550 Maranello: Exhaust ideas

A Maranello shall have a medium muted sound which is sober and elegant. Not like a F1 car. But it is just a matter of silencers. You can get a good muted sound with both OEM and 6-1 mufflers. Another thing to remember is that these cars were designed to be driven both to work and go theough a continent at 150 mph. cruise speed. Then it is very important to have the car silent and be able to run at a continious high rpm. without being tired. If you compare the Ferrari V12s with a diesel or Mercedes 500 which also offers great high cruise speeds, it is wirth saying that the rpms. are much higher. That in combination with a very loud F1 scream will make the car less avle to go very fast from A-B over a long distance. And when you do that, the exhaust becomes VERY hot and makes much more sound just because of the heat. So in fact, the original exhaust is not at all bad, but it just sounds so boring when you want to show off the car to your friends or have a fast fun drive. I would be very interested to test a car with 6-1 headers and the original OEM center and original rear boxes. (Original 575 silencers are less muted than 550 ones).

 

I disagree. The OEM design, particularly early iterations was nearly soulless. It’s not the car’s fault mind you, but rather the prevailing regulations and laws that made nearly all standard production cars from the late 80s-early 2000s so muted from factory (that and the loss of carbs and improved insulation). It was only with the widespread implementation of valves and revised noise regulation that cars started to sound lively from factory come the 2000s. Indeed, the 575 got better with every revision, with the HGTC being the best. This is even more so true for the 599. Fabio’s exhaust goes a long way to fix that.

I ran that setup BTW (headers>high flow > h pipe > SS axle pipes > OEM HGTC). It was quite sedate with the valves closed. @Aerosurfer drove it with that setup and would likely agree that it was actually reasonably quiet. Given the insulation even with the valves open, it wasn’t the loudest with the windows up. You could easily carry on a normal to quiet conversation even at speed. With Fabio’s rear mufflers. It’s only faintly louder with the valves closed valves open now…. however, it’s quite “angry” with pops and crackles but NO drone.

 

Has anyone ever removed stock mufflers and replacing with straight pipes while retaining stock cats and center resonator?

 

It’s a popular choice on 456. In fact will be doing just that as my current setup (mid pipe delete) is too raspy.