Car & Driver: Ferrari 430

[SFDMALEX]

Here it goes:

First of all why are people comparing the Ford GT to the 360? Is it because the 360 is the only Ferrari Ford can beat?

Good move by Ford, lets hype up our brand new car by putting "FORD IS BACK. FERRARI DEFEATED" on every american magazine cover with a little disclaimer *the ferrari 360 is a 6 year old vehicle.

Its like watching Holifield getting beat by some young wanker. Give it a break, the old man is retired.


Now the Galardo. Again competition for the 360?Hmmm the FGT story again.


That source alanlambo provided is tottaly irrelivant. If they got 4.4sec 0-60 on the CS then how can I even look at the rest of the stats? that 4.4 contradicts every single magazine outhere(only thing some of the are good for...numbers)


Now when people say that Galardo will be on par with the F430 or whatever it just makes me laugh.

This car outaccelerates the F40 for Chirst sake....and any of you ever seen those BM vids with the F40 always reaching the first corner before the last car crosses the start/finish line? Well think about something even faster then the F40.

Now Im sure that the F430 is faster then the CS. Might not corner as fast(and thats a big MIGHT) but it will definetly pull away in a straight line.

The F430 doesnt have the 360s signature twitchiness. If you watch the 5th gear test then you'll see how smooth its is with the tail out and TC off. The 360 could never do that.


Anyway......the F430 will be the benchmark car, just wait and see.

[Guibo]

Originally Posted by SFDMALEX Good move by Ford, lets hype up our brand new car by putting "FORD IS BACK. FERRARI DEFEATED" on every american magazine cover with a little disclaimer *the ferrari 360 is a 6 year old vehicle. That source alanlambo provided is tottaly irrelivant. If they got 4.4sec 0-60 on the CS then how can I even look at the rest of the stats? that 4.4 contradicts every single magazine outhere(only thing some of the are good for...numbers)

Show me one American magazine that has that on the cover. Only mag I recall with a similar cover was CAR. And
1) that's not American, and
2) Ford doesn't dictate what goes on car magazine covers

360 is the only one the Ford can beat? Err...no, the Ford GT also beats the 360CS. How do you think a 575M would fare against the GT? 612?
In the recent MT comparo, the GT was 2/10ths and 2.7 mph slower in the quarter than the Enzo. Wow, congrats. Now go and build 4500 of them.

Autocar also got 4.4 for the CS. How is that irrelevant to the discussion? So what if the 360CS should be good for 4.0. Don't you guys get it? If the Ferrari gets to 4.0 (likely the result of optimum traction), AND its 0-150 is slower than the Gallardo, then it's even slower than expected once off the line. You shave 4/10ths off the 60 time, but what about the 2.5 second-gap at 150?

[Max Power]

Don't really agree with that. The Gallardo was designed with 2 cars in mind as competitors, the Porsche 996TT and more importantly the Ferrari 360. Ford obviously benchmarked the 360, and since the Gallardo has come out in the interim, it's obviously (at least theoretically) in the same marketing envelope as the others. The 996TT is of course quite a lot cheaper, so it falls in a lesser pricing bracket, but the GT, Gallardo and 360 are definetely intended to go head-to-head.

Well BMW Williams F1 was also designed with the F2004 as competition, but it doesn't have a V12 displacing 5 liters, although maybe it should........and as already said 360 is 6 yrs old

[FordGTGuy]

Originally Posted by dons5 ok if the ford had better pistons, better pulleys, better suspension blah blah blah i can go and say the same thing about a honda, if it had a bigger engine and better pulleys etc etc it would be faster too, so would every car genius

except a honda doesn't have the engine space or design to keep up with a supercar. good luck putting a v8 in a s2000

the 427 cammer i was talking about is the 60's version and by redesigned i meant new materials, bigger cylinders.

[dons5]

oh ok thanx so your saying a huge engine can make huge horsepower, thanx i didnt know that

[Guibo]

Originally Posted by JiggaStyles09 where does it say that the gallardo is 2.5s faster to 150? im not trying to be a smart ass or anything i just didnt see the stradale's 0-150 time anywhere. the only numbers i saw posted about the stradale on C&D were the 0-60 and 1/4 mile.

Where does it say it? It says it in the data panel of the actual article. You DO have the actual article, don't you?


Reference with the Gallardo's 21.4 second 0-150 time here:
http://www.caranddriver.com/article....&page_number=5

Simple arithmetic takes care of the rest...

[JoeHahn]

I think a big area the Ford has over the Ferrari (360, Stradale and F430) is the huge amount of torque produced. The Ford (as much as I dont like it) has what it takes to beat the F430. Obviously people can argue otherwise and thats the point of an opinion, we will have to wait for tests I guess.

Also I think it is quite irrelevant to bring cost into the equation simply because the Ferrari is imported into the USA and the Ford isnt. I dont live in the USA but I pretty much work off the british pound which pegs the Stradale at 133k and the Ford at 120k, but... (and this is a big one) has anyone seen the Top Gear episode where JC is having problems with his Ford and currently paying over 130k for his car? While the F430 will come in at about 117k I personally think you cant go wrong with that. Cheaper than the Ford, even though slower you have to be content with driving a F430. I am not a Ferrari man and I quite hate most of their new models but to have a Ford costing more or less a similar price to a Ferrari while being a tad quicker is lunacy to me. Thats me, others have different views obviously.

[Guibo]

Originally Posted by dons5 umm Fiorano is smaller then Laguna maybe on Laguna the 430 would be 5 or 6 seconds faster then 360. And if Ferrari makes 110 hp/L out of a 6 litre engine and about 115 out of a 4.3 litre then the Ferrari would probably get around 700 - 800 hp with a 5.5 litre engine with a supercharger

If the 430 is 5-6 seconds faster than the 360 at Laguna, and the Ford GT is faster than the 360 by a similar margin at Laguna, then how are we to assume that the 430 will beat the Ford GT??
And it would likely cost far more than it already does...Do you honestly think it would be cheaper than a Porsche GT2? Yes or no?

[Guibo]

Originally Posted by Max Power ....the ford gt was a preproduction one in the article and C&D says that the CS is faster than the Gallardo...Top Gear also established CS faster than the lambo All these numbers say nothing cause if u wanted to compare these cars than u would need some sort of 'rules' ... like same engine size, rwd and etc, otherwise u only compare them because of prices

And how does that preproduction Ford GT differ from production ones? Tell me exactly how. You mean how Ford claimed it would top out at 200, yet much later it went 212 at Nardo?
When did Top Gear establish the CS is faster than the Lambo? What were the documented acceleration times?

[JiggaStyles09]

Originally Posted by Guibo Originally Posted by JiggaStyles09 where does it say that the gallardo is 2.5s faster to 150? im not trying to be a smart ass or anything i just didnt see the stradale's 0-150 time anywhere. the only numbers i saw posted about the stradale on C&D were the 0-60 and 1/4 mile. Where does it say it? It says it in the data panel of the actual article. You DO have the actual article, don't you? Reference with the Gallardo's 21.4 second 0-150 time here: http://www.caranddriver.com/article....&page_number=5 Simple arithmetic takes care of the rest...

no i didnt have the article i was going by the online version on C&D.com which didnt have that page thanks for posting it up (thats why i was saying that the only times i saw for the stradale were 0-60 and 1/4 mile).

i do see any you have a fine point here, that the gallardo pulls slightly harder, at higher speeds but as someone pointed out before its not nearly as drastic as 37 carlengths and when talking of speeds at 150+ 2.5 seconds faster isnt that much (compared to like a 0-60 time difference of 2.5s).

there are a lot of factors that go into a road test of the car, track conditions, driver, temperature, and the car itself. i really think the acceleration differences between the gallardo and the stradale minimal at best.

for example the trans am WS6 and the camaro SS are almost identical cars yet in this test here on edmunds.com they got slightly different times for this road test. still its not recognized whatsoever that the WS6 "pulls harder" than the SS. on a given day one of the cars can outpreform the other.

and i think the same about the lambo and ferrari, on any given day depending on conditions one car can beat the other.

and hey i still agree with you that i prefer the gallardo better than the ferrari.

[Guibo]

Originally Posted by findleybeast Originally Posted by Guibo 150 mph = 220 fps, 220 fps X 2.5 seconds = 550'. That's ~37 carlengths. Tell me again how the Gallardo doesn't pull harder?? not that I want to seem like I'm taking sides on this, because I'm not, but that argument doesn't really hold any water. it would be true if the gallardo was traveling at a constant 150mph, and the 360CS was standing still. of course that's not the case, so even if you do figure out the accelleration for both cars up to a point in time, you'd have to subtract the distance covered by the 360CS from the distance covered by the Gallardo. your point that the gallardo hits 150mph 2.5 seconds faster is valid, just the math you used to emphasize it is wrong anyway, back to it

Hey, that's a good point. However, it would also be true if both cars were traveling at a constant 150 mph; the 360CS wouldn't have to be standing still. Of course, at 21.4 seconds when the Gallardo is traveling 150 mph, the Modena isn't quite at 150. But what you're saying makes sense.


For the others...
Here's how these cars compare throughout various tests:



The trend is pretty clear: it would take a miraculous road test of the 360CS to definitively prove that it is faster than the Gallardo. Even then, it's hard to argue that 1 test disproves 4 others. For anyone else saying the F430 is faster than the Ford GT, well, that would put it in Enzo territory, wouldn't it?
Who's got C&D numbers for the F40? I've only got the 0-170 time (which is faster than the F50 by .5 second). By R&T numbers, the F430 is noticeably quicker to 60, but that's it. After that, the F40 is quicker.

[Guibo]

Originally Posted by JiggaStyles09 there are a lot of factors that go into a road test of the car, track conditions, driver, temperature, and the car itself. i really think the acceleration differences between the gallardo and the stradale minimal at best. and i think the same about the lambo and ferrari, on any given day depending on conditions one car can beat the other.

That might be true. But if you look at the road tests between C&D, MT, Autocar, and Sport Auto, they all have the Gallardo consistently faster above 60 mph. Even if you pick the quickest 360CS test to 150, it's still not as fast as the slowest Gallardo test to 150. If these two are truly evenly matched, we'd expect that there would be some swapping of positions. Sport Auto's times indicate that as speeds increase, the 360CS only loses ground to the Gallardo. Not purely by coincidence, I think.
Agreed, a 2.5 second difference at 150 is not like it is at 60. But it's still fairly significant. If you look at individual road tests for cars like the Viper, 550 Maranello, Porsche GT2, Vanquish, even across continents, the differences in 0-150 times aren't that great. I mean the difference between Autocar's time and C&D's time for the 360CS is only 4/10ths. The difference for the Gallardo is only 1/10th. The difference between Autocar's time and C&D's time for the GT2 and 550 Maranello is only 2/10ths. Between 3 different mags (Autocar, C&D, and TopGear), the Murcielago shows a 1.9 second spread to 150. Sounds like a lot, for one car. That's about a 9% difference. Then you realize that the difference in their 0-60 times was 11%. Meaning even with differences in conditions, traction, drivers, timing equipment, etc, the faster the car goes, the less these factors impact the outcome (particularly traction from a dead stop). And thus the smaller the margin. IMO, it's a better test for what these cars are truly capable of.
(One also finds that the Murcielago's slowest time to 150 is 21.4 seconds. Still clear of the Stradale's quickest by 2.1 seconds. The Murcielago's best 0-150 undercuts the Stradale's best by 4 seconds.)
And C&D has gotten a 0-150 time of 22.5 seconds for 3 different GenII Vipers.

Originally Posted by JiggaStyles09 for example the trans am WS6 and the camaro SS are almost identical cars yet in this test here on edmunds.com they got slightly different times for this road test. still its not recognized whatsoever that the WS6 "pulls harder" than the SS. on a given day one of the cars can outpreform the other.

Hmmm...that would be the second same-day test I've seen where the WS6 beats the Camaro SS, then. Here's another:
http://popularmechanics.com/automoti...s/index7.phtml
They are mostly identical, except that the SS is about 100 lbs heavier...

Originally Posted by JiggaStyles09 and hey i still agree with you that i prefer the gallardo better than the ferrari.

I'm actually more inclined to go with the 360CS, personally. (But not because it's quicker. )

[JiggaStyles09]

Originally Posted by Guibo That might be true. But if you look at the road tests between C&D, MT, Autocar, and Sport Auto, they all have the Gallardo consistently faster above 60 mph. Even if you pick the quickest 360CS test to 150, it's still not as fast as the slowest Gallardo test to 150. If these two are truly evenly matched, we'd expect that there would be some swapping of positions.

i will agree with you here

Originally Posted by Guibo I'm actually more inclined to go with the 360CS, personally. (But not because it's quicker. )

haha well then fine then i guess we are both trying to defend cars that we dont really prefer

[Max Power]

And how does that preproduction Ford GT differ from production ones? Tell me exactly how. You mean how Ford claimed it would top out at 200, yet much later it went 212 at Nardo?

...Exactly and the GT has 550bhp instead of 500

[Guibo]

You mean it has 550 hp at a minimum. From what I've seen, it's closer to the Enzo's output. It would need to be, in order to weigh that much and be so close to the Enzo in acceleration, especially considering the Enzo's gearing advantage, lightning-quick shifts, fatter rear rubber, etc.