard more room, absolutely nothing happened. The ABS did that slow-motion thing it always does on ice and snow, and it was only luck, and quite a bit of screaming on both our parts, that meant we didn't have a head-on.
Over the next hundred miles or so, I didn't really learn very much except that it is possible to go for many hours without blinking. Or breathing. So far as the car's concerned? Nothing to report, I'm afraid. Bad weather levels the playing field so that your bright red supercar is no more and no less able to move about than your beige Peugeot.
However, I can reveal that the dashboard lay-out of the Ferrari is a bit bonkers. Because of the flappy paddles that operate the new gearbox, Ferrari has decided that all of the things normally controlled by stalks should be controlled by buttons on the steering wheel. That's the dim dip, the wipers, the windscreen wash and the indicators. And that's a lot of buttons even before you get to the red one that starts the engine and the six-way traction-control system.
Just sitting there, things are confusing. On the road, it’s worse, because the trouble with a steering wheel is... it doesn’t sit still.
So the button to operate the left indicator is now on the right. And every time you try to dim your headlights, you wash the windscreen. And to make matters worse, the instrument binnacle is a bit bonkers as well.
You have a rev counter in the middle and two television screens on either side. The one on the left tells you how fast your lap was and other not entirely relevant information while the one on the right is either the satnav screen... or a speedo. But not both at the same time. This can be a bit alarming when you are nearing a speed camera. But not for me obviously, because I never got past 40mph.
Much, I suspect, like the people who'll buy this car.
It could be then that I have produced the first truly relevant Ferrari road test in journalistic history. But I'm afraid my thirst to drive this car properly remains unquenched. Stay tuned.
Ferrari-458-Italia_Top-Gear-article-JC
Apr 30, 2010 2:31:34 PM
EVO Italia 'vs' RS
<embed src="http://www.evo.co.uk/front_website/swf_library/jw/4.5/player-4.5.swf" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" flashvars="file=http://video.evo.co.uk/online/458 vs GT3 RS part 1.flv&plugins=dcinstream,gapro-1&dcinstream.ad.tag=http://ad.doubleclick.net/pfadx/www.evo.co.uk/videos/supercarvideos;tile=9;bigad=yes;live=yes;type=article;make=ferrari;model=458;sz=468x430;ord=2700454323?&dcinstream.ad.position=pre&gapro.accountid=UA-4196494-1&gapro.trackpercentage=true&gapro.tracktime=true&gapro.trackcompletes=true&gapro.trackdetails=true&gapro.trackerror=true&autostart=true" width="392" height="239" />
<embed src="http://www.evo.co.uk/front_website/swf_library/jw/4.5/player-4.5.swf" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" flashvars="file=http://video.evo.co.uk/online/458 vs GT3 RS part 2.flv&plugins=dcinstream,gapro-1&dcinstream.ad.tag=http://ad.doubleclick.net/pfadx/www.evo.co.uk/videos/supercarvideos;tile=9;bigad=yes;live=yes;type=article;make=ferrari;model=458;sz=468x430;ord=6861620296?&dcinstream.ad.position=pre&gapro.accountid=UA-4196494-1&gapro.trackpercentage=true&gapro.tracktime=true&gapro.trackcompletes=true&gapro.trackdetails=true&gapro.trackerror=true&autostart=true" width="392" height="239" />
May 1, 2010 1:10:23 AM
FFaust:
lor:
EVO Italia 'vs' RS
http://www.evo.co.uk/videos/supercarvideos/251455/ferrari_458_italia_v_porsche_911_gt3_rs.html
http://www.evo.co.uk/videos/supercarvideos/251458/ferrari_458_italia_v_porsche_911_gt3_rs.html
Thanks for the post FFaust. Wow what a video!
May 3, 2010 2:38:39 PM
May 21, 2010 7:39:02 PM