The Best Sports Car in the World?
With the return of the legendary ‘GTO’ badge to a Ferrari for 2010, the question being asked by most people familiar with sports cars and Ferrari in particular is, ‘is this the best sports car in the world?’
The model lucky enough to get the GTO treatment and wear the badge is Ferrari’s two seat flagship the 599 GTB Fiorano. The Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano was introduced in 2006 to replace the 575 Maranello. In it’s first year the 599 won the Evo car of the year, Evo being the premiere Magazine in Britain focusing on driver oriented cars and a global authority on performance cars.
So the 599 GTB was already a great supercar when it first appeared in 2006, featuring a 5999cc V12 positioned at the front of the car longitudinally. It develops 611bhp and 448lb ft of torque and all of that power is transmitted to the rear wheels via a 6 speed manual transmission or Ferrari’s 6 speed ‘F1 Superfast’ automated manual transmission with paddle shifters.
The 599 GTB also features magnetorheological dampers which are dampers filled with magnetorheological fluid and controlled by a magnetic field. So by varying the strength of the electromagnet emitting the magnetic field you can adapt individual dampers to continuously altering conditions. This semi active suspension is critical on the 599 GTB in compensating for the basic physics of having the engine out in front of you feeding the driving wheels behind you.
Read the rest of this entry »
