Celebration of 30 years of the launch of the Ferrari 456 GT (In Italian, but subtitles auto-translated to English are quite decent):
I tried to translate that 3 part 456 anniversary video to no avail. It looks fascinating. Ferrari just falls all over itself for that 456. Especially Montezemolo
There should be just a couple of steps: 1) Press "CC" near the bottom right once to turn on subtitles 2) Press the cog symbol next to it and then press "Subtitles/CC" in the pop-up menu 3) Now press "Auto-Translate" in the new menu and finally select "English" from the final menu (you may have to scroll down). At that point the cog pop-up menu should look like the picture below. You should now have English subtitles for the Italian audio. Hope it works, it's nice to see all the love those 3 people have for their 456 GTs!
Seeing the video I can't understand why the F1 gearbox is so maligned, honestly I don't think I'm faster changing gears, nor better doing heel and toes with my 550. Probably I'm a bad driver.
It was not maligned back in the day, as 88% of all 575Ms came with the F1 gearbox (only 246 out of 2056 575Ms were manuals). However, that F1 gearbox, though faster than a human could shift gears, was still a single-clutch system, and took a bit of skill to drive smoothly. Nowadays, almost every car has flappy paddles, and you cannot buy a new Ferrari with a manual gated shifter transmission, so the nostalgia of something you can no longer experience kicks in. There is also the perception/fact that the F1 gearbox does not offer the full driving experience of a manual transmission, so all those factors combine for the huge premium of the manual 575M manual over F1, with rarity for sure being the most significant. There is a long thread debating exactly this issue started 16 years ago! https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/575-f1-vs-6-speed-manual.258273/
Just came across this fun Motorweek short coverage of the spy shots for the Ferrari 512 GT America, Project F116, anticipating the 412i replacement for 1990 with a new 5L V12 with 360 hp. That is the car that looked too much like the BMW E31 8-series, leading to Pietro Camardella's new design proposal, and had an engine Ermanno Bonfiglioli (lead engineer in engine development) called not-meeting-design-specifications, leading to the complete new design with a V at 65° hearkening to the Dino V6 and the crossed intake manifold solution. There was even an imagined technical diagram by an Italian magazine, showing a never-seen V12 under the hood.
@Sunshine1 Hadn't seen that one before. Great video, thanks for posting! Here's the (longer) companion video of the full interview of the owner.
Great find! The translation does work, if you turn on subtitles (CC button) and select auto-translate to English in the little cog button. Image Unavailable, Please Login
