Inside scoop on Ferrari’s new FF - The first thing we were told - this was the marketing man speaking - is that the FF was designed around customers' wish-lists. This made us scared.
Customers have no idea what's possible, or which characteristics are incompatible. It's like asking diners in a restaurant to detail the ingredients instead of letting the infinitely more knowledgeable chef do it for them.
Anyway, apparently people wanted a Ferrari with room for four. And a big boot. And they wanted it to be a whole lot more driveable in the wet (fair enough - a 599 is sphincter-puckeringly skittish in the wet).
This could have resulted in a bulky, ill-proportioned car, an ugly looker designed to fit around the people and the golf bags, as well as the huge engine. It could have been heavy and cumbersome, with a complicated and heavy 4WD transmission.
Which would have met the brief but it wouldn't have looked like a Ferrari should, or driven like one. And the customers, despite having got what they asked for, would have run a mile.
But then we started to speak with Amedeo Felisa, Ferrari's CEO who happens to have come up through the engineering ranks there and is an absolute supercar genius. He explained what's been done to make it agile and fast, as well as manageable in the wet even with - get this - 660bhp on tap.
Can a car have 4WD for security, but still drive like a Ferrari? Can even Ferrari manage that?
Well, the FF doesn't actually have a normal heavy 4WD system with a centre diff and an extra prop shaft. It has a normal Ferrari configuration, with the drive going from the V12 back to a seven-speed twin-clutch gearbox driving the rear wheels. This is good for weight distribution, and in the dry the FF is as fast around a track as a 599 (it's only a little heavier, yet usefully more powerful). Felisa swears it feels like a proper front-engined RWD V12 Ferrari, too. And he has spoken the truth to me in these matters all the 16 years I've been interviewing him.
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