Send this page to a friend!
Fill in the form bellow

news

Cars that made my spine tingle

The Ferrari 550 Maranello is the archetypal GT car

The Ferrari 550 Maranello was the first car I drove on the road that felt truly fast. It was the kind of car that I felt could bite if I got a bit too enthusiastic with my right foot, and I discovered I liked that feeling. Things have changed since then. I was 17 at that point and 479bhp felt like a lot, I also had failed to appreciate the wonderful balance that its chassis is endowed with. The big Ferrari is the archetypal GT car, but one that you can have some real fun with when the time is right.

It is one of those cars that allows one to steer it on the throttle, which I really like. Of course, this is helped by a creamy V12 and a great drive train including Ferrari’s famous exposed gate manual gearbox. The gearbox is not something that encourages you to slam gears home in double quick time, but it has a nice rhythm to it and suits the elastic nature of the engine.

I also like the way the 550 looks. I have met plenty of people who are not such a big fan, but I think it looks incredibly stylish, especially in Grigio Titanio grey with a burgundy interior, but that’s just my personal taste.
If I won the lottery tomorrow a 550 Maranello would be on my shopping list. Sometimes cars are less good when you come back to them, especially those that you first experience at a young age, but the 550 Maranello never disappoints me.

Ferrari hit the nail on the head with the 550, so much so that its replacement, the 575Ferrari 575MItaly, 2002 > 20062 series
5 versions
81 photos
, was less good than the original. The 550 Maranello often slides under the radar, but it deserves to shine.

Ferrari 360 CS

Anyone who doesn't like the 360 Challenge Stradale?

I am a Ferrari fan, that much I will admit, but I have never met anyone who doesn’t like the 360 Challenge Stradale, the raw numbers do not do it justice, it is a car that is so much more than the sum of its parts.
I have already highlighted the Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale as a ‘modern classic’ for Autoviva and I think that there is good reason for suggesting that the lightweight Ferrari is a good place to put your money, but there is also good reason to buy one to drive. My memories of the Stradale are etched so deeply inside my mind that I think I will be dreaming of them when we are all driving hover cars. That I am rambling so incoherently probably hints at the level of my adoration for this car. I will try to explain why I am such a fan.

The standard Ferrari 360 ModenaFerrari 360 ModenaItaly, 1999 > 20055 photos
is a very good car, but it never really feel fast enough and suffered from slightly moody on-the-limit handling characteristics. It came with 400 bhp when the 355Ferrari F355 Gen.1Italy, 1994 > 19997 versions
44 photos
that came out 5 years earlier had 390 bhp and somehow it never quite hit the nail on the head like the 355 had done in 1995.

The SpiderFerrari 360 SpiderItaly, 2000 > 20054 photos
version made me even less keen on the standard car. I have driven plenty of them but one drive sticks in my memory. I was coming back from Scotland, it was a long drive and I was tired, which probably didn’t help. I had survived on drive-through McDonalds and bed was the order of the day. Stupidly I decided to swing by a pub on the way home to meet a friend who I went to university with, while we were eating the heavens opened. I have never had a more terrifying drive home, the car aquaplaned everywhere and transitioned from slithery understeer to snappy oversteer so fast that my eyes were on stalks. It was positively dangerous.

The Stradale was a revelation. It may have only had 25bhp more than the standard car and a mere 100kg weight saving but the effect was electrifying. The first thing that you notice is the noise. When you fire it up the Stradale immediately seems to breathe more easily and it darts towards the red-line in a way that the standard car cannot do.

The chassis also inspires more confidence than a normal car. It can be criticized for being slightly too ‘hard’ over a very bumpy back road, but it doesn’t buck about in the same way that some overly hard-riding BMWBMWGermany, 1918 > present87 models
8471 photos
43 videos
’s do. When it comes to direction changes the Stradale is in a different league, not only does it retain superb body control but it turns in with precision and retains a beautiful balance that allows the driver to adjust the car’s trajectory using not only the steering wheel but the throttle and brake pedals.

When you get into a Challenge Stradale you feel like you are plugged into it intravenously, and that is what supercars are all about. I’ll have mine without the optional stripe though.

Caterham R500

The Caterham R500 gives you the raw driving experience

The point of a Caterham is to give the driver a raw experience, the extreme R500 does that better than any other Caterham I have ever driven.

I have always been a little disappointed with lower powered Caterhams, they do not have enough power to exploit the chassis fully, or overcome it if you are that way inclined. To my mind they also lack the appeal of a similarly powered EliseLotus EliseUnited Kingdom, 1996 > present3 series
27 versions
81 photos
1 video
.

However, the more potent the engine becomes the more my smile widens when it comes to Caterhams. My favorite memory is of an R500 in 2008. I had a day thrashing around some country lanes in Leicestershire with a Lamborghini Murcielago LP640Lamborghini Murcielago LP640Italy, 2006 > 20105 photos
and a couple of other tasty pieces of machinery in tow and then the time came to head back home.

When you think about Caterhams open wheels, no roof and possibly a roll-cage spring to mind and on this basis I like it to be as hard-core as possible. The R500 has 230 bhp and a kerb weight of 480kg giving it 500bhp/tone, hence the R500 moniker. This is a power level that suites the open wheeled, roll caged exterior in my mind.

Anyway, I was following a guy called Steve, who is pretty handy behind the wheel, through the rain with huge plumes of spray coming off the rear tyres of the Lambo and I realized it was the Caterham that I wanted to be in, it felt alive in a way that I can remember no other car feeling. I had to be so careful getting on the throttle as a slip would send the car into a spin in no time, as I threaded the car through the lanes I would see the suspension working and the wheels reacting as I turned into slides.

The Caterham R500 was terrifying to drive in the rain but it works with you as long as you’re not too ham-fisted. This is the car, above all others that I feel truly alive when I get out of, soaked to the core but smiling nonetheless.

Lotus Elise Mk 1

The Lotus Elise is a true driver's car

I have a lot of experience with the Lotus Elise. I am older than my sister, but not by much and as we were approaching our 17th birthdays my father decided, partly because he fancied one, that we ought to have a Lotus Elise to accompany our thoroughly unexciting learner cars.

‘Our’ Elise is a basic 118bhp Rover K-Series powered car. This does not sound like a lot of power largely because it isn’t, but a sports exhaust has made it sound and go a little bit better. But the reality is that straight line performance is not the raison d’etre of the diminutive Lotus.

It only weight 780kg and it feels reasonably quick up to about 70mph, but is lethargic over 100mph, however the maximum UK speed limit is 70mph so I can live with that.

But the beauty of the Elise is the way it feels. When I hop in the Elise it immediately feels like a driver’s car, the sills are wide and made from aluminium and the seats are figure hugging. The pedals, and I’ll get onto those in a minute, are alloy and the instruments are simple, but clear. Then you start it up and it is obviously mid-engined, clearly the Elise was built to handle.

The Elise has some of the best steering feel I have experienced in a modern car, it also has tactile, well spaced pedals that allow you to heal ‘n toe with ease, pair this to a peppy four-cylinder engine and you have a great ‘B’ road machine, one that requires all of your attention due to its lack of ABS and traction control, but which pays your effort back in spades.

I have driven plenty of other variants of the Elise including a few ExigeLotus ExigeUnited Kingdom, 1999 > present3 series
31 versions
102 photos
1 video
, one of which I did my ‘ARDS’ test in, I still love the basic MK 1 that is parked in the garage though.