Misc Pictures of F50, F40 LM, F40, etc

Hello to all ! Just wanted to add some pictures to this great website..The first group is of Andy Evan's F50, the one Mr. Ferrari gave him for winning the IMSA Championship that year..These were taken in 1998 at the Team Scandia Shop outside of Indy..The second group is of The Moma display of Ferrari around the same time..The Third Group is of an F40 Lemans at the New York Auto Show, around 1992..The 1st Us Display of an F40, in March of 1988, of which the sign clearly stated not for sale- non U.S. Model..and some misc pics of other car shows..including a non Ferrari- Nigel Mansell's Indy car..By the way, in 1988, you were allowed to stand next to the cars, as seen of the kids with the 328, however from then on, they were kept some distance back.. Also amazing that Ferrari North America didn't seem to care that the lights surrounding the F40 Lemans had some bulbs out..I hope you all enjoy these pics as much as I enjoy this website..Thanks to all !!!
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Thanks for the reply's.. I should have said Piero Ferrari gave Andy the car, not Enzo, who had died several years earlier.. Thanks again for looking..

 

Ferrari F50 - Road Test
Why it took 13 months to get our hands on this supercar.
BY JOHN PHILLIPS, PHOTOGRAPHY BY RICHARD DOLE
January 1997

Pages: 1 2


Visit Our Buyer's Guide »Ferrari
Downloads•Complete Specs and Performance Data
•PDF of This Story as it Appeared in the Magazine
There are two things you should know about the Fer*rari F50. First, no one we know in all of the world has measured its performance. Second, it doesn't matter if you're richer than Ted and Jane; you can't buy one.

This is true. And to make sense of it, we slogged slowly through a ver*itable Ripley's fun house of politics, behind-the-scenes arm-wrestling, and lifestyles of the rich and famous.

So why can't you buy an F50 out*right? Well, it isn't because all 55 of the U.S. allotment has been spoken ton. It's because the whole passel of F50s was offered only via a two-year lease whose various articles and cod*icils were fashioned by Ferrari North America (FNA). Even if you possess the requisite $240,000 down pay*ment for the lease (not to mention sales tax and luxury tax), and even if you also are sufficiently affluent to swing the 24 payments of $5600 per month, you'll still have to summon a $150,000 final payment—again, two years down the cash-littered road—before you can truthfully refer to yourself as an F50 owner.

According to Ferrari North America, this lease-it-or-leave-it scheme is in place simply to weed out avaricious speculators—the quick-turnaround artists who, you may recall, jacked F40 prices to as much as $1 million when that car was introduced in 1988. Mind you, it has historically been tricky even for Ferrari to identify those specula*tors. For instance, whose motives for buying an F40 could brie truer or bluer than former Ferrari driver Nigel Mansell's or, say, Princess Caroline's husband's? Yet both of these customers almost immediately liquidated their F40s into a stack of Euro-dollars slightly taller than Enzo's headstone.

Even if your savings account, gravy-wise, is relatively undamaged by the $560,640 that you'll eventu*ally spend on an F50 lease program, you still may not qualify to wrap your sticky fingers around this par*ticular car's carbon-fiber shift knob. And that's because Ferrari North America will lease you an F50 only if you're on its "A list" of customers.

More hoops to clear? Fine. But how?

"There's this long questionnaire that Ferrari sent me when I first tried to buy the thing," explains a current F50 lessee. "FNA makes you answer stuff like, 'What Ferraris do you cur*rently own? and 'How many Ferraris have you sold in your lifetime and for how much? and `Have you raced any Ferraris?' and 'Do you plan to race the F50?' And so on. If your answers satisfy someone at Ferrari, maybe then your name goes on a list of guys they'll con*sider leasing an F50 to."

In the previous 13 months, C/D has spoken at length to 11 Ferrari F50 lessees. Most expressed annoyance at FNA's questionnaire and leasing scheme. "I always pay cash for my Ferraris," said one. "This time, I couldn't do that, so the car doesn't feel like it's mine. Throughout all of this, I've felt as though Fer*rari was questioning my motives—me, a guy who buys another of its cars every single year."

"I admit [the questionnaire and lease] were kind of a screening process," says Ferrari North America spokesman Giampaolo Letta. "The F50 became something of a reward to customers who already had three, five, ten Ferraris. We looked at the cars they owned. If they already owned an F40—hadn't sold it to make a profit—that was important. But we [FNA] did not decide who got an F50 and who didn't. That decision came from Maranello."

Says longtime Ferrari dealer Rick Mancuso: "The [leasing] theory isn't wrong, but the execution is painful. They [FNA] have controlled an inordinate amount of the transaction on this car."

He's not kidding.

More than a year ago, when C/D first asked FNA if we could measure an F50, it told us, "No, there is no press car." Fair enough. Not many companies regularly hand out half-million-dollar machines to writers who will thrash them on a track.




But a funny thing happened as we began contacting the 11 men who had F50s parked in their garages. Either they recited what sounded like a prepared FNA public-relations speech, which always began, "Numbers have nothing to do with Ferraris. The cars are about soul and emotion and a rich heritage." Or the F50 lessee enthusiastically replied, "Sure, let's do it, where do you want to test?"

Then, among those who said yes, one of two things would happen in short order. Once we'd reserved a track and the test drew near, they'd stop returning our calls and faxes. All contact would cease. That happened four times. Or an even stranger response would manifest. The lessee would sheepishly call to announce: "I'd still like to let you test my car, but I can't. Fer*rari doesn't think it's a good idea."

Well, okay. But why would wealthy, inde*pendent men care what Ferrari thinks?

Explained one: "I buy every new Ferrari that comes out. It was suggested that if my F50 got tested, I might not be on the list of preferred customers, which I think is necessary to get the first new models."

"There are perks for being a loyal Ferrari customer," said another lessee who had initially been keen on having C/D test his car. "Things like personal factory tours in Maranello and pri*vate drives at Fiorano. Maybe I have a big ego, but those things mean a lot to me. So, to be told I might lose those perks, well, you know. . ."

And that was the end of the discussion. No owner was willing to reveal the name of a man at the distributor, at the dealership, or at the factory who had uttered these intimidating persuasions. So we asked Ferrari North America whether it had recommended that its customers not lend us an F50. Replied spokesman Letta: "It is true that we didn't want a customer's car to be tested, because you never know what condition it is in, or how it has been maintained. But Ferrari North America never threatened a customer."




We then asked Letta if any magazine had measured the performance of an F50. "No," he replied. When asked if he knew why, he again said no but added: "I'm aware that [C/D] con*tacted some customers who agreed to test. But [those customers] backed out when they heard someone else would drive their car." In point of fact, however, C/D offered each customer the chance to drive his own F50 during the test.

In one instance, Letta referred by name to a Midwest customer who, he said, "backed out because he wanted to drive his own car." This is an odd statement, for two reasons. First, it was that customer's dealer who called C/D and with*drew the car from the test. Second, that partic*ular customer, back in 1991, happily handed us his F40 to test under identical conditions.

And so, 13 months and 11 American F50 lessees came and went, and the paperwork in our F50 file began to resemble something akin to a Warren Commission report.

Still, if there did exist some Oliver Stone—style conspiracy to keep us from measuring an F50, no one had explained its purpose. The lone theory ever posited, at least for publication, came from a dealer who would only speak anonymously. "Understand that Ferrari, the company, has a big ego," he said. "And the F50 probably isn't as fast as the F40. I'm sure it would prefer this go unsaid."

Fast-forward to late summer 1996, and we're wandering the paddock at an IMSA race. That's where we stumbled across a 45-year-old investment analyst and heavy-duty trader of corpo*rate stocks, bonds, and possibly small countries. His name is Andy Evans, a crony of Bill Gates's. He lives on a private island near Victoria, British Columbia, and using either his three-engine, ten-passenger Falcon DA-50 or his Lear, he daily flies to his office in Mill Creek, Washington, or in Indianapolis.

Through Team Scandia, one of a dozen companies he owns, Andy Evans fields an unprecedented number of racing cars. Last year, for instance, Evans ran a CART Indy car alternately for Eliseo Salazar and Michel Jourdain Jr. He entered seven IRL cars at the Indy 500 and six at the Las Vegas event—giving rides to the likes of Alessandro Zampedri and Michele Alboreto. He ran one and sometimes two IMSA Ferraris—magnificent, open-cockpit WSC 333SPs—for drivers Fermin Velez and, occasion*ally, for himself.

 

Ferrari F50 - Tutti in Pinta!
Why it took 13 months to get our hands on this supercar.
Pages: 1 2


Visit Our Buyer's Guide »Ferrari
News & Reviews
•Ferrari F50 - Road Test
Downloads•Complete Specs and Performance Data
•PDF of This Story as it Appeared in the Magazine
What grabbed our attention was Evans's easy-going, do-any*thing relationship with Ferrari. In '94, sharing the 333SP with Velez, Evans was voted IMSA's most-improved driver. In '95, Team Scandia's Ferrari won outright at Sebring—again with Evans as one of its drivers. Velez then went on to win the IMSA driving championship and, better yet, Ferrari went home with the constructors' trophy. In Maranello's eyes, Evans had become more than the Golden Boy; he was John Wayne with a cell phone.

"That [championship] was the highlight of my career," recalls Evans during one of the rare moments he is not flying or cutting deals on the phone or both. "And it must also have pleased Piero Ferrari, because when I went to Italy, the factory said, 'As a reward, what would you like? I said, 'I'd like the first F50 you make.' Well, I was a little late—the first F50 was a beater, a prototype mule. The second had already gone to, I think, the Sultan of Brunei. But the third was still around, and Ferrari put my name on it. Chassis number zero-zero-three. I couldn't believe it, because our [model] 333 race car was also chassis number three. My lucky number."

As it happened, F50 chassis number 003 was never intended for U.S. consumption. "It has European lights and bumpers," explains Evans with a shrug. "But I don't care, because I was never gonna drive it. I just wanted it as a col*lector's item, a memento of our winning IMSA season."

Indeed, the first time C/D clapped eyes on Evans's F50, it was parked 10 feet from his glass-encased office in the lobby of his 38,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art Indy-car shop—the word "mall" is more accu*rate—in Indianapolis. The car's odometer showed 50 kilometers (31 miles).

Although its engine and drivetrain are identical to every other F50's, chassis number 003 is in one way profoundly rare. It is owned outright—no lease—by an American. Which meant Evans was free to do with his F50 anything he wished. When C/D asked whether he'd let us run num*bers on his car at the Trans*portation Research Center's 7.5-mile oval in Ohio, Evans asked only, "When?" and "Can I do the top-speed driving myself?"

October 11: Andy Evans begins the morning in Gainesville, Georgia, where (so the rumor goes) he is talking to Danny Panoz about a Le Mans prototype. By noon, his two pilots have landed the Falcon in New York, where Evans confers with sports-mar*keting guru Roberto Muller, his partner in the duo's recent takeover of IMSA. By 3 p.m., he flies in to Dublin, Ohio, and drives to the test track. He is preceded by one of Team Scandia's Indy-car crews in a Penske-perfect 40-foot truck carrying not only Evans's F50 but also a Jaguar XJR-15—strangely enough, that car is also chassis number 003—which he has brought along because "I just love hearing the sound it makes."

Evans is wearing a red Ferrari jacket, a Ferrari-monogrammed knit shirt, and a prancing-horse baseball cap that he does not remove. Oddly, he is not wearing the Ferrari F50 driving shoes that come as standard equipment with the car, stowed behind the right headlight. The baseball cap stays put until we ask, "You ready for a top-speed run?" Without uttering a word, he slips on his helmet.




Tutti in pinta! (Roughly translated, "Everyone on the track.")

Things are happening quickly. Evans warms up the F50's fluids, making a couple fifth-gear passes in the 150-mph range. Lap number three is deadly serious: 194 mph through both our timing lights and our Stalker radar gun. In fact, the F50 is slowing only to 187 mph as it sinks deep into Turn One on the track's steep banking. Evans isn't lifting, and one of Honda's deer spotters stationed around the oval says to me, "That guy is brave or crazy." As the Ferrari passes, its gated exhaust is in the barn-door mode—inside the cockpit, it's at 104 piercing decibels of shriek—and the sound comes as close to raising goose-flesh as anything since the V-12 Matras lit up the Mulsanne.

On the fourth lap, the F50's speed drops to 191.6 mph, and radiator coolant is fizzing out of the overflow vent. Evans stops. "Not exactly a WSC car out there," he reports. "It dances around a bit, but it pulls right up to the redline."

The F50's top speed is shy of an F40's by 3 mph. It is 8 mph below the factory's claim. It's also 4 mph beyond the 8500-rpm redline—a cardinal sin, except when the test driver owns the supercar in question.

During six acceleration runs, Evans expertly experiments with launch techniques. The most efficient turns out to entail only a mild rear-tire chirp at step-off, then lots of throttle. We view from behind; the wisps of white tire smoke transform the car into a flying pink wing.

The computer spits out some amazing figures: A 60mph dash in 3.8 seconds. The quarter-mile in 12.1 seconds at 123 mph.

Evans's pilot turns and asks, "Is that as quick as most other supercars?" I tell him that these quarter-mile times are quicker than a Porsche 911 Turbo's or a Dodge Viper GTS's by 0.2 second. They're five-tenths quicker than the most recent Lamborghini Diablo coupe we tested. He smiles.

On the other hand, these times are essentially identical to the F40's, whose twin turbos made it more difficult to launch. In fact, once beyond the quarter-mile traps, the F40 surpasses the F50 at every speed we measured. By 170 mph, the older F40—despite spotting the F50 four cylinders, 28 valves, and 35 hp—would be a full half-second ahead. More than 100 feet ahead.

We move to the asphalt lake for braking tests, where the F50 immediately wants to lock its front wheels prema*turely. Without ABS, the F50 kicks up mini-puffs of blue smoke and is ever on the verge of creating Flintstone tires. Evans practices, then squeezes out a dandy 176-foot stop from 70 mph. Still, this is eleven feet farther than it takes a Ferrari F355 with ABS to halt from the same speed.




On the 300-foot skidpad, the F50 easily holds an understeering line with 0.95 g of grip. Try to hold the tail out for a lap, how*ever, and the car shows a predilection for oversteer that evokes a 180-degree spin. This is the same lateral stick that an all-wheel-drive 911 Turbo can muster, but it's a fair whack behind the F40's amazing 1.01 g. And again, the F50's performance is shy of the factory's claim of 1.2 g. More troubling, the car's rear tires, fol*lowing four laps in each direction on the skidpad, emerge with a dozen dime-size blisters on each inner rib of tread, this on a 60-degree day.

And so, we invested 13 months of frustration and a set of Goodyears into conducting a 180-minute test on a car whose on-track performance matched our original predictions almost exactly. Does the work-to-fun ratio here sound slightly askew?

So far, the only Ferrari F50 offered for sale, free and clear on the open market, is a Swiss car. Asking price: $608,300, or $47,660 beyond what will be the vehicle's eventual out-of‑lease price in America. Jeez. A price hike. A speculative spike? It may not make any difference, because not one of the 11 lessees C/D contacted expected to sell his F50 once he owns the thing.

"Supercars, you know, there's always another one that's faster," says Evans philosophically. "I could buy a McLaren [F1], spend twice the money, go more than 200 mph. But to me, that's not the point. I think Ferraris are the greatest sports cars on earth—I wouldn't race anything else. I admit the politics of the company are sometimes difficult. Right now, for example, I'm frustrated they won't con*centrate on the racing version of the F50—get back to their sports-car roots, rather than all this F1 emphasis. But I'm willing to wait it out. If they do construct an F50GT, Team Scandia will buy one. I want chassis 003."

Meanwhile, the replacement for the F50, probably dubbed the F60, is due in 1999. This time, if there's a lease, we're filling out one of those ten-page questionnaires. There might be some fibbing involved.

Of course, when men deal in fast cars, isn't there always?