One of the highlights of 2022 is Ferrari’s 75th anniversary. To mark the occasion, Petrolicious has teamed up with Ferrari North America to showcase six key models from the marque’s history and their modern counterparts.
The first of these films features the perfectly preserved F40 that belonged to longtime Ferrari owner and collector, Jerry Leʋy. The film features road test authority, Jethro Boʋingdon, who compares and contrasts the F40 with Ferrari’s latest fastest car, the impressive SF90 hybrid supercar.
In the late 1980s, the Ferrari F40 set a new mark in the burgeoning world of supercars. Many today would argue that it still hasn’t gotten over thirty-five years after that event.
In the time since, there have been dozens of well-equipped luxury sedans that could beat the Enzo’s extended go-kart on the ‘Ring or down the quarter mile, but as any enthusiast As any real driver knows, performance on paper doesn’t really matter any more than when you swap the keyboard for a steering wheel. And in any case, the F40 is not a failure compared to the old version; Ferraris capable of reaching speeds of 200MPH with composite chassis and twin turbos tend to resist such accusations of slowness. Outdated definition, but slow? Not necessarily.
The slab-shaped Ferrari’s timelessness can be explained by its looks or simply its position at the pinnacle of Ferrari road cars, but the real reason lies in the relationship created between the car and its driver. As Jethro Boʋingdon said, “Everything you put in, you get out. It requires a lot, but the rewards are huge.”
So there’s been a long-standing barrier to entry since it was demolished by modern models like the Ferrari SF90 Stradale—with no modern-age support to fill the driver gap dry in an F40—but for those lucky and talented enough to cross that threshold in an F40 race, it pays you in full. This car has no ABS, no power steering, and no electric motor to plug the gaps in the turbocharger and booster. Traction and stability assist are controlled by three pedals and the steering wheel, leaving the rest up to you.
Like almost all clichés, there is an element of underlying truth in the concept of extremely fast cars being “race cars for the road,” and we can call cars like the F40 that because expressive use since then. But here’s the real deal, and it’s summed up much more eloquently than Boʋingdon in the movie: “You won’t want to dry this car every day, but the days you take it out, you’ll remember for a long, long time.”
So how can something as powerful and powerful as the Ferrari F40 compare to its modern counterpart, the SF90 Stradale? They’re packing the engine-mounted twin-turbo V8s, but that’s almost superficial to say they can be ordered in red. The heart of the Venn diagram of these cars is built on philosophical rather than physical similarities. Ferrari isn’t in the business laurels, so of course “they don’t make ’em like they used to” take it literally, but they’re constantly pushing the high-performance model further with each of their flagships.
This is a bridge between something super modern like the SF90 Stradale and something decidedly similar like the F40. Both cars pursue the same goal, have the same mission: to create the fastest car possible. The day will come when the ingeniously electronic, nearly 1000 horsepower Ferrari SF90 Stradale is considered an old Italian car that will seem outdated when sitting next to its great granddaddy𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥, but their purpose won’t change, it just always exists.
One of the highlights of 2022 is Ferrari’s 75th anniversary. To mark the occasion, Petrolicious has teamed up with Ferrari North America to showcase six key models from the marque’s history and their modern counterparts. You can watch these short videos from Classiche Connection on Ferrari North Aмmerica’s Instagram profile
