How Do You Define "SOUL"

Rawness. The history, the smells, the sounds, the feeling that it was not over-engineered, the feeling that you're not just sitting in a $20,000 car with a bigger engine, the feeling that it is special, the feeling that it's not just reading a teleprompter, but that it has feeling, that it lives and breathes and barks and roars. And sings.

 

'Soul' means the car involves you in all the mechanical goings-on -- gearbox, engine, road grip -- through all of your sense. 'Rawness' is a big part of it. I would say my old MGB wasn't a very good car in many ways, but it had soul because you could tell what kind of mood the car was in whenever you drove it.

Design can also give a car soul, because the car has to speak to you. Does it have details designed just to make you appreciate them (side strakes, Momo steering wheels), or is everything utilitarian (Toyota Camry, Ford Explorer) and sensible? It's hard to have 'soul' without someone wanting to add some 'art' to driving experience.

I didn't vote in the poll because I think the options miss the point, or at least don't capture it.

 

This is a good idea for a thread, but i think the concept of 'soul,' may be too hard to define. A soul is intangible, yet at the same time ensconces you in it's presence. In short, a soul is everything. A soul is the Ferrari experience

 

I tend to agree. If a car has "soul", it must be because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; so starting with a list of parts is self-defeating in answering the question.

 

for me its the epic racing history of ferrari, including all the tragdy and pain. But the pinacal of soul is the fact that.....Miles Davis owned a ferrari Cant get more soul than that

 

Soul cannot be defined.

 

Agree.......

 

I define Soul by saying "Don't give up on us baby"
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its the way the car drives and sounds, the car feels as if its alive and an extention of the person driving it

 

There were a few points missed:

Questionable mechanical reliability

Needy maintainence

Requires occasional expeditions for parts

Smells like oil, gas, leather, Lucas smoke

Cold in winter, hot in summer

You wouldn't part with it for a Honda S2000 no matter what your wife says.

Ken

 

I think the thread on 0846, the "lost" P3/4 car really cemented the picture for me of Ferrari in the 1960's. Ford was spending whatever it took to beat Ferrari. I seen an interview with Carrol Shelby, in which he claimed Ford may have secretly pumped as much as $2 Billion into the GT/40 project. Regardless of the amount they spent to beat Ferrari, consider Ferrari.

In restoring 0846, race records have indicated engines having the same serial numbers with different displacements at different race tracks. One race its a 4 liter V-12, at another a 3.3, maybe some other race its a 3 liter. From one week to the next a small handful of engines were being manipulated and reconfigured to place the car in races under different classes. 5 or 6 cars running a tiny handful of engines, so few engines in fact, that Ferrari had to resort to altering them to be competitive? Why so few? Couldnt he build more engines?

Consider that when my two 308 GTB's were built in 1977, after 30 years of building cars, Ferrari had barely built a combined total of 10,000 cars. There are guys in the metro area here that have built that many houses in a year. You never heard of them. How much money does a guy building houses make, compared to building a car? If, on average Ferrari built 333 cars per year, say 28 cars per month, he wasnt rich by any standards we would use today. He had a factory, employees, materials to requesition, I am sure a lot of overhead. Ferrari was just a tiny racing car builder, not a big mover and shaker.

But up against Giants with open check books like Ford, Mercedes, Jaguar, BMW, Honda, Renault, or anyone else in the world, Ferrari persevered. Drivers layed it on the line for Ferrari, and more than a few paid the ultimate price. There is a lot of blood that was payed to put Ferrari on the grid. And they keep coming back. Year after year, win or lose, they are there. For over 50 years Ferrari has been there. For one stretch of 18 years, never winning a single championship, but they kept coming back.

So no, to me it has nothing to do with perfect handling, prestige, rarity. Its that little black horse on that yellow background, its over 5000 racing victories, 9 wins at Lemans, 8 Mille Miglias, 7 Targa Florio's, 25 world titles by a man that went up against giants. Its the names of famous drivers. Its the echos, the silent little echos of the past that no one else can ever hear but you, if your listening, when you sit in the car alone. When you quietly turn the key to on and hear the fuel pump, you know whats coming next. The car could ignite and burn to the ground that very instant, but its remains would still have more "soul" left behind than any other machine on the planet.

 

For me it all has to do with feel and feedback. If it doesn't talk to you it is just an appliance, if it is alive in your hands and tingles then it is more than just a machine.

I would say it can be defined, but can't be quanitifed or measured. It is everything that won't show up on a spec sheet.

 

A lot comes down to nostalgia. Old time technology combined with a certain unattainabilty we as children felt (most of us at least!). What was going on when we were kids? There were Ferraris, Lotus' and a few others. If companies like Lola made road cars they'd be there too today. Lamborghini never raced but I'd have to say a Miura has as much soul as any vintage Ferrari since it was in the "super car" catagory at the time and equally exotic.

But I think that is done....will today's Hondas have "soul" in 20 years? I doubt it.

Ken

 

I agree that soul can't be defined, but I think it can be described... I also agree with Yin that, as a whole, the sum (of a Ferrari) is greater than its individual parts...

Ferraris - specifically the older ones - have soul because they were hand made. The blood, sweat and tears of actual people went into the construction of the aforementioned 'parts', thus creating something greater than their sum. Their problems, their sorrows, their joys, their pride and effort went into those cars. There is a true sense of existentialism when you pilot a Ferrari.

But the company's mystique just adds to it. There are a handful of stereotypes that automatically go with Ferraris - their legendary racing status, their blinding speed, their dangerously curvaceous, beautiful bodies. They are as illustrious as anything in this world (or beyond) could ever possibly be. And that, in itself, manifests feelings we can only interprit as the car having soul.

I will say that, any time I've ever driven a Ferrari with an empty passenger seat, I never felt alone.

 

Oh, I thought you were talking about music, as in soul music.

Clearly, some cars are more fun to drive than others. In that regard, Ferrari makes some cars that have soul and some that don't.

I used to say that the Challenge Stradale was the most fun car that I have ever driven. Now, I must say that a F430 with ceramic brakes is even better.

However, lately, I have been getting into driving the old banger - a 330 GTC. A completely different kind of soul.

Dale

 

Sam and Dave, in some warehouse dive in Austin, Texas......LOL!

 

here is some SOUL
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I'd define 'soul' as the way the car makes me feel when I drive it.

If if feels like an appliance, no matter how competent, luxurious or dependable, it doesn't have 'soul'.

If the car fills me with anticipation, gets the heart rate up a bit, gives me the tinglies, it has 'soul'.

My $0.02,

Neil

 

A car with soul wants to be driven hard. A car without soul is as indifferent about it as a toaster oven, simply a tool to be used for the task at hand.


That is not to say that a tool car cannot be an extremely effective weapon for winning races, as P-car history clearly shows.

 

The sould of a car is defined by the person who drives it as a result of the experience of driving.
A 15 year old beat up Honda will end up developing a soul over time, but a car like a Ferrari will have a soul as a result of initial exhiliration and expectation.

Steve

 

Its hard to really define it but when you look at a car you can see it. I guess its really any car that has a purpose other than to be just basic transport. Wether thats a beautiful design, or great performance. Its just a feeling that the designers took the time to say"you know what would be really great" and not just "whats going to sell the best". Its a feeling that time was actually put into making a car that would be great and memorable rather than just rummaging through nthe parts bin to create something that will fill a hole in the market.

 

I would argue that a Porsche Speedster (1954-57 version) has more soul than any new robot-built, CAD-designed Ferrari. You can almost feel the spirit of the guys who built it -- by hand (Teutonic soul, maybe, but you get the point...), and you have to learn how to shift it, warm it up properly and know how it's supposed to sound. It takes you back to 1955, when you had to pop the bonnet to fill the fuel tank.

With a Porsche 996/7, anyone can hop in and drive it. No special knowledge required, and if you've seen one you've them all.

 

I do appologise, but I stand by what I said earlier. If you stood next to Friendship 7, walked under the Bell X-1, seen the liberty bell, or heard the sound of the restored steam whistle off the Titanic, that is soul. Just because a car is fun to drive, to me that has no bearing on it having any soul. My 66 GTO with 421HO and a deep geared posi was a blast to drive, but it had no soul. My MGB/GT was even more fun, and was the first car I really fell in love with, yet I would never say it had any real soul. My 72 Alfa GTV 2000 had no soul. But a Ferrari, and to me a real Ferrari was built by Enzo Ferrari while he was alive and in charge, is like owning a fine Violin. A special Violin made by that other fine Italian violin maker. A real Stradivarius has a soul, a voice unlike no other musical instrument. A Ferrari has a soul, a presence unlike any other machine. Any other car maker you can name had massive bank rolls of money they could spend and yet could never come close to beating that tiny poor company from Italy for any length of time, because Ferrari's passion for winning was stronger than those other big car makers. The others simply wanted to win to make a name for themselves and sell mundane cars for the masses, Porsche included. Seriously, anyone who could envision everyone driving around in a Beetle doesnt have a lot of passion. Ferrari and company just wanted to keep winning because they really just wanted to keep racing and building ever better racing cars. The only reason they bothered to build us some of thier products, was so they could fund thier racing. The only other car makers that really come close to that ethic would be Jaguar and Maserati, Everyone else was really just in it purely for the money. Antonio Stradivari simply wanted to make the prettiest music. The others just wanted to build violins.